Phones, Cobalt Mining, and America Outsourcing Guilt

Yeah, where does our guilt extend? Like if we outsource all the things that we're guilty about, does it leave at our border? Never. It never leaves. Yeah. You have a phone that's made by slaves. But do you feel guilty about it? Yes. You do? Yeah, for sure. If there was a company that came along that was like if Samsung said, Hey, we're gonna make all of our phone cruelty free. Cruelty free. We're gonna get all of our cobalt from this place that where we can ensure you that there's nothing there and no Chinese factory workers making, you know, 16 cents a day or whatever the fuck they make. Yeah. It's not if yeah, if there's a phone that was made in America that cost twice as much, I'd buy it in a fucking heartbeat. But there isn't. There isn't. And because there isn't we, what do we do? We put up with the guilds? Well, they fucked up. They fucked us. Okay, and you know to be connected to something where you absolutely absolutely need it, but it's morally reprehensible at its very core. Like imagine how many people have tweeted self-righteous things on a phone that was made by slaves. Yep. That's that's the reality of these phones and Apple's one of the richest fucking companies on planet Earth. I don't know what the logistics would be involved in making a phone in America with skilled labor that gets paid a fair wage and gets health insurance and union benefits and all that stuff. But whatever it is, I feel like I would like to pay that and we have maybe and if I don't have the money I'll buy less phones. I'll buy a phone. I have a fucking iPhone 11. One of my phone lines is iPhone 11. It's great. Still works. Yeah. Still seems so normal when I fire it up. It doesn't seem any different to me. But do we have the mineral? Like do we have cobalt in America that we can mine? I don't think we do. That's the tricky thing. I don't know. Is cobalt available in America? I thought it's only available in like the Congo. Well, that's where the primary source is for sure. But I think there's at least one other place on earth. I don't remember correctly. Mexico. Let's go. Let's go to this shit. Listen, we have a problem with the cartels. Let's just like Mexico. Do we have a problem with them? Do we have a problem with the cartels or are we working with the cartels? Well, for sure someone's working with them. I mean, it's not just like 100% Mexican citizens that are sneaking across here and doing all this business. Someone's working with them. Goddamn what's wrong with my throat. Yeah, someone for sure is working with them. But it's not good. It's not good to have this like fake scenario. You have a fake scenario. Say drugs are bad. If you make drugs illegal, no one's going to do drugs. Like your math sucks. Okay, because that's not the correct math. The correct math is if you make drugs illegal, then illegal people sell drugs. You fucking asshole. And so now you've propped up a multi-billion dollar industry south of the border filled with ruthless murderers. Idaho is the only cobalt mine in the United States and it's going to remain so. Okay, so we have some cobalt here. I'm sure they could find some more. Okay, maybe we have just enough for us. How about just for us? Let's like let the world make their own moral decisions. But maybe if we legitimately are the moral high ground, we could like encourage the rest of the world to realize like the same thing we were talking about earlier about having too much money. Like just don't you can't just think about my at a certain point in time. You just you have to just figure out what's best for everybody. And in this situation, if I was the king of the world, if I was the king of America, I would say how about we only make phones that are in America. We make American made phones with American will have sanitary conditions that are safe and provide health care. All the things that you would hope someone working a fucking cobalt mine would get give them a great wage. Like make it so that this is an even exchange. It's not a negative exchange. Protect them from all the. And if we knew that the cobalt we're getting on our phone, you don't have to worry. These guys make one hundred thousand dollars a year. They're fucking well paid. They're they live in a great community. OK, great. Now I don't feel bad about my phone. But if you watch those videos from Foxconn, you see those fucking poor people slaving away all day long in this sweatshop, 16 hours a day. They have bunks there and shit. They put nets around the building to keep people from jumping off. That is so wild. Instead of changing the conditions, they won't let you kill you. That's crazy. They're like, get back to work. Grab you by your hair. Fucking drag you back down onto the floor. You probably owe them money or something. I mean, I don't know how they fucking do that. Yeah, it's a tricky one. Do you feel you would you would want everything you use in your everyday life to have a clean connection to like ethically sourced