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EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

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Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#201

Post by anigbrowl »

freehunter wrote: post #161
thinkfurther wrote: post #135

Why 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,…

Pure central planning has all sorts of problems of its own, since planning agencies are both corruptible and have limited powers of foresight (a general problem with any utilitarian proposal). On the other hand pure market solutions aren't working either. I don't believe that the 'drive to do better than everyone else' as a matter of economic necessity is a healthy or sustainable one.

I think there's a possibility for communism 2.0 where planning is distributed rather than being centralized or wholly reactive. We've built a great deal of the logistical infrastructure for this already, but our social and economic technology has fallen behind our physical capabilities.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#202

Post by roceasta »

Perhaps I'm being naive, but how about reducing sales tax ('VAT' in UK) for items which come with long guarantee periods? So sale of a washing machine with a 10 year guarantee would be taxed at 5% instead of 10%, or similar. Wouldn't this give manufacturers an incentive to make more durable products?

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#203

Post by ksk »

cwyers wrote: post #190
ksk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You want me to present an argument that stuff that doesn't exist isn't better than stuff that exists? And "acceptable compromise" -- acceptable to who? Because the current compromise is acceptable to people who buy these laptops with soldered-on RAM. And it's not acceptable to those who buy other laptops that don't have soldered RAM. The compromise has been accepted by the market. "Well, the market got it wrong and s…

Because you're the one dismissing user serviceability as an impeding factor to reducing the overall package size?

>And "acceptable compromise" -- acceptable to who?

To me, and anyone else who shares my values.

>Because the current compromise is acceptable to people who buy these laptops with soldered-on RAM.

Seems like you can layer-on any argument you want simply by citing sales. I suppose people think Windows security is the best since they overwhelmingly choose to buