cocoa is the main input for that and is subject to weather and crop failure, which - surprise - is why its' more expensive. however if you're talking about chocolate candies (not raw cocoa) it is indeed less expensive now adjusted for inflation. the problem is the quality of chocolate candies has reduced, so the equivalent chocolate bar is probably more expensive even though the similar one is cheaper.
ironically cocoa is a great example of my point though - it's not imported from china, so there isn't a huge cost reduction.
Are TVs cheap, or does someone else pay the hidden cost?
Food would probably be cheaper, if that was traded as freely as TVs. But since there seem to be good reasons to regulate prices that farmers allow to work, not every domain of production outsources environmental costs to non-citizens or nature in general.
> Food would probably be cheaper, if that was traded as freely as TVs. But since there seem to be good reasons to regulate prices that farmers allow to work, not every domain of production outsources environmental costs to non-citizens or nature in general.
Resiliency is also often priced out - and food is actually the perfect example for that.
Remember the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? A lot of countries in Africa were pretty darn screwed - domestic industry had gone down the drain following mismanagement (e.g. Simbabwe) and/or Western donations (can't compete with free), so once Western donations dropped down after we reduced overproduction, they went for Ukraine who at the time was famous for its highly productive arable land that could supply wheat at probably the cheapest prices in the world.
But once the Russians invaded and farms had to close up shop (fields were contaminated, transportation infeasible, machinery destroyed, workers killed by acts of war or joining the army), the situation became very dire.
If all we do is regulate prices, then there’s still an incentive to despoil the environment if it lowers your costs.
What you want to do is to mandate prices on externalities – the pollution itself. That way people are still free to buy and sell TVs and to innovate new ways of manufacturing them, but the only way to avoid the cost of externalities is to generate fewer externalities - less pollution per TV – which is what we want.
Not sure about the second paragraph, but about first one I kind of agree with "someone else paying the hidden cost". I believe Google, Amazon, Roku, etc. basically pay the ODMs to manufacture the TV for them, and market the devices with affordable prices to acquire more users, in order to gain more usage data from consumers.
Their point most likely is that there's a lot of nasty chemicals and toxic emissions associated with any kind of large scale manufacturing, particularly when semiconductors are involved - the Silicon Valley is by far the US' largest agglomeration of Superfund sites for a reason.
Other countries, particularly China, are known for much laxer standards and even more timid enforcement of these - of course, the generations after ours will have to live with the contamination, but for now, they can produce for far, far lower costs than Western countries with environment and labor protection laws and decent enforcement.
And another thing... advertisers. Good luck finding a non-smart TV these days, you gotta pay a significant premium for what's known as "digital signage" (assuming that you can even get models actually usable). Normal consumer TVs and monitors? They're sold at a loss or near-loss price because the real profit is from the continuous (!) stream of ads over the life time of the device, plus analytics over the content that the users consume.
Beef and chicken does not cause cancer anymore than anything else does. It is an insane take that regular food causes cancer in any level that should be worrisome. Don't cite the studies where they grouped frozen pizza in the same category as beef.
If the true value is medium high, any random measurements that lie even further above are easily explained, as that is a low ratio of divergence.
If the true value is medium high, any random measurements that lie below by a lot are harder to explain, since their (relative, i.e.) ratio of divergence is high.
Therefore, the further you go right in the graph, the more a slightly lower guess is a good fit, even if many values then lie above it.
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