Too many products are easier to throw away than fix—consumers deserve a ‘right to repair’::There was a time when the family washing machine would last decades, with each breakdown fixed by the friendly local repair person. But those days are long gone.
Phones should also have unlockable booloaders by default to flash your own updates when your manufacturer stops supporting it.
I understand security risks and all, but it really should be an option for people who buy their devices.
Google’s Pixel phones are very open for ‘convenrional’ Smartphones, which is why GrapheneOS can use a complete verified boot chain
Xiaomi used to do this, untill some middlemen decided to install malware that looked like Xiaomi’s MIUI ROM. So they had to lock it somewhat. They used to install malware and sell the device to the emd consumer. Atleast till now you can unlock the bootloader as the end customer of the device.
A prime of example of this is the BlackBerry Playbook. A decent device for people who don’t need a very powerful device but being locked into BlackBerry’s OS needlessly complicates things. Used models around me sell for around $10.
I know BlackBerry has their own reasons for not unlocking their bootloaders but it can be a bit frustrating
You know what needs to be added to this? Cars. The amount of body damage needed to “total” most cars is almost trivial these days.
To be fair, cars are designed to break in a car crash for safety. If it breaks it can absorb the impact a lot better and therefore make the crash more survivable.
Yeah, in this case it’s an acceptable tradeoff. I’d rather lose my car than my life.
But what about Rule of Acquisition #23: “Nothing is more important than your health… except for your money,”?
The body and the chassis are really the only parts that need to be built for the sake of breaking for safety. The other parts on the car do not need to be disposable, but for the most they are. The part placement and design are not engineered with repair in mind.
Definitely want to see cars (and other larger purchases) more able to be repaired in future. However, especially in cases of an accident there’s other factors.
Part of it as already mentioned is a safety thing. Crumple zones and the like are there to purposefully deform so that the people inside the vehicle have a higher chance of surviving a crash.
Part of it is that being hit in the wrong way can also weaken the structural integrity of the frame making it unsafe to use. Makes more sense to strip it for parts at that point. Last thing a repair or insurance company wants is to be found liable for saying “yes the car is repairable/safe to drive”, then the front falls of on a highway.
Part of it also is that insurance companies won’t want to pay for repairs that amount to more than the cost of replacing the entire car if it’s older. Or they know they can make more money by paying out a policy then repairing and refurbishing the vehicle.
Can’t you just tow it outside the environment to avoid liability if the front falls off?
Even when it is replaceable, it’s ridiculous. I accidentally pulled off the front bumper of my Prius by scraping it on a parking barrier and it cost me $800 because they had to replace a huge amount of the front of the car. The dealer wouldn’t even touch it. They said it had to go to a body shop. It’s the fucking bumper!
When I buy a vehicle, I touch it, if it’s solid metal hey awesome, if it’s plastic or fiber whatever I just nope out because I’ve seen what happens when they’re in the smallest of accident.
I can pull a ding out of metal, or even just stop by pull apart and pop a replacement door or whatever off something similar. Can’t do that when half the frame shatters in impact, might as well buy another car which is exactly what they want us to do
Our planet deserves our right to repair.
I disagree. Our planet doesn’t give a shit. It was long before us here and it will remain even longer after last one of us. Our living environment on the other hand is suffering. I know this is semantics we are talking about, but it does point just how stupid we are. It’s tantamount to shitting under your own window and wondering why everything stinks.
Part of the reason why our environment is suffering is that it takes a lot more energy (which causes pollution) and raw materials (which also take energy and cause pollution) to make and ship a new thing than it does to fix the one you have. Sure it’s not a huge percentage overall, but imagine if every thing you had suddenly lasted 3 or 4 times longer. The sheer amount of new things you had to buy would drop substantially, along with all that’s required to produce and sell them to you.
I feel like it would make a huge difference. They’re planning obsolescence for vehicles and equipment now too. I have a tractor from the 70’s that’s still running fine, why? Because they used to make them with the idea that the consumer can and should be able to perform their own maintenance and repair, for a farmer back then a tractor was a huge purchase and was expected to last many years. I
Meanwhile, the new ones require being brought to the shop for all kinds of things, many can only be fixed with software that most people don’t have, if available at all.
Instead of repairing what they have, companies want people to just buy new stuff every couple of years if not sooner.
It’s just sad when stuff from 50 years ago will still last longer than something you purchase today.
