Name: Phones, Cobalt Mining, and America Outsourcing Guilt
Uploaded: 2023-03-24T17:52:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Phones, Cobalt Mining, and America Outsourcing Guilt' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Phones, Cobalt Mining, and America Outsourcing Guilt' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-24. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Yeah, where does our guilt extend?
Like, if we outsource all the things
that we're guilty about, does it leave at our border?
- Never, it never leaves.
- Yeah.
- You have a phone that's made by slaves.
- But do you feel guilty about it?
- Yes.
- You do?
- Yeah, for sure.
If there was a company that came along
that was like, if Samsung said,
hey, we're gonna make all of our phones--
- Cruelty free.
- Cruelty free, we're gonna get all of our cobalt
from this place that where we can ensure you
that there's nothing there and no Chinese factory workers
making 16 cents a day or whatever the fuck they make.
- Yeah.
- It's not, if yeah, if there was a phone
that was made in America that cost twice as much,
I'd buy it in a fucking heartbeat.
- But there isn't.
- There isn't.
- And because there isn't, what do we do?
We put up with the guilt?
- Well, they fucked up.
They fucked us, okay?
- And, you know, to be connected to something
where you absolutely need it,
but it's morally reprehensible at its very core.
Like, imagine how many people have tweeted
self-righteous things on a phone that was made by slaves.
- Yep.
- And that's the reality of these phones.
And Apple's one of the richest fucking companies
on planet Earth.
I don't know what the logistics would be involved
in making a phone in America with skilled labor
that gets paid a fair wage and gets health insurance
and union benefits and all that stuff.
- But whatever it is, I feel like I would like to pay that.
- Do we have cobalt?
- And if I don't have the money, I'll buy less phones.
I'll buy a phone.
I have a fucking iPhone 11.
One of my phone lines is an iPhone 11.
It's great.
It still works.
Still seems so normal when I fire it up.
It doesn't seem any different to me.
- But do we have the mineral?
Like, do we have cobalt in America that we can mine?
- I don't think we do in America.
- That's the tricky thing.
I don't know, is cobalt available in America?
- I thought it was only available in like the Congo.
- Well, that's where the primary source is for sure.
But I think there's at least one other place on Earth.
I don't remember correctly.
- Ooh, Mexico.
Let's go.
Mexico's this shit.
- Listen, we have a problem with the cartels.
Why don't you just, let's just like Mexico.
- Do we have a problem with them?
Do we have a problem with the cartels
or are we working with a cartel?
- Well, for sure, someone's working with them.
I mean, it's not just like 100% Mexican citizens
that are sneaking across here and doing all this business.
Someone's working with them.
Goddamn, what's wrong with my throat?
Yeah, someone for sure is working with them.
But it's not good.
It's not good to have this like fake scenario.
You have a fake scenario, say drugs are bad.
If you make drugs illegal, no one's gonna do drugs.
Like your math sucks, okay?
'Cause that's not the correct math.
The correct math is, if you make drugs illegal,
then illegal people sell drugs.
You fucking asshole.
And so now you've propped up a multi-billion dollar industry
south of the border filled with ruthless murderers.
Idaho.
- Is the only cobalt mine in the United States
and it's going to remain so.
Okay, so we have some cobalt here.
I'm sure they could find some more.
- Okay, maybe we have just enough for us.
How about just for us?
Let's like let the world make their own moral decisions.
But maybe if we legitimately are the moral high ground,
we could like encourage the rest of the world to realize like,
the same thing we were talking about earlier about having too much money.
Like just don't, you can't just think about money at a certain point in time.
You just, you have to just figure out what's best for everybody.
- Yes.
- And in this situation, if I was the king of the world, if I was the king of
America,
I would say, how about we only make phones that are in America.
- Yup.
- We make American made phones with American, we'll have sanitary conditions
that are safe
and you know, provide healthcare, all the things that you would hope someone
working
a fucking cobalt mine would get, give them a great wage, like make it so that
this is an
even exchange, it's not a negative exchange, protect them from all the, and if
we knew that
the cobalt we're getting on our phone, you don't have to worry, these guys make
a hundred thousand
dollars a year, they're fucking well paid, they live in a great community, okay
great,
now I don't feel bad about my phone, but if you watch those videos from Foxconn,
you see those
fucking poor people slaving away all day long in this sweatshop, 16 hours a day,
they have bunks
there and shit, they put nets around the building to keep people from jumping
off, that is so wild.
Instead of changing the conditions that these people have to work.
- They won't let you kill you, that's crazy.
- They're like, get back to work, they'll grab you by your hair, fucking drag
you back down onto the
floor, you probably owe them money or something, I mean I don't know how they
fucking do that.
- Yeah, it's a tricky one.
- You would want everything you use in your everyday life to have a clean
connection to like ethically
sourced materials, you know, great relationships with workers, no greedy
corporations that are
fucking over the environment, everybody would want that.