materials, you know, great relationships with workers, no greedy corporations that are fucking over the environment. Everybody would want that. I think they'd want that if they had access. I think most people are like trying to pay their fucking rent. And they're like, all right, if this is a little bit cheaper, I have a little bit more money for my family, my parents who are sick, my kids, like I can buy them another fucking baseball mitt. They can't even consider people in the Congo. And I think that's the tricky thing where like they know it's almost like the Amazon situation where it's like most people probably know that Amazon might not be the best situation for like mom and pop businesses. But it's so convenient to them. And it's so much cheaper. And it's so efficient that they just go, all right, well, this is great for me. Yeah, yeah, there's that. It is interesting. But I think that in those circumstances, when, you know, there's people that just can't afford to buy, you know, whatever it is, ethically sourced and organically grown, there should be other options. But if there was a clear option that someone could take, if a phone costs 1,200 bucks, right? I just looked up as saying that cell phones are not what's driving the cobalt price rise. It is electronic batteries. It's called batteries. Well, yeah, well, that was the tesla's issue. But that but that is what they use them in cell phones. It's like lithium ion batteries. Eight grams of cobalt is in a cell phone. And how much is in like a nine volt battery? How much cobalt in a nine volt, the rechargeable battery? That's okay. I see your point. You're right. It's like it's everything electronics. We're thinking about it as cell phones, but that's because cell phones are the primary method of communication and just just just how many podcasts are listened to on cell phones? All of them? Yeah. Or is it like 90% like if imagine if cell phones are made illegal and people still had to get podcasts like done. The majority of modern electric vehicles use these battery chemistries and lithium nickel manganese, manganese, manganese cobalt oxide, in which have a cathode containing 10 to 20% cobalt. And what was the cell phone? Eight grams. Eight grams. But that's a different measurement unit, right? One of them is percentage. Yes. One of them is grams. Either way, I mean, it's like it's kind of for everything with lithium ion batteries. It does something to stabilize it. You know what it's like? It's like it's almost like asking for to 30 kilograms for UV. 5%. Okay. Cell structure requires a minimum amount of cobalt, about 5% and less lower energy density. Lithium ion batteries without cobalt are used at the expense of performance. A typical smart phone battery requires only 5 to 20 grams of cobalt, whereas an EV requires between 4 and 30 kilograms. Whoa. It's electric cars. Electric cars are fucking up the environment. Oh, no. Isn't that like what a conundrum? Life is funny. I mean, it's not just the environment. It's like, when I'm saying the environment, I'm like the frequency of the earth. Yes. You know, like you're, until somebody cleans that up, the minds, until somebody actually looks at it, like every electronic thing with lithium ion batteries is connected to this horrific crime against humanity. Yeah. What are we doing? Nothing. Wild. All the chitter chatter, all the talk about equality and equity and helping and charity and what about that? We're all personally responsible. Yeah, bro, this ain't a secret. It's not like a fucking X marks the spot in a pirate map. Nope. This is Google. Yeah. Google. And I, as Siddharth Kaur, are on my podcast. We talked about it in front of fucking millions of people. People know it's a thing. They're not even talking about it. They're not doing shit. It's inconvenient. It's too inconvenient to care about. It's very inconvenient for all of us. Yeah. We're not going to stop using our phones. Idaho Cell Phone Company. You're going to start it? That should be the name of the company, Idaho Cell Phone Company. Dude, Idaho? They mine, they mine, Cobalt. Let's build, like, this would, if Apple was smart, they'd make a deal. You can buy iPhone, you can buy iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, you can buy that. Or you could buy Idaho Cell Phone Company. iPhone. iPhone. It costs $2,000, but it's made in fucking Idaho. And you get to see the photos of the people that work in the factory, and you know that everybody's getting paid well and everybody has health insurance. You know, you would do it. Of course. 100%, it would be a big status thing to have the Idaho Cell Phone Company's iPhone. Yes. But that is good. That is good we reward caring about other people. 100%. We want that. We want that. ICC. ICC. Idaho Cell Phone Company. This might happen. Like, just old school, just a fucking... Flip phone. The state of Idaho, like, the way it's on the map, like, on the back, just says ICC. And everybody, you got an ICC? Oh, shit, cool, bro. Helping out the environment.