Rare Earth Metal Prices Are Skyrocketing, Electronics Prices Expected To Follow

[Readlight]

Interesting. I wold be glad to get some off this material, for pension.

 

[Tardian]

More or less 1:1 with common sense. Eh...

Misnomer?

Most people probably don't know about it, but the minerals our electronics use have serious impacts, there's no better example than the conflict mineral Coltan. The demand for Playstation 2's in the west helped spark a war over this mineral in the Congo that helped to devastate the country and its people

Environmental Consequences
In order to mine for coltan, rebels have overrun Congo's national parks, clearing out large chunks of the area's lush forests. In addition, the poverty and starvation caused by the war have driven some miners and rebels to hunt the parks' endangered elephants and gorillas for food. In Kahuzi Biega National Park, for example, the gorilla population has been cut nearly in half, from 258 to 130.
Tracing the Source
The path that coltan takes to get from Central Africa to the world market is a highly convoluted one, with legitimate mining operations often being confused with illegal rebel operations, and vice versa, making it difficult to trace the origin. To be safe, in recent months many electronics companies have publicly rejected the use of coltan from anywhere in Central Africa, instead relying on their main suppliers in Australia. American-based Kemet, the world's largest maker of tantalum capacitors, has asked its suppliers to certify that their coltan ore does not come from Congo or bordering countries. But it may be a case of too little, too late. Much of the coltan illegally stolen from Congo is already in laptops, cell phones and electronics all over the world.

What Is Coltan?

abcnews.go.com

Minerals might be rare, except in Australia

 

[Flyordie]

Early retirement, here I come.
Thank you consumers for being greedy and brainwashed by marketing. Because you "need" all the shiny toys even during a pandemic and price increases, I can retire years ahead of the plan.

Not all of us. ;-)

In my lifetime, I've only ever had 4 cell phones. I ran my Note 5 for 4 years. Plan on running my Note 10+ for another 2-3 years+. My carrier is trying to get my dad to upgrade his phone to a 5G phone but.. we don't need a 5G phone. 5G will never be deployed in my area so its not something we want. We are still on 2G and 3G its that bad here. lol. (but hey, as long as the carrier says.. "we have 4G deployed there, the FCC will have to believe us.. even when customers complain.")

Corporate America is a cesspool of garbage. It just sucks because the ones lower on the totem pole take the brunt of the attacks and have no recourse.

 

[Space Lynx]

The chinese are behind it, made all countries stop working with the virus then the chinese are using their reserves which bought very cheap from those countries before the virus then will sell 10 to 20x more expensive then they will crash the rare metal market then will buy those metal very cheap again, business 101.

Know how you can stop the bs? just don't buy overpriced products.



Where I live I can buy it for 750 usd and still having doubts because i have a 28 4k monitor 60hz working without any problem and seems all right, an oled 48 inch 120hz would be awesome.

you can get LG 48" OLED for 750 USD??? WTF ARE YOU WAITING FOR.... they would be sold out instantly here if they were that price...

 

[R-T-B]

Early retirement, here I come.
Thank you consumers for being greedy and brainwashed by marketing. Because you "need" all the shiny toys even during a pandemic and price increases, I can retire years ahead of the plan.

So where are you sourcing your unobtanium? Kinda hard to make a profit if it's already expensive to make, yeah?

Also acting surprised people like electronic toys on a tech forum is a little ironic.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Not all of us. ;-)

In my lifetime, I've only ever had 4 cell phones. I ran my Note 5 for 4 years. Plan on running my Note 10+ for another 2-3 years+. My carrier is trying to get my dad to upgrade his phone to a 5G phone but.. we don't need a 5G phone. 5G will never be deployed in my area so its not something we want. We are still on 2G and 3G its that bad here. lol. (but hey, as long as the carrier says.. "we have 4G deployed there, the FCC will have to believe us.. even when customers complain.")

Corporate America is a cesspool of garbage. It just sucks because the ones lower on the totem pole take the brunt of the attacks and have no recourse.

I had some Samsung? type cell that was "semi smart" 9+ years ago. It had a touch screen, full keyboard on the touch screen and so on, but it wasn't able to display internet pages like a smart phone. I had it for 3 or so years, but the touch screen kept having so many issues and recalibrating only sometimes fixed it, I had ti move away fron it and got a new phone. I got the HTC DNA. I used it for 4+ years until the internal speaker failed and now I'm still using my Samsung S8.

In that same amount of time, almost everyone I know had been through 2-3x as many cell phones as I have. I knew someone that upgraded his phone about every 8-10 months, once something newer came along. The rate most people go through cell phones is mind boggling. I wonder how much better off things would be if folks could limit themselves instead of gorging themselves on every little new phone iteration that came along.

 

[mechtech]

Nice; price hikes in the middle of the scalper apocalypse.

This news is sure to cheer everyone up....

Ya I was working in metals in 2005-2008 it was great, prices were at record highs, then they weren’t and the economy collapsed and then it wasn’t great and was unemployed. I sure hope history does not repeat itself so quickly…….

 

[NotHereMan]

I don't know whether to be disappointed about cost or be depressed about how the world works. The questions and thoughts run too deep for such a simple man. Things would be a lot easier if they taught us kids to only tolerate each other, not love, and to take advantage of our fortunes.

 

[Chrispy_]

Ya I was working in metals in 2005-2008 it was great prices were at record highs, then they weren’t and the economy collapsed and then it wasn’t great and was unemployed. I sure hope history does not repeat itself so quickly…….

Sadly history repeats itself because the people in charge with all the money and decision-making are always focused on short term personal gains and not the bigger picture :\

 

[yotano211]

Just use Linux or keep Win10.

