I'm sure there's truth to that. But I also think a large proportion of the price (and in general the plummeting price, and apogee-ing performance of many high tech components, such as batteries) is due not to exploitation, but to increases in efficiency. The bequeathed legacy of the thousand accreted technologies and improvements that have layered to produce contemporary supply chains.
Of course...everything we do today is based on exploitation: 1000s of years of exploitation of humans, frequently the worker and poorer classes' labor, 100s of years, and billions dead in war...all our achievements today literally stand atop this ginormous pile of blood and death...but, that ever-present historical reality aside...I think a large proportion of the skyrocketing perf and ocean-depth-plumbing prices of components is due to the compounding and intersecting effects of all our technological efficiencies.
Of course...everything we do today is based on exploitation: 1000s of years of exploitation of humans, frequently the worker and poorer classes' labor, 100s of years, and billions dead in war...all our achievements today literally stand atop this ginormous pile of blood and death...but, that ever-present historical reality aside...I think a large proportion of the skyrocketing perf and ocean-depth-plumbing prices of components is due to the compounding and intersecting effects of all our technological efficiencies.