~~Six~~ ~~Two hours to go~~, the "e-waste" HTC Evo phone has been bid up to ~~$137.50~~ ~~$167.50~~

$265

Remember, depending on who wins this bid, I could be arrested by Interpol for violating the MPPI (a working paper drafted by some people who go to Basel Secretariat meetings. Evidently the working paper trumps the actual text of the Basel Convention, which allows export for repair and refurbishment).

I have not removed all the non-working parts that I expect will be replaced - which in the case of this cell phone, means removing a screen which still works for 80% of the screen, allowing the buyer to confirm other functions before undergoing the repair.

The phone may sell in the USA, which means I'll have to get an R2 downstream audit of the buyer. Most of the cell phone repairers I have met in Boston, Paris, and NY are immigrants.

My point in all this is that the free market is not some evil that must be taken out of the equation in a process flow diagram. If you design a diagram, and by following it, reduce the value of this cell phone to $20, the difference (at least $117.50, and climbing) cannot be attributed to "externalized pollution costs".

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Karl Marx was a better economist than this. My point is that StEP and EPA and Basel need to try running real world products through their process flow diagrams. If they are destroying added value, that will almost always translate into more mining and refining and toxics and carbon, and less affordable product for poor people. Let's take the legitimate concerns about "ewaste" and use them to make fair trade better, not command-and-control the secondary market.