If you have objections around how lithium is produced you probably should take some steps into lessening the demand of it. Systemic change, sure, but thinking "wow this is fucked up, not gonna do the tiniest bit about to help" is psychopathic.

Like if you only buy smartphones when they get actually too old or broken instead of on a 2 year schedule you're way out ahead. There, look, a freebie

Why does your conception of a connection to production involve the worst abuses of capitalism? Of course it would be the adult consumer doing a stint in the mine.

The complete separation and obscuring of consumption from production is possibly the most insidious part of capitalism, and there are many reasons to have an alternative in which it's at least possible to take part in making the items and supplies we use.

It's more like lithium mining if lithium had its own feelings and subjectivities, and lithium mining actually meant raising young lithiums in a concentrationary universe of lithium meat factories and denying lithiums their own freedom and ethical significance in order to feed a grossly excessive, alienating, and generally unnecessary addiction to lithium meat. In other words it's a shitty comparison