I'm still on windows ME

 

[neatfeatguy]

Ya I was working in metals in 2005-2008 it was great prices were at record highs, then they weren’t and the economy collapsed and then it wasn’t great and was unemployed. I sure hope history does not repeat itself so quickly…….

I worked at a company that supplied floorcovering installing products at that time. I remember when things were just booming! We couldn't keep stock in one major product - tack strip - in the last stretch of the housing boom because of a couple of things:
One of the major distributors was working on moving to a larger production facility, so their output was cut sharply as they made their transition so inventory through them was a trickle.
A second major distributor we got it from was initiating a massive price hike and was allowing any orders up to X date to get in before the price jump....well, companies (like the one I worked at) purchased trucks loads worth so we could buy lower and keep lower prices and then slowly transition higher pricing as we started to bring in higher priced material. Well, that didn't work well because so many companies put in so many orders they couldn't fill them at the promised cost and the distributor ran itself too low on inventory too fast and had troubles catching back up....
Then the housing crash hit, we didn't really feel the ripples of it until around the summer of 2006. By winter half a dozen folks were let go and it continued to be a growing trend until winter of 2009 when a dozen folks that January were let go and I was one of them.

Hopefully something similar doesn't happen this time around. Right now from what I can see a lot of places were shut down or running limited production/skeleton crews that they got so far behind on orders they're all still playing catch up and also trying to accommodate new orders as they come through. It seems to be a world wide issue and will probably continue to be one for a while. Something will break in this system eventually, as it did with the housing bubble that popped, but I guess we just have to wait and see.

 

[sylva1]

State capitalist monopoly

Hey Sisyphus, you used this magic term. No one caught on to it. In the old country, the communist gov tried to inoculate it into us as the definition of the last stage of capitalism. Did you read some Marxism, ha, ha?

 

[Sisyphus]

Hey Sisyphus, you used this magic term. No one caught on to it. In the old country, the communist gov tried to inoculate it into us as the definition of the last stage of capitalism. Did you read some Marxism, ha, ha?

Everyone should read some Marxism to understand its impact on freedom. China did not want to follow the USSR into the fall, so they abandoned the planned economy and replaced it with state capitalism. Chinese dissidents always says: The Chinese communists have paired the worst of communism (cadre party, one-party dictatorship) with the worst of capitalism (monopoly economy, workers without rights).

Didn't Xi announce support to rebuild Afghanistan recently? Same Afghanistan where suddenly tons or rare elements were discovered?

Once Australia was the biggest Rare Earth exporter, until China destroyed his Rare Earth mining industry by price dumping. There are many mines, ready to open. But nobody invests. High Risk China will repeat its play, from cashing in to price dumping. As a single company you cannot stand against China.
Afghanistan isnt able to produce anything, no qualified workers, no infrastructure, civil war. China is taking over the firmer US ally Pakistan and Afghanistan to threaten India. The fact that you can also outclass the USA is a pleasant additional benefit. In middle term India is Chinas closest and biggest economical rival.

 

[claes]

Hey Sisyphus, you used this magic term. No one caught on to it. In the old country, the communist gov tried to inoculate it into us as the definition of the last stage of capitalism. Did you read some Marxism, ha, ha?

This is so curious to me! What old country? I’m not familiar with any currents that are that stagist, but I don’t know much about Maoism or Stalinism.

Everyone should read some Marxism to understand its impact on freedom. China did not want to follow the USSR into the fall, so they abandoned the planned economy and replaced it with state capitalism. Chinese dissidents always says: The Chinese communists have paired the worst of communism (cadre party, one-party dictatorship) with the worst of capitalism (monopoly economy, workers without rights).

More interesting history! Were the dissidents Trotskyists or is this another strain of Maoism from before the Sino-Soviet split?

 

[zlobby]

Everyone should read some Marxism to understand its impact on freedom. China did not want to follow the USSR into the fall, so they abandoned the planned economy and replaced it with state capitalism. Chinese dissidents always says: The Chinese communists have paired the worst of communism (cadre party, one-party dictatorship) with the worst of capitalism (monopoly economy, workers without rights).

Once Australia was the biggest Rare Earth exporter, until China destroyed his Rare Earth mining industry by price dumping. There are many mines, ready to open. But nobody invests. High Risk China will repeat its play, from cashing in to price dumping. As a single company you cannot stand against China.
Afghanistan isnt able to produce anything, no qualified workers, no infrastructure, civil war. China is taking over the firmer US ally Pakistan and Afghanistan to threaten India. The fact that you can also outclass the USA is a pleasant additional benefit. In middle term India is Chinas closest and biggest economical rival.

I was thinking more in the line that China will have a cheap surplus of rare elements. Rest is just a bonus. It's always better to exhaust everyone else's resources before your own (USA+oil comes to mind).

 

[hat]

Remember when economy experts warned governments that all those lock downs will have a huge impact on economy but the media "experts" blamed them for spreading conspiracy theories? Pepperidge Farm Remembers

I think a lot of it is sheer laziness. At least here in the states, there's more people than ever who would rather sit around and collect free money, and also not pay their rent, then going to work. Guess what happens when nobody goes to work?

 

[95Viper]

Get back on topic.

 

[TheUn4seen]

So where are you sourcing your unobtanium? Kinda hard to make a profit if it's already expensive to make, yeah?

Also acting surprised people like electronic toys on a tech forum is a little ironic.

The simple answer is that I don't. Hardware-wise I can live with what I have for a year or two more, and I got some Al, copper and more extravagant things years ago, it's always good to have some metals other than Bloodbath albums . I expected prices to reach current levels in a few more years, but here we are. I'm not surprised, I'm happy with people driving prices even higher.