Africans Import Used Electronics Because They Are: ______

A)  "Africans buy used because they are Smart."

Emeagwali 1998 "Superbrain of Africa"

- The 1990s used equipment is less susceptible to ESD (electrostatic discharge)

- Equipment which lasts 15 years drops 50% in cost after 2 years.

- Warranty laws that protect consumers in "rich" nations make their used equipment more valuable.

- Capacitors that cost $2.15 can repair a Dell Optiplex worth $800.

- CRTs cost less, but withstand heat and are less prone to theft.

- If you have access to electricity and earn $3,000 per year, a $21 CRT monitor is smarter than a $800 monitor that may or may not work.

- If you are worried about burglary, CRTs are heavier as well as less valuable.

- If you buy new, there's a 33% chance you lose all your money.

- African reuse of WEEE is 85%-91% after repairs.  Brand new has a 33% failure rate.

@TheGuardian finally reports the other side of the "ban on exports" story, as Dell's eyes adjust to the light.  Maybe Africa's "superbrains" are not as primitive as the "experts" told us.  Hope they have stronger legs than HP's Africa venture of 2009 (year that "e-waste export hoax" hit top gears).

Crayons on Maps: Your list of Acceptable Jobs

The theme of social choice, being able to choose a job, is key to mobility.  But mobility is also key to being able to select a job.

In the blogs here about slums, choices of jobs, and exports of materials, we are really talking about free trade.  If you ask people their opinions on free trade and sustainability, you can predict what their estimate is of bad trade.

The Bayesian analysis used by Reed Miller's group at MIT did some interesting things, using surveys of experts, seeding "known" information, and then weighting opinions of statistics according to their ability to answer known things correctly.  The expert who knows the most about your car is most likely to tell you correctly what is wrong with your car.

What is seriously lacking are surveys of Africans, Chinese, Latinos, living across the colored crayon lines that we have drawn on our maps.

Defining E-Waste Racism: Part III Caste Irons

I'm on vacation and so I'm not interrupted, as I normally am.   That's good and bad.

Before posting the next part of my Marlow-inspired (I've just finished Joseph Conrad's 1902 work "Heart of Darkness") rant on the people who illogically criminalize contact between rich and poor, I thought I'd post this link to a morning story on Romeo and Juliet -in India.

As the USA celebrates the Loving v.Virginia interracial marriage, which was an imprisonable offense during my lifetime (and an annual theme of this blog), the growth of cities and expansion of information (parents and local society no longer control all the ideas of heaven, hell, and society) has led to inter-caste marriages in India.

BBC Reports on "A Hideaway for India's Rebel Couples", and interviews a woman who married a childhood friend - a barber from a lower caste - and the threats from her family to get a gun and shoot him dead.

I'm thinking there has to be some Stephen Pinker brain evolution behind the fear of intermingling.  But just as used computers sold Egypt made it stronger (democratically, by weakening the sick and weakened ruling class), diverse genetics make our species stronger.

Finding a case where marrying a lower caste turned out badly... that was the main enforcement in Virginia prior to the Loving marriage... threats of how badly in might turn out.   That's the tactic trying to keep companies like mine from negotiating terms for the sale of capacitor-plague boards, which can have the tiny caps replaced by a smart kid with a soldering iron.

PACE Yourself: Basel Logic of e-Waste Export

HP Blackbird 002 Crashes in the Dead of the Night.
An e-waste export crime in the making...

Basel Convention has a section on legal export which says that repairing electronics is not "Waste".  The ENGO Basel Action Network protested that from the beginning, but lost.  The ENGO now seeks to change this via a BAN "Amendment", calling the Convention as ratified as "an unfinished success story"...

In the meantime, while waiting for its amendment to be passed, BAN is fervently presenting the case that export for repair is indeed already waste.   While waiting to get its export-crime law passed, BAN is also trying to get "competent authorities" in importing countries to act as if repair is already illegal.

Blackbird crashing inthe dead of the night

The NGO has already been very successful when either A) the importing country manufactures new products and sees protectionism value in BAN's interpretation, or B) is a dictatorship trying to stop affordable internet.  89.7% of e-waste enforcement I've seen may be within one of these two categories [tic].  Now they are trying to get the interpretation enacted by USA Congress.   This is what HR 2284, the Green Thompson #Ewaste Bill, would do in the USA.

While waiting for export for repair to be made illegal, how is export for repair already in fact illegal?  BAN explains the logic, in their own words. From the BAN Library: