Tony Rees wrote:
Regarding another reply I received, I understand the difference between the connectors, but I’m still at a loss why this is a government problem.
Answered earlier. Trash. Pollution. Trash is a social problem. Pollution is a production problem, too. Which makes trash a government problem.
And our beloved devices and its cables and chargers and the rest are eventually trash, if not sooner.
With the same gear everywhere, reuse is feasible, packaging and shipping and electronic waste is reduced, and—contrary to what might be business preference here, what with expensive cables and parts—common parts are commodities.
The costs of electronic waste are recorded by others—paid for by individuals in their trash bills, and society as a whole with the piles of trash and the efforts to reduce and dispose of same—and—short of requiring the businesses to recycle, which is where we’re headed—are not costs otherwise considered or accounted for by (most) businesses, or are something actively increased in the interests of increasing business profits; by vendor-specific and weird cables (e.g. Lightning), etc.
For each of us, the shift to USB-C means commodity parts are more common, more interchangeable, and with associated cost savings.
In different terms, the costs of passport controls and the inevitable losses from currency exchanges coming and going were a big motivation for the European Community. Businesses just passed those costs along, and we all paid. The mess and the costs of crossing borders was not to be underestimated, and the common currency and common border controls makes that all vastly easier. (The US has something similar to the EU here, due to its size, too. Having six different currencies and border crossings in New England would be a disaster, just as it was an expensive mess in Europe prior to the union.) The border crossings were a form of insensible financial losses for all of us, in terms of added payments and percentages and fees, and scheduling delays, similar to the insensible losses from electronic waste. But these border activities were profitable for the border businesses and the casas de cambio, and profitable for the folks selling unique cables and chargers.
