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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5852131" data-attributes="member: 19675">No.  Just an unwillingness to sell materials at a price to make consumer goods viable.  It has happened before.Valuable industrial materials such as rubber, titanium, helium, certain kinds of steel and others have, on occasion, been so rare or access restricted- even in times of peace- that alternatives had to be found.  In some cases countries resorted to outright theft to obtain them.And in those times, consumer products made using those materials were either extremely expensive or withdrawn from the market.As for running out of trees...if that happens, it's moot, since we will all be dead.  The same can't be said of running out of lithium or petroleum.Edit: had to take a puppy break.And capitalism can actually make the problem worse.  Price is determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves.  So far, i've only discussed supply.On the demand side, increased speculation due to scarcity can lead to ridiculous price effects- there is no real scarcity reason for gold to trade higher than platinum, and yet, this year, it did.  This could happen with any or all of the more expensive materials used in the tech sector.Add in the status effect of the latest & greatest tech, and you get a certain thing they call price inflexibility.  A lot of people point to that as one of the reasons why Apple's computer products seem to be pricier than similar PCs, but it really shows up in "luxury" goods.If smartphones get too pricey, the cheaper phones will enjoy a resurgence...and you'll see fewer people upgrading every time they renew their contract. As sales volumes decline, per-unit and/or service contract prices will rise if the companies want to maintain profit margins.</blockquote>

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