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it's discussed in the piece.

Usually, because make new stuff is cheaper than repairing, it stops making sense. Yes-yes, environmentalism, and yesyes, don't waste for no reason... but like, why bother?

I guess it'll take the cost of replacing a gadget to exceed the cost of repairing it. Which likely means we are in some kind of environmental doomsday scenario?

Or, as in my comment we need some major advancement on reusability tech

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Or, we're just in a temporary period of relatively cheap material inputs. If that flips, landfills may become future mines.

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Sounds like a good setup for a scifi

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It's mostly that plastics are cheap, right?

Easy enough to imagine energy demand rising to the point where plastics are no longer an economical use of petroleum, at least for all the things it's used for now.

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150 sats \ 5 replies \ @optimism 9h

I think y'all would love Steward Brand's book in progress.

Have a chapter

There's more but I'm on mobile.

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that's literally what the Harford article is about :)

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33 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 8h

Awesome. Will hunt for archive later when im at my desk.

I've read every chapter of Brands drafts thus far and I actually find it rather romantic.

Also his book in making inspired me to help a dude set up a repair business in 2024. 3D printers are the bomb.

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amazing! Best of luck, let us know how it goes

Super interesting and no surprise we decided to just stop using paper instead of dealing with all that.

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