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Fairphone 5 Released
(shop.fairphone.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Technology
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Millions of people could afford this phone, they just don't care about ethics.
Instead the Samsung S's, Folds and iPhones sell by the tens of millions because they are trendy and give more "bang for the buck".
And millionaires could afford to pay their workers fair wages, but apparently you'd rather blame the general public instead.
It's not at all unreasonable for people to assume the goods they buy are ethically produced.
If someone gets food poisoning from a restaurant, do you blame them for eating there? Do you try and shame them for not reading through 800 reviews to check it was safe to eat there? Do you insist they should have gone somewhere that was twice the price for half the portion?
Of course you don't. But apparently this deeply flawed logic is only used when it comes to corporate greed and only because rich people don't run restaurants.
All those are fair points. There's not much freedom of choice because common people are struggling to live as it is, to splurge on something with a bad camera and battery life makes no sense (I believe those are some main points people upgrade their phones).
I'm running a 4 year old phone and probably will be going on 5th year because of economical strain.
In your analogy, it also doesn't help that there's only one ethical restaurant among hundreds of unethical ones. It's expensive because nobody goes there and nobody goes there because it's expensive.
I understand why people would hesitate to pay the price. Realistically, the Fairphone could have put in higher quality parts but that would have just blown their costs out further.
But exploitative wages -- for both foreign and domestic workers -- are at the core of many problems and I hate to see customers blamed.
The one in a hundred restaurant might be full of empty tables, but where would people eat if you doubled their wages? If there were two chocolate bars with identical taste, being offered at an identical price, except one of them used child slaves (and said so on the packaging), how many people "wouldn't care" then?
Ethical choices shouldn't be a luxury, unethical choices just shouldn't be an option. If that means people can't afford chocolate, they can take it up with the executives who have been pocketing their payrises.