>I am of course talking from a moralist and empathical perspective.
Speaking from a business and engineering perspective, I'd be surprised if (even in an ideal world with no environmental externalities or exploited third-world labourers) the cost of the raw resources, shipping and e-waste processing were a significant part of that $1.
We're literally talking about something 1/16 the size of a postage stamp that gets stamped into a similarly tiny plastic shell.
From my admittedly "peak mount stupid"[1] position as an engineer that uses these things, I'd suspect that the biggest contributors to that $1 figure come from the expert labour required to both R&D the chips as well as run the machines that manufacture them.
Speaking from a business and engineering perspective, I'd be surprised if (even in an ideal world with no environmental externalities or exploited third-world labourers) the cost of the raw resources, shipping and e-waste processing were a significant part of that $1.
We're literally talking about something 1/16 the size of a postage stamp that gets stamped into a similarly tiny plastic shell.
From my admittedly "peak mount stupid"[1] position as an engineer that uses these things, I'd suspect that the biggest contributors to that $1 figure come from the expert labour required to both R&D the chips as well as run the machines that manufacture them.
[1] http://theengineeringmanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/...