A couple hours before I was on the edge of getting a Fairphone 5 but I read the specifications and didn’t see 3.5 mm audio jack anywhere. So I thought to myself…why? The community has been requesting this for a couple years ago now so why not. They’re already making money on the phone, they’re really pushing for people to get their wireless headphones? Just add the headphone jack, shouldn’t be too hard.
They said they’re treating their workers fairly, sourcing from ethical sources, renewable claims, repairability claims, and supporting foss projects (they donated a fp4 to CalyxOS to support development). All of these are amazing, so adding a little headphone jack shouldn’t be that hard in the grand scheme of all this.
*Add the headphone jack and I’ll be happy to support and get a fp5.
What’s the conclusion of this claim? That we shouldn’t consume anything at all? That it doesn’t matter what we consume as it all is equally unethical?
Even if you believe that all consumption is unethical, there are still differences in impact and effect depending on what we consume and how much we consume.
Of course not, but who is urging people to replace their new/working smartphone with a fairphone?
From a price/quality perspective, the fairphone has always been “bad”… You pay the price of a upper mid smartphone and get older mid tech. That’s because the fairphone’s main appeal is it’s modularity and their focus on “sustainable” production, which of course has it’s price.
If your main focus is price and affordability, the fairphone is a bad choice.
First: nothing you buy will ever be free from exploitation under this system.
Second: buying one product over another will make no difference in society and the world.
Actually, this second conclusion is also a derivation of another statement: individuals do not change a society, collectives do. Boycotts, which are another attempt at conscious consumption, sometimes manage to shut down companies, but they never manage to end the harmful production pattern that these companies were applying in the first place.
And that doesn’t mean we should stop consuming everything, because it’s impossible to live without consuming.
In the end, conscious consumption only serves to feel good (falsely) about yourself. What is an honest reason to do something.