> Please find me any source or other evidence that tractors or cars have gotten any less reliable

My understanding from friends who work in that industry is that the mechanical parts have gotten more reliable, but cars have gotten less reliable overall due to relying on many micro-controllers and their firmware. I don't find source right now for statistics but i remember reading electronics were ~30% of the price of a new car, and represented the reason for >50% of recalls in the past years in the USA. (I will update with a link when i find the source again)

As for tractors, it's a well-known problem that's been widely discussed on HN regarding John Deere in particular. There's a growing right to repair movement due to the fact manufacturers intentionally make the tractors harder to repair with electronics: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farm...

> Do the countries in question actually only tax new products, or ALL tech products?

Fair question, it would require to take a look at a specific example. In general, i assume taxes mostly apply to new products as the second hand market tends to be undeclared hand-to-hand transactions. For example in France the copyright mafia has imposed private copy "taxes" (technically not a tax, we call it a "redevance" in french) on every second-hand device, but only second-hand shops (eg. backmarket) apply it and >90% of second-hand transactions on markets and platforms like leboncoin are totally unaffected.

> Tell me, do these countries tax oil by the same or a greater amount? It's obviously true that environmental concerns _do not_ drive these tax policies.

I'm not saying that's the reason these taxes exist; i'm saying that's a compelling reason to consider such taxes. As you may know, producing electronics requires tons of coal/oil along the whole industrial process. Also, oil is highly taxed in many countries (including in France where spiking taxes have birthed the gilets jaunes insurrection).

> Are you going to provide an example of tech hardware being used to "control" people?

The NSA/Palantir infrastructure (among others) come to mind. The whole CCTV, facial recognition, and marketing/analytics industry come to mind. Also, bossware solutions whether on your own laptop or dictating work like in Amazon centers. When a facial recognition algorithm gets you to jail, or a bossware algorithm prevents you from peeing on the job because you have to hold the cadence, i'd call that social control without a doubt.

> when you are about to advocate for very high taxes

I'm not advocating for or against taxes. Hell, i'm against money and private property to begin with. I'm simply pointing out that most problems we face today can be solved with less tech not more (lowtech vs bloat), and that tech intended to solve human problems (eg. cars) often end up becoming a radical monopoly doing the exact opposite (see for example Ivan Illich's calculations on cars). I can't help but cringe every time i see a thread about a startup that wants to build automated farms... i really don't to produce more electronics waste just for food, and i certainly don't want electronics garbage seeping into our soils. That's a typical example of an industry trying to invent a problem that's been solved for decades with modern, science-based permaculture techniques.