Incentives prefer consumerism over parsimony

I mean, obviously.

From the post iPhone 14 Plus Pre-Orders Worse Than iPhone 13 Mini, Product Strategy ‘Fails’ (Reddit), the following chain of comments,

We start off with the voice of reason.

“Older phones are simply faring better than they used to as well. Used to be a phone two models old was getting super slow and battery life was shit. Or there was a major new feature. That’s not as much the case anymore, my 12 pro works flawlessly and I see no good reason to upgrade. A slightly better camera isn’t worth a thousand bucks.”

Followed by two comments that consider only personal gain and not e-waste:

“Also, have a 12 pro but decided to upgrade. The trade-in value gives the new phone for basically free. I have no intention of switching carriers anytime soon so there’s basically no downside. Especially considering I was starting to see some battery degradation.”

“There’s basically no downside” only because the owner doesn’t recognize e-waste as a downside.

“Same boat. Going from 12 Pro to 14 Pro is costing me like $56 (taxes on $999 plus one month of the financing charge before the credits kick in). The piece that people who aren’t taking advantage of this are forgetting is future trade-in value. The 12 Pro won’t be worth the same as a 14 Pro in 2 years.”

They sound reasonable, and they might even be convincing, but their argument is based on them having externalized the cost of throwing away a perfectly good electronics device. There is no guarantee that anyone else will be using that device, nor are they incentivized to care or even think about it.