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Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

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Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#11
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

Imagine a place where no lower bound on quality is established on anything.

You'd have to spend all your time advocating, evaluating, fighting for everything important in your life: the quality of your housing, the quality of your children's education, the quality of your car and your consumer goods, and so on.

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#13
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

So if we go off of Woz's example, you would have preferred it if bell was allowed to say what kind of phone you were allowed to have and that the "few bureaucrats" should not have stepped in to allow other manufacturers to build phones.

People could not have voted with their wallet because there was no alternative. We're approaching the same type of problem with tech giants. People just want to ensure that components can be replaced and that the tech giants aren't going out of their way to prevent that.

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#15
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

There is perhaps a bigger picture "tragedy of the commons" scenario where external regulation is needed - absent intervention around repair, companies are likely to keep churning out short lifespan electronics, creating an eWaste problem down the line. That's an externalised cost that the producers of the eWaste are unlikely to bear.

If the supply of rare earth metals and other components needed to produce products is constrained or politically at risk, it makes sense for strategic intervention to try to ensure better longevity of products, to improve resilience. That's a government level risk in some ways, as countries are now highly dependent on technology.

Disruption to chip supply chains is already having an impact. If the financial incentives are to drive selling more chips to replace existing devices whose lifespan could be extended by repair, it's possible we reach a "local optima" free market solution that limits device lifespans, where a global optimum point exists with long lifespan devices that are easily repaired, and gives better "big scale" outcomes, but which might not yield the same cosy 24 month re-purchase cycles for mobile handsets etc.

On the other hand, consumers don't have the option right now to buy a repairable device, so they can't easily vote with their wallets and signal their demand for this. In an era of chip shortages, as a government I would want to ensure I was gearing up policy-wise for a period of reduced availability of supplies, prioritising the key demand that is nationally significant, rather than letting the free market determine they can make more profit from selling another range of new mobile phones at inflated high margins, since the last generation of handsets had an artificially suppressed lifespan.

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#16
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

The problem is that corporations use mind control (marketing/psychology tricks) to get people to buy their stuff.

The free market is generally great but our biology has an exploit actively being exploited.

Sure there are lots of us that use logic and reason to make purchasing decisions... But there are many people who do not. Dancing cartoons of young skinny people on flashy backgrounds to music DOES get people to spend money.

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#18
post #12

TL;DW: He's very supportive, and talks about how things used to be fixable and have plans included on paper, "open source". He says Apple II shipped with complete schematics and source code listings.

I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if Woz got his wish to not bury the Apple II (Which had a huge amount of ports for tinkerers/electronic maker type enthusiasts).

I was too young for the Apple II, but as a kid I saw a father working with his in his garage. He was always inventing something, and connecting it to the Apple.

In a way, it was one if the first Raspberry pi's? Kinda?

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#19
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

Wow, the voice of reason in the first comment? Am I really on HN? Of course, you are 100% correct. There is nothing stopping one of the big players from offering a more "repairable" product to satisfy all of the supposed demand. Remember, R2R wants to force their ideas upon _everyone_. Doesn't that mean, that there should already be a huge group of people who are willing to buy repairable devices? Instead of making new laws, R2R should be focused on repealing existing bad laws that hinder competition (patent, copyright, regulation, etc).

Re: Steve Wozniak speaks on Right to Repair [video]

#20
post #15
post #2

Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.

There is perhaps a bigger picture "tragedy of the commons" scenario where external regulation is needed - absent intervention around repair, companies are likely to keep churning out short lifespan electronics, creating an eWaste problem down the line. That's an externalised cost that the producers of the eWaste are unlikely to bear. If the supply of rare earth metals and other components needed to produce products i…

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