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Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

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Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#211

Post by Grishnakh »

vkou wrote: post #172
Grishnakh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Ok, how do you keep people from dumping their garbage in someone else's garbage bin, or in some public place in the middle of the night? This also doesn't really deal with the fact that different garbage has very different effects on the environment and society, and very different mass. "E-waste" frequently doesn't weigh that much, but has a lot of both valuable metals…

> urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile. Curb-side compost pickup.

Good luck getting the dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local governments in America to implement that.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#212

Post by acaciapalm »

athenot wrote: post #167
AJ007 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway. Right now it is profitable for many parties to extr…

Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places. It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for disposal or haul their trash to a landfill…

Exactly this. We socialize the cost of garbage disposal in the first world to disincentivize dumping. Worth it, IMO.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#213

Post by [deleted] »

athenot wrote: post #167
AJ007 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway. Right now it is profitable for many parties to extr…

Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places. It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for disposal or haul their trash to a landfill…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#214

Post by jogjayr »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #195
berntb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just too far away. Swedish politics is as sick a joke as in Italy. - The school and high school results are in a state of implosion. No real political reaction. - Because of internal political manoeuvres, the immigration policies were done so it will cost multiple times of the defence spending the coming years -- and risk a Spanish style housing crash. - Putin acts more or less like Hitler in the mid 1930s. T…

" Putin acts" Are you describing Russia or Sweden?

I think the poster was referring to Sweden not spending on military despite having a potentially hostile neighbor (or near-enough; not sure if Sweden shares a border with Russia)

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#215

Post by hlandau »

logfromblammo wrote: post #210
hlandau wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard. I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory, companies will need to be able to stock replacement pa…

Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies suddenly change direction. When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much as they ne…

Non-standards can lead to standards. AMD's Mantle graphics API, for example, was donated to the GLnext effort, which was then renamed Vulkan. If not for this kick start, GLnext would probably still be figuring out a decent API design. Companies need to have the prerogative to do their own thing for a while, because it can lead to better standards.

>I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist.

I think I actually had this idea recently, with regard to print cartridges. The idea is that the government would mandate inkjet printers to adopt an open standard for print cartridges, but the law would expire after a number of years. The idea is that once it's established, no company is going to be able to get out of it without damaging their position in the market, but genuine innovation is allowed to appeal to consumers on its own merits, weighed against the downside of divergence from an established standard.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#216

Post by grizzles »

To truly fix the situation would probably require: 1) Tracking every single saleable physical asset 2) Paying manufacturer's a small fixed income type subsidy for every extra year their product lasts. 3) Charging manufacturer's a small penalty tax when their product becomes waste.

#2 is essential because otherwise manufacturing obsolescence into the product will be more profitable for the company. The economic reward of long lasting product & enduring customer relationship needs to be better than sell one every few years.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#217

Post by at-fates-hands »

jernfrost wrote: post #190

This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier…

>> Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install.

I'm running into this with some of my drones now.

The 3DR Iris Plus was released in 2014 and they've already ceased supporting it, less than two years after releasing it. This means no more OEM parts available and whatever is out there right now, is out there. I have found only one distributor who carries parts for this model - so I'm left with either being super careful and not crashing again (unlikely) or selling it to someone who doesn't know they can't get parts for it anymore.

I'm probably going to sell it. It was shocking to know they just dropped hardware support for this model after only two years of supporting it.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#218

Post by ska »

CPLX wrote: post #125
ska wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the category error of conflating corporate and state implementations - complaining about the existence of IKEA is a bit like complaining about the existence of fast food. Clearly there is massive demand for both, so lobbing darts at the most successful producers of same avoids all of the interesting questions.

I don't detect any complaining in my post. Just noting the (considerable) irony in Sweden leading the charge against "disposable culture", as did the article's writer.

Perhaps I read more into it than you meant - fair enough. You are still conflating Sweden and IKEA, which is just silly.

Also IKEA's m.o. is more cheap and cheerful than disposable, so what irony there is, is a bit weak.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#219

Post by floatrock »

Grishnakh wrote: post #211
vkou wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile. Curb-side compost pickup.

Good luck getting the dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local governments in America to implement that.

San Francisco sends its (mandatory) curbside compost up to Napa to grow our wine, and having lived through a couple ballot initiatives and largely-self-infliciated absurdly high rents here, I can think of no municipality that is more dysfunctional or incompetent.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#220

Post by drumttocs8 »

jernfrost wrote: post #190

This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier…

Incentivize the consumer and you incentivize the producer. The idea is that this will create a market need for easily repairable products.
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