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Passenger

@schratze

Yes!

While still somehow being "a luxury device that if you're poor you shouldn't have, and shows that you aren't one of the Good Poors."

4 comments
tuban_muzuru

@schratze @passenger

I've watched as cell phone tech leapfrogged copper in rural Africa and Central America.

You don't see it much anymore, but there used to be a brisk trade in phone charging. An old lady would buy a truck battery, keep it charged up and charge some nominal amount to charge up your phone.

Григорий Клюшников

Passenger, not any more. There exist sub-$100 phones. They are as crappy as you would expect, but they do still grant you access to all the things you might need.

[DATA EXPUNGED]
Passenger

@cshlan @grishka

I think that's the crucial point I was trying to make: while cheap and secondhand phones are very affordable, there's still a perception by wealthier people that a phone is a luxury that the impoverished don't need. Like most perceptions of the poor by the rich, this is false and exists to support preexisting biases.

[Here I trail off into a long screed talking about Graeber and how power creates information asymmetries.]

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