Regarding automotives and equipment, old machinery could last forever really, with the right replacement parts, but those are getting extremely hard to find as well with everyone just buying new instead of repairing what they have. It’s something else…
Repairing is an infinitely more complex task than manufacturing - in this way any government with sufficient wisdom could ensure (pretty interesting and fulfilling) jobs for its citizens despite the march of automation.
In essence, not creating new value from skilled manufacture, but focusing on restoration and enhancememt of value though even more skilled repair and modification.
Exactly, the reason we don’t repair things is two fold.
- The reason everyone here is talking about: the products aren’t designed for it.
- The reason the products aren’t designed for it: we can’t afford it.
To dig deeper into #2, yes sometimes things are made harder to repair for the sake of thinness or some technological reason, but a main issue is that we cannot afford our own labour. Our wages have not kept up over the last half century and we can no longer afford to hire our neighbors in our local communities for their skills.
Because we have been outsourcing manufacturing for so long we feel like we have money, becYse we can buy a TV for every room. But if that TV was made in NA and not Asia? It would be a $2000 TV, not $400. It’s cheaper to buy new because we cannot afford man hours to repair.
The consumer economy we have is built for waste and exploitation. While I 100% support right to repair and it’s a step in the right direction, I feel most people will still buy new.
I don’t know, your #2 reason doesn’t seem to stand up to reality.
I don’t know where you are, but where I am (UK) you can go on any high street (in most towns there will be an area where most shops are, think strip mall in the US) and you will find at least a couple shops that fix and sell electronics - primarily smartphones, but also vacuum cleaners, TVs, computers, games consoles.
Pretty much all of them are locally-run and are, I assume, profitable in spite of every electronics manufacturer trying to run them out of business.
I say I assume because they wouldn’t be everywhere if they weren’t.
I’ve had phones fixed by them, they offer warranties, reasonable prices, only had an issue once and it was put right after a tiny bit of back and forth.
I think by “we can’t afford it” you mean “capitalism hasn’t yet found a way to centralise the profits and run the small business owners out of business”.
I think saying it doesn’t stand up to reality is a bit harsh. I’m not claiming nothing is worth repairing, just that it’s cost prohibitive in the majority of cases.
To take your cellphone repair store as an example, I bet they do the majority of their work on iPhones and higher end Samsungs because the upfront cost of those phones are so high. People aren’t going to pay repair costs for a cheaper $300 Motorola.
Similarly there are vacuum and appliance repair shops as well, and when your Meile or Bosch breaks then they do their magic, but compared to most people going to Walmart and buying a replacement? I’d say estimate the number of repairs are low.
So yes, without any numbers, I feel pretty confident making the claim that the overwhelming majority of things are not repaired and I don’t see this legislation changing that. Like I said before, it’s still an improvement I support.
You know there are guys living from repairs, right? They are repairing products that were built on purpose not to be repaired while the manufacturers are actively and intentionally hampering the access to information and parts.
Yes I am aware of that and I addressed in my second comment. They are a relatively niche industry compared to consumption. I would love to see them expand.
I don’t know how it is in other areas of technology but in the automotive electronics world, a big barrier to re-use and repair is mostly poor record keeping. When an OEM makes a car, they buy subsystems from suppliers such as Bosch, Continental and Valeo. These mechatronic assemblies contain software that is often completely opaque to the OEM, never mind the end user. Even if you did want to repair the sensor or whatever has gone wrong, you wouldn’t be able to access the diagnostic interface without specialist tools and documentation. This barrier is deliberately and cynically inserted by witholding the information. Our machines are not made to be repaired because it is less profitable and profit decides every decision in capitalism.
I agree - though it’s a short sighted vision.
If you aim for a lower margin and a longer product lifecycle, you’ll make more in the long run. For example, creating a system designed for compatibility, easy upgrading, and repair would reduce production costs and shift profit from repairs to incremental upgrades (e.g. pc building).
I’m all about right to repair. But why is it so hard to find places to dispose of e waste clearly labeled do not throw away in trash? We can’t even trash correctly.
Is there no recycling center around were you live? In germany basically every city has a “Wertstoffhof” that takes everything from old clothes over smaller e-waste (including batteries, etc), larger stuff like fridges to all kinds of reusable / recycleable plastics and metals. Basically everything that can be recycled or reused in some way and is not meant for the normal recycling household trash.
