Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's the large stream of perfectly usable e-waste modern practices emit. From my point of view, the proposals suggested here, although difficult to discuss in detail because of how abstract they are, would not solve this issue in any meaningful way. By "meaningful" I mean that the cost-to-benefit or cost-to-regulation ratio would be rather poor. IMO, the core issue with e-waste isn't necessarily bad practices by ma…
> This issue extends beyond electronics as well. People often throw away clothes once they "go out of fashion," which these days happens exceptionally quickly. The same applies to furniture, appliances, and other consumer goods This deserves a 'in the first world' caveat. Most waste streams terminate in the not-first world. There's a reason there are so many photos of African and SE Asian markets full of a hodgepodge…
Cars are a good example of this. Historically, people in Western Europe would sell their used vehicles into what was essentially a second-hand market in Eastern Europe. This worked and continues to work to this day.
While a car is a good example of something whose lifespan can be extended beyond its first user, I don't think the same necessarily applies to mobile phones that are more than seven years old and are no longer supported by the manufacturer. That said, broken phones or phones that are traded in early in their lifespan can definitely find a home in secondary markets.
> Things like appliances (small motor, big bulky box) and furniture (bulky) are exceptions to the above, given their difficulty to efficiency ship en masse.
It's largely a matter of the weight- and volume-to-cost ratio. Otherwise I agree.
> It's a gradient, like all things. Repair has difficulty and cost. Policies (like this one) could be enacted which decrease that difficulty and cost. Are they worth it?
There are already vendors that refurbish phones and resell them today. However, it is not a particularly profitable business, largely due to the high labour costs involved. And I'm not talking about the difficulty of replacing a glued-in battery, but rather the cost and expertise required for component-level repairs on the motherboard, something no regulation is going to magically make disappear.
> But even so, I think it's a valid question of whether society would be 'better' if people had more ownership of their devices. Versus the current outsourcing to the mercy of Google / Huawei / Samsung / Vivo / Xioami / Apple.
It depends on where you draw the line on ownership and what benefits that provides to the end consumer.
There are specific areas where full ownership is explicitly restricted by regulation or other legal requirements, such as radio firmware or secure payment systems like Apple Pay or Google Pay. I don't believe consumers would benefit from increased access to these systems. In fact, I believe the opposite.
There are also cases where manufacturers rely on intellectual property from third-party vendors and simply cannot release or open-source the code without violating a non-disclosure agreement and potentially causing significant financial harm to the vendor. Even if regulation were introduced to allow manufacturers to disregard such agreements, that would not eliminate the underlying problem. It would simply shift the cost onto the third-party vendor, whose intellectual property and business model could be undermined by having its proprietary technology made public.
However, there are also cases where software or hardware becomes unusable for no apparent reason whatsoever. A good example, albeit purely a software one, is what Stop Killing Games is trying to address. I would generally agree with initiatives like that.