A Sustainable Train of Thought

Straight from Wired (IPod [sic] Will Be the New CD – the “I” in iPod should never be capitalized, since it’s a trademark, but what do I know):

Well, the iPod could become the new CD, especially if Apple starts offering cheap shuffle iPods pre-loaded with hot new albums or artists’ catalogs. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogs.

Flash-memory drives are now so cheap, software companies are starting to use them to ship software. H&R Block, for example, is selling the latest version of its tax-preparation software on a flash drive for $40—the same price as the CD version. How much would it cost Apple to add a few music chips and some cheap earbuds?

Three major problems with this proposal:

1. Apple will never turn the iPod into a commodity. Period.

2. iPods have sex appeal. Taxes do not.

3. The ecological ramifications would be enormous.

Regardless of how “cheap” a “disposable iPod” might be in terms of manufacturing costs, we all know that prices in our current economic system fail to account for the true cost of products and services. For example, what about the e-waste generated by all these cheap, disposable iPods?

Here’s what would ideally happen in the H&R Block scenario painted above: you bring your existing iPod into the store and you get a discount on the software which accounts for the costs not associated with: packaging; transportation of physical materials, including tolls, fuel, pollution, etc.; licensing fees to Apple; materials to construct the CD or disposable iPod; storage of the CDs or disposable iPods; labor to manufacture, assemble, distribute, the CDs or disposable iPod, etc. etc. etc.

But of course I need to wake up and smell the….pragmatism? I thought the whole point of having things in a digital medium was to speed their distribution and reduce costs. Silly me. Marketing trumps reality.