- I think they'd want that if they had excess, I think most people are like
trying to pay their
fucking rent and they're like, all right, if this is a little bit cheaper, I
have a little bit more
money for my family, my parents who are sick and my kids, like I can buy them
another fucking
baseball mitt. And so they can't even consider people in the Congo. And I think
that's the tricky
thing where like they know, it's almost like the Amazon situation where it's
like most people probably
know that Amazon might not be the best situation for like mom and pop
businesses, but it's so convenient
to them. And it's so much cheaper and it's so efficient that they just go, all
right, well,
this is great for me.
- Yeah. Yeah. There's that.
Yeah. It is interesting, but I think that in those circumstances, when, you
know, there's people that
just can't afford to buy, you know, whatever it is, ethically sourced and organically
grown,
that there should be other options. But if there was a clear option that
someone could take,
if a phone costs $1,000, $1,200, right?
- Yeah. This article I just looked up as saying that cell phones are not what's
driving the cobalt
price rise. It is electronic batteries.
- A price rise? - It's batteries.
- It's car batteries. - Well, yeah, well that was the--
- Like Teslas and shit?
- But that, but that is what they use them in cell phones.
- In cell phones. - It's like lithium ion batteries.
- Yeah. - Eight grams of cobalt is in a cell phone.
- And how much is in like a nine volt battery?
- Um, how much cobalt in a, I don't know if it's a nine volt, but the rechargeable
battery.
- That's okay. I see your point. You're right. It's like, um, it's everything
electronics.
We're thinking about it as cell phones, but that's because cell phones are the
primary--
- It just dominated our life. - Method of communication.
- Yeah. - And just, just, just how many podcasts are listened to on cell phones?
- Yeah. - All of them?
- Yeah. - Or is it like 90%?
- Yeah. - Like if, imagine if cell phones were made illegal and people still
had to get podcasts.
- Done.
- The majority of modern electric vehicles use these battery chemistries and
lithium nickel
manganese cobalt oxide in which have a cathode containing 10 to 20% cobalt.
And what was the cell phone?
- Eight grams. - Eight grams.
But that's a different measurement unit, right? One of them's percentage.
- Yes. - One of them's grams.
- Oh man.
- Either way. I mean, it's, it's like, it's kind of for everything with lithium
ion batteries.
It does something to stabilize it.
- You know what it's like? It's like, it's almost like asking four to 30
kilograms for a UV.
- Five percent. - Five percent.
Okay. Cell structure requires a minimum amount of cobalt, about 5% and less
lower energy density.
Lithium ion batteries without cobalt are used at the expense of performance.
A typical smartphone battery requires only five to 20 grams of cobalt, whereas
an EV requires between
four and 30 kilograms. Whoa.
- That's a lot more.
- It's electric cars. Electric cars are fucking up the environment.
Oh no. Isn't that like, what a conundrum.
- Life is funny.
- I mean, it's not just the environment. It's like, when I'm saying the
environment, I'm like,
the frequency of the earth.
- Yes.
- You know, until somebody cleans that up, the mines, until somebody actually
looks at it, like every electronic thing with lithium ion batteries is
connected to this horrific crime against humanity.
- Yeah.
- What are we doing? Nothing.
- Nothing.
- Wild.
- What about all the chitter chatter, all the talk about equality and equity
and helping and charity?
And what about that?
- We're all personally responsible for it.
- Yeah, bro, this ain't a secret.
It's not like a fucking X marks the spot in a pirate map.
- Nope.
- This is-
- Google.
- Yeah, Google. And I had Siddharth Kaur on my podcast. We talked about it in
front of fucking millions of people.
People know it's a thing.
- Yeah.
- And they're not, they're not even talking about it. They're not doing shit.
- It's inconvenient.
It's too inconvenient to care about.
- It's very inconvenient.
- Yeah.
- For all of us.
- Yeah. We're not going to stop using our phones.
- Idaho cell phone company.
- You going to start it?
- That should be the name of the company, Idaho cell phone company.
- Dude, Idaho-
- Because they mine, they mine cobalt.
- Let's build a, like, this would, if Apple was smart, they'd make a deal.
- Okay.
- Like, you could buy iPhone, you could buy iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, you
could buy that.
Or you could buy an Idaho cell phone company.
- iPhone.
- iPhone.
- Okay.
- It costs $2,000, but it's made in fucking Idaho.
And you get to see the photos of the people that work in the factory.
And you know that everybody's getting paid well, and everybody has health
insurance.
You know, you would do it.
- Of course.
- Of course.
- 100%.
It would be a big status thing to have the Idaho cell phone company's iPhone.
- Yeah.
- But that is good.
That is good.
We reward caring about other people.
- 100%.
- We want that.
We want that.
- I-C-C.
- I-C-C.
- Idaho cell phone company.
- This might happen.
- Just old school, just a fucking-
- Flip phone.
- Yeah, like the state of Idaho, like the way it's on the map, like on the back,
just says I-C-C.
And everybody, you got an I-C-C?
Oh, shit.
Cool, bro.
Helping out the environment.