The Authority on Bamboo: brought to you by Green Earth Bamboo

It seems that cell phone carriers may be moving away from the practice of locking customers into long contracts whenever they purchase a new handset.  T-Mobile has had initial success with its no-contract plans, which it announced in March, shortly before it started carrying the iPhone.  Industry analysts seem to think that this will spur T-Mobile’s competitors to follow suit and phase contracts out of their business models.

The average buyer might care about this possibility because it means that carriers will also have a different approach to their price structures.  Currently, contracts serve as guaranteed income to the carrier, which justifies the subsidies they pay to keep the initial cost of your phone low.  This loss-leader is no longer sustainable for the company if they know you could jump ship before you’ve paid them enough to cover the actual cost of the phone.  The real cost of a cell phone is, of course, much higher than what consumers are typically paying for them these days.

Just this week, T-Mobile raised the price of its iPhone 5 by a whopping fifty percent.  That is, they increased the required down payment from fifty dollars to 150 dollars.  This does not in any way change the twenty dollar monthly installments that the buyer must then pay for twenty-four months.  And it still keeps the total cost below the 650 dollar price tag the phone carries if it’s purchased outright from Apple.  T-Mobile has explained this change as the end of a promotion, though they never said the lower initial price was temporary.  But I hope it’s not too speculative to suggest that this might be an instance of them reformulating their pricing to accommodate the decreased dependence on contracts.

I also hope it’s not too pejorative to say that it’s idiotic if this modest increase is something that cell phone buyers are worried about.  Yet, for some reason, media coverage of the potential end of cell phone contracts has apparently made a point of trying to promote such worry.  From what I’ve seen, instead of saying, “Congratulations, you might not have to commit to two years of service whenever you buy a phone,” news stories about T-Mobile’s no-contract success have been saying, “If you’re in the market for a new phone, you might want to get it before the price goes up.”

Bull crap.  Pay more for it now.  You’re actually likely to end up paying less in the long run if you stop making your service provider absorb the up-front costs for you.  But even if you don’t, it’s ridiculous if you’re only willing to pay 100 dollars for something that really costs 650 and probably should cost even more.  For instance, according to some rough calculations, an iPad 2 would have roughly double its current production costs if it was produced by American workers being paid a fair wage.  If Apple wanted to retain its current profit margins, it would then sell each item for well over 1,000 dollars.  On Apple’s website, the iPad 2 currently retails for 400.

Electronics are ridiculously inexpensive today.  And yet it seems that we experience consumer anxiety any time there is a threat of a modest price increase, even if it’s just an increase to up-front but not total costs.  And we do it with everything else, as well.  I find it uniquely annoying to see somebody complaining bitterly about a higher price tag on something they don’t need.  If you can’t afford a price that reflects reality, live without it.  Otherwise, you should be willing to pay a little more.  Isn’t it better to pay a realistic price for a device that you can be pretty sure wasn’t assembled by foreign slaves?  If you’re concerned about the environment, isn’t it better to pay a little more for clean energy, or recycled merchandise, or bamboo clothing?  Or are we so accustomed to having cheap things given to us that we can’t see beyond them?

I fondly remember hearing a routine by the comedian Louis CK in which he told an anecdote about being on one of the first airline flights to ever offer wi-fi.  He said that when the service went out and a stewardess made an announcement apologizing for it, the man seated next to him turned to him and muttered, “This is bullshit.”  Louis CK was impressed, as I would have been, by “how quickly the world owed him something he found out existed just five seconds ago.”  In the comedian’s words, this was a symptom of living in a time when “everything is amazing and nobody is happy.”  I’m worried that western society is making a lifestyle out of not realizing how good we have it.

The world doesn’t owe us untenably cheap prices on anything.  And we really need to be aware of the fact that when that’s all we’re willing to pay, there are negative consequences attached to it.  For one thing, we get cheap, fragile, but easily replaceable crap.  But more importantly, we often get it thanks to worker abuse or environmental damage.  Whether we’re talking about cell phones, non-essential food, bed linens, toys, or anything else, low prices aren’t everything.  There is also value in both quality and conscience.

I’m frankly not sure if there are major electronics on the market today which provide both of those things.  No doubt there’s plenty of quality, but there’s also too much abuse and unsustainability.  Still, I know that the perfect, humanely-produced phone isn’t going to become available unless people are clearly willing to pay for it.  I also know that there is merchandise in other industries which does provide the best of both quality and conscience.  Responsible consumers can practice exhibiting good demand by buying bamboo and other luxurious, eco-friendly, and humane goods.

Or at the very least, they can laugh and dismiss media reports when they try telling them to be worried about up-front cell phone costs that no longer coddle them.

Tagged as: bamboo clothing, eco-friendly, environment, green consumer

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