Externalities & Lifecycle Displacement

An exploration of the right to repair movement, examining how manufacturers use software locks and proprietary designs to control product lifecycles, from tractors to smartphones, and the battle for ownership rights.

Tracing the origins of repair restrictions, from John Deere's software-locked tractors to Apple's glued components, and how manufacturers shifted from selling durable goods to controlling product lifecycles.

A four-part forensic series introducing the Processing Concentration Index (PCI) to reveal that the critical mineral supply chain's true vulnerability sits in the processing layer — a chokepoint three times more concentrated than mining, and one that current mineral security policy was designed not to measure.

Examines how resource-rich nations are using domestic processing mandates to capture value from refining, and traces the PCI response to this structural shift in the global critical minerals balance.

Audits the Minerals Security Partnership and bilateral mineral agreements against the PCI data to evaluate what is actually being secured versus what policy statements claim.

Applies the Processing Concentration Index to lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese to demonstrate that the IRA's critical minerals provisions are calibrated to the wrong chokepoint in the supply chain.

Maps the critical mineral requirements of lithium-ion battery manufacture and establishes the supply chain geography that Processing Concentration Index analysis must navigate.

A four-part forensic series introducing the Scrappage Displacement Ratio to demonstrate that government vehicle scrappage programmes produce net global emission increases when the vehicles they retire are not destroyed but exported — displacing the remaining emissions and safety failures southward along established arbitrage trade routes.

Analyses the economics of formal vehicle dismantling, catalytic converter theft as a value-signal for unpriced recycling asymmetries, and the shredder residue disposal costs that the vehicle lifecycle's last act accumulates.

Examines the second- and third-lifecycle repair economies that sustain old vehicles in destination markets, and traces the knowledge erasure that software-locked modern vehicles represent for the informal mechanics keeping them running.