Everyone can reconcile almost anything, practically humanity's superpower. It's rare the person that fails to - on any issue. I think we all do it all the time for most issues.
-Benjamin Franklin
Also being shamed for everything you do as bad for the environment or bad for human right does not work.
I'm not going to buy a new phone today and it sounds like you probably won't either, I'll check back in tomorrow and see how the environment is doing!
That's kind of a tenuous link at best. You could make the case that buying more increases the opportunities for those at the bottom.
I'm not even necessarily making a factual statement here, but personally I don't feel that there's anything to reconcile.
I don’t know enough about these things to know whether buying more or less of these devices directly helps enslaved people, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to observe that rampant consumerism does fuel the postcolonial economic machine that perpetrates that kind of exploitation. And I think that those of us who stand to benefit the most from this system would do well to be extremely cautious about how we are incentivized toward motivated reasoning.
I wouldn't do it personally (see me still using a >7 year old Macbook), but they're likely not dropping anywhere near the full MSRP every year, after they sell the old one.
Meanwhile, I've had three gaming Windows laptops during that same time, and two of them literally fell apart (one I kept using until enough of the plastic frame around the monitor cracked that I could no longer keep it in place with binder clips). The most recent one (ASUS ROG Strix G15) is still doing well, but I've only had it for about two years at this point.
With that said, I generally go for 3 years and use the older phone to drive my stereo, sometimes act as a travel spare, etc.
