r/technology • u/ourlifeintoronto • Sep 10 '23

Transportation Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.article
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u/Hoooooooar Sep 11 '23

You can have 90% margins in the us or 99.7% margins with slave labor overseas. Please choose how you will deliver value to the shareholders.

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u/bigsquirrel Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 11 '23

Yup we don’t want dirty nasty mines in our backyard. Corporations nations don’t want to compete with overseas markets (they can, they would just make slightly less billions) so we will continue to export environmental disaster, misery and death so little Timmy can get a new (insert whatever batter powered gadget of the year) for Christmas. *man my spelling today

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u/Joe_Jeep Sep 11 '23

It's less about Timmy and more about billionaires trying to make more and more

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u/bigsquirrel Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 11 '23

Sure but Americans insane thirst for piles and piles of useless shit isn’t helping. I don’t live like a kink (ha Monk)* or anything but years living abroad makes me reflect on my own purchasing habits with embarrassment. So much pointless shit that only lines the pockets of billionaires and ultimately hurts people in other countries.

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u/MattcVI Sep 11 '23

Yeah but who cares about people who might as well not exist since I can't see them? I need another delivery so I can be excited about the package when it comes. Just one more and I swear I'm done cold turkey, please?

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u/headunplugged Sep 11 '23

"Coronations don’t want to compete with overseas markets". <= this is the root problem.

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u/bigsquirrel Sep 11 '23

Ha my spelling is so bad today. Gotta pay more attention to what autocorrect is throwing in there.

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u/headunplugged Sep 11 '23

All good, I turned mine completely off, more hastle then its worth, even though I'm terrible at spelling.

Still, companies refusing to compete is a huge problem though.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23 edited Sep 11 '23

Nah, that means withholding all western tech from developing countries. Like when Ford made his first car, he immediate expanded to Canada. You have to make the factories in the regions you want to sell the stuff OR the other guy has to compete to keep you out.

The problem isn't global corporations aren't competing overseas, it's that overseas corporations aren't offering compelling enough options to keep global corporations out as they would otherwise have all the advantages being a domestic offering. Like Ford doesn't get outsold by Toyota because globalism is unfair, they get outsold because Toyota is making a better product, including outselling Ford in cars in the US market. And smaller nations aren't really going to all do better by developing their own domestic cars, that's a lot of redundancy and only the few top designs are really needed. The country hosting the factory gets to learn how to build globally market leading products, not trial and error their way through everything. It's a good deal in most cases for most countries because they get better markets to access, but technically the US could have kept a closed market after WW2 and dominated the world more, pushing up American's standard of living relative to the rest of the world, which is more or less what you're asking for and is more or less the greediest option we had.

It's that having every nation independently develop all tech would be slow, painful, redundant, somewhat evil AND make the people who invented the tech WAY less money.

Like.. how do we share tech with developing nations if they can't build the tech or pay US/EU wages? We just sit on our big hill and tell them to innovate faster!!!

Is that really the moral high ground?

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

It depends really, in some cases you really can't make the product in the US and sell it to some market with much less GDP per capita and you really do spread wealth and give out jobs with Globalism.

The biggest re-distribution of wealth in human history is when western nations adopted modern globalism... where ppl actually get paid.. not the other kind!

You can see it in the global GDP graphs where developing countries diverge from being locked to developed nations growth if you're actually interested.

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u/bigsquirrel Sep 11 '23

GDP is an absolutely terrible measure for this sort of thing. A nation can get “richer” as its people get poorer and sicker.

We could go on for days but ultimately these effective monopolies and massive purchasing power in the hands of a few companies create environments that act as monopolies. They won’t support or make any moves that might increase cost or lower prices in those spaces. Until legislation internationally catches up none of this will change. Wealthy countries will export misery to poor countries so a handful of people can get wealthy there and thousands suffer. Sure there’s a lot more money in Cambodia than there used to be. Only for the top .1%. GDP is not a reflection of how people are living.

Like how opening a Wal Mart “helps” rural communities in America.

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u/SynthD Sep 11 '23

Lithium mining is pretty much guaranteed to create a Superfund site.

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u/bigsquirrel Sep 11 '23

For sure, best the brown people live with it. 😅. That’s the messed up thing. We know it’s awful, we have regulations to at least mitigate some of the impact human and environmental. Corporate profits demand we export that misery somewhere else so they can buy another yacht.

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u/phyrros Sep 11 '23

I just recently got into the position where i would could buy the tools i wanted instead of just those i could afford.

And if you drop, dunno, 800€ in a festtool tracksaw you certainly don't want to rebuy that thing in the next few years.

And you instantly start to be more careful with that thing because it is such a sizeable investment.

Biggest issue is imho those throw-away tools/gadgets. And companies at the high end scale which aim for the walled garden ecosystem