EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products • Hacker News Board

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#121

Post by inetknght » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #109

dTal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts: A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality. Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that…

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.

When the original cost of the good is so expensive as to significantly prohibit replacement of broken/defective parts, is the good really all that... good?

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#122

Post by moo360 » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

twii wrote: post #118

Finally.. Although I am not optimistic about seeing results soon. Companies will go to extremes to circumvent such rules. But it's shocking to see their lack of insight: > software should be easier to repair and update ROFL!

Well this is the same people who gave you the cookie law.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#123

Post by oever » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #31

oever wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Software and hardware should be sold separately.

How does that work? Computers would be sold without operating systems? Good luck pitching that idea.

Very simple: you buy hardware and software from different vendors. Each device must have enough information available publicly so that other companies can write software for it.

You might be able to purchase software and hardware at the same time, but there should be a choice of software and the price of the software should be listed separately on the bill.

The prevalent software business model of lock-in has infected hardware. This has disastrous consequences for the environment. Just because some software is unsupported, expensive hardware is bricked.

The parliament recommendation has this to say about this problem: "software solutions which prevent repairs from being performed, other than by approved firms or bodies, should be discouraged".

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#124

Post by azag0 » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #109

dTal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts: A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality. Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that…

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.

As does any regulation. That does not mean the regulation is bad. I wouldn't regulate this issue with specific rules, just put a cost on waste. Each company would need to deal with the product waste in an environmetally safe way. If they can essentially recycle the replaced products into new ones, then I have no problem with that. But if it ends up as waste, then there should be a price on that. I wonder how much would this motivate companies to make repairable products.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#125

Post by forinti » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

I recently changed the display on my Kobo Touch and was appalled at what I found inside it.

The battery is glued to the case and the wires are soldered to the board. The display is also glued to the case (I had to break the original display into bits in order to take it out).

The whole thing was designed to be disposable. This just seems wrong. It's unfair to the customer and bad for the environment.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#126

Post by handzhiev » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

When I read about yet another EU regulation of this kind I always remember the cookie law :/

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#127

Post by andrewla » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

gmac wrote: post #90

andrewla wrote: post #82

Not to play the free market card too aggressively, but isn't there already a solution to this, called "extended warranties"? Whether provided by the manufacturer or from the retail seller, they provide a way for customers to pay an extra fee in order to extend the product's lifetime. In theory, they even give a way to price out the effective longevity of comparable devices by looking at the prices of the warranties.…

My hunch: part of the problem here is that people got fleeced by retailers, who sold hugely overpriced extended warranties, banking on loss aversion and risk aversion and general lack of technological understanding. When people realised how much they had been fleeced (assisted by consumer programmes like Watchdog in the UK), many of them went off extended warranties as a mug's game — and never came back. (I once had…

Yes, you can argue that warranties are overpriced, but if everyone factored the price of the extended warranty into every purchase they made, then manufacturers would naturally be forced to reduce the cost of the warranty, by making their product either more reparable or increasing initial quality.

> Finally, people are hyperbolic discounters, they are myopic in a way that hurts their happiness, so a regulation that encourages longer-term thinking may help them in the long run.

Here it may just be my Yankee self-reliance talking, but this smacks of the worst sort of paternalism. Arguing slippery slope arguments is in itself a slippery slope, but why stop here? If buying a bigger TV is not going to make me happy (or make me unhappier) then surely a regulation should exist to prevent me from buying it.

When there are significant externalities (like leaded gasoline) then government regulation is easy to justify. When the externalities are second-hand (the reduction in demand for product longevity causes reparability to become a secondary concern for manufacturers) then I'm more inclined to err on the side of "let the customer set the price of their own risk", rather than "let's just increase costs for everyone because it may or may not have a net societal benefit".

I don't trust that regulatory authorities are above the myopia and are truly able to see long-term more than anyone else.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#128

Post by cwyers » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #121

cwyers wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.

When the original cost of the good is so expensive as to significantly prohibit replacement of broken/defective parts, is the good really all that... good?

Watch this video of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

The '59 Chevy gets 13.5 miles per gallon. [1] The '09 Chevy gets 25. [2]

Yes, modern cars are more difficult to maintain than older cars -- they require more specialized equipment to maintain, parts are more difficult to replace, so on and so forth. Modern cars are also incredibly more fuel efficient and safer to ride in, and much of that is enabled by the same engineering efforts that make cars more difficult to maintain.

1) http://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/full-si...

2) https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/25483.shtml

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#129

Post by oever » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #119

oever wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better incentive would be to require manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired. Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product. A significant number of consume…

That isn't really reasonable. No product is expected to work _forever_. Things fail. ICs go out of production.

At some point an equivalent product could be offered as a replacement. Or parts could be replaced. The cost of this will be reflected in the price of the warranty which also serves as a down payment for a replacement product. But still, the producer will have an incentive to do an honest assessment of the longevity of the product via the cost of the warranty. Too low will cost the company and too high will shy away the consumer.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#130

Post by CaptSpify » Wed, Jul 05, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #82

Not to play the free market card too aggressively, but isn't there already a solution to this, called "extended warranties"? Whether provided by the manufacturer or from the retail seller, they provide a way for customers to pay an extra fee in order to extend the product's lifetime. In theory, they even give a way to price out the effective longevity of comparable devices by looking at the prices of the warranties.…

Maybe in the EU things are different, but in the US....

I've only had a couple of "extended warranties", and they were worded in such a way that they were useless. "This warranty does not cover normal wear and tear on $common_failing_part..." and the like.

If they were useful, I'd buy them all the time.