EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
171–180 of 241 posts
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#172Why can't we have economies that can be stable without the sky falling, can grow when wanted, and shrink when needed without a cascade of catastrophies? Can't we? It's a honest question, I have no clue. Because I also think this is a great idea too, but everything else being the same, the general insanity being the same, something else will probably give. On the other hand, if we did have this hypothetical more flexi…
That would take central planning. The government in capitalist societies can't force someone to open a business when unemployment gets too high, and can't force businesses to close or merge when there are inefficiencies in the market. A capitalist economic system is inherently reactionary: someone notices a demand and creates supply for it. Someone tries their hardest to keep their business open even with low demand,…
>The government in capitalist societies can't force someone to open a business when unemployment gets too high
It does all the time, no? At least here, town halls give stupid jobs to people when unemployment is too high. Obviously, the results are catastrofic.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add to automation in car manufacturing the logistics. The chain of supply of cars is efficient due to high volumes, predictability and competition. The chain of supply for spare parts (like radio modules) is low volume, unpredictable and does not attract competition. Thus, fixing a car radio may seem prohibitively expensive when compared to the price of the car. If you do it yourself, it's cheaper, but the insurance…
> Thus, fixing a car radio may seem prohibitively expensive when compared to the price of the car. It's very easy to add together a few repairs which sum to more than the value of the car. If you wanted to get a new car from scratch by ordering the individual components and having your dealership put them together, it would have to be at least 10x more expensive than buying one produced at scale. > If you do it yours…
I have a relative who once worked in a city vehicle maintenance facility. They had a truck with a body that had rusted out, and he was told to replace the entire body. He pointed out that a new truck would be cheaper than replacing those parts. He was told to do it anyway - they had a repair budget already, but getting a new truck would require making a case before the city council.
He quit that job.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does regulation solve the issue that replacing e.g. the touch screen may take many man hours of labor, whereas making the car itself took proportionally less, thus making replacements more expensive? Your experience is a symptom of a high degree of automation in one area (car manufacturing) and the absence in another (repairs), and regulation does not change that.
What? Car radios are (or at least, were 10 years ago) easy for even a DIYer to replace with about an hour's labor. Even in modern cars with nonstandard radios they're still modular . You can take it out and replace it with a functioning one. The GP's issue isn't that he needed a technician to take apart the radio and install a new screen, he just needed a new radio. Which was his eventual solution.
I suspect that new car radios aren't nearly as modular as the ones of old. With the new regulations requiring backup cameras, the interface to the camera probably isn't standardized.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#175I totally support this. I accidentally cracked the touch screen of my car radio console. The car is nothing special, a Ford Mondeo that is a few years old. Cost to replace touch screen module: more than the entire value of the car! That is insane. Effectively, if I want to claim from insurance - crack the touch screen (it is a replaceable module) and have to scrap the entire car. In this case, I managed to get a repl…
My family encountered a similar issue with something even simpler, console LEDs. Some of the LEDs that lit up the control console in our old Toyota Sienna blew out, so we asked a dealer how much it would be to fix. Turns out they'd have to take off the entire dashboard just to access the LEDs, several hours of labor and several hundred dollars. We could literally get a new set of tires for cheaper. As it was we commi…
My 2007 Sienna has the same problem, a blown LED. Luckily it lights a part of the dash I don't need often.
I don't understand how LEDs can blow out, they're solid state and should last nearly forever.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.
To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.
Or, maybe we are looking at it and deciding it is worth it.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#177Not 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.
This is probably closer to the fatal flaw in my argument. Even AppleCare, which is manufacturer-based, only allows two screen replacements, and charges you for both of them.
I guess a middle ground could be to force (through regulation) the companies to offer a manufacturer's warranty, but I'm not sure that this approach is any better than the recommendations that the EU is calling for.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
You shifted the argument (which nobody was making) to being "modern is better" using your car example. I'm bringing it back to user-serviceable is _better_. >Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. So let them figure out another way to make it thinner/lighter. I don't want them to do it at the expense of upgrading common parts. We're not asking…
Thinner and lighter are not purely cosmetic (although I think Apple overvalues them) -- laptops are meant to be carried and therefore being smaller/lighter are actual benefits. Even if they were purely cosmetic, however, there is actual engineering required to do them. The laws of the universe don't go, oh, you only want to make a cosmetic change, therefore you can get X into this space/thermal profile without any ot…
I think at some point you're going to have to present an argument that user-serviceable RAM makes a perceptible difference in making the laptop thin/light going forward. Several assumptions - The RAM itself can't shrink or be made to be more energy efficient, or socket design is static, can be challenged. However a manufacturer without a mandate/incentive will probably never invest their efforts to making that happen. They're going to optimize for the commercial aspect of selling the product in a way that maximizes their bottom line via market segmentation and price gouging on storage. Obviously, making money is not something that I'm against, but I simply would like to see an acceptable compromise made between making money and making it repair-friendly. Like you said, everything is a trade-off.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#179I agree. I live in the EU and bought a washing machine for 450 eur. After 1 year and 2 months a big hole in the Drum appeared and this makes it flood my apartment. LG wants 530 eur to fix it, so obviously not worth it. My parents had 2 washing machines in their whole life, in contrast...
If this was a concern for you why didn't you buy a more expensive washing machine that has a longer warranty and a reputation for quality? These things exist but they cost more. Consumers need to be willing to put money where their mouth is.
It's starting to be difficult to differentiate "good quality and expensive" from "bad quality and expensive".
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#180I agree with this too. I always try to repair things first and then replace them if necessary (even if it is a torn shirt or backpack, a broken zipper on a shoe or broken connector on a laptop). Also, I try to buy things which are durable, but a lot of times it is hard to tell what will be durable so I go with the pricier option hoping it will last longer. This is not always true, especially for shoes and clothing, b…
> there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years without breaking. The problem is the X years. For electronics that website would be almost useless. I could tell you about the failure modes of my past laptops and phones but would you buy a discontinued product? At best you could hope that newer products of the same brand fixed some of the problems of the past ones and didn't add new issues. T…
Even when you don't get new models so fast, you'll get manufacturing updates on existing products that can affect their reliability both good and bad. The best you can do is identify the manufacturers who have a reputation of building good stuff, and hope they don't sell their name to someone who wants to make a quick buck by trading on their reputation.