The absurd part is that we needed a memory shortage to rediscover that perfectly functional electronics don’t automatically become garbage when the phone does.

It doesn't seem absurd to me at all. A budget phone's primary goal is low cost. Labor is generally more expensive than new parts. So buying new memory and consuming less labor has made economic sense up until now. The only change now is that the cost of the memory has increase beyond the cost of the additional labor to extract memory. So the budget approach is reuse.

Most of the time consumers don't buy pre-owned/used items over new for ethical reasons. They buy them because they're cheaper than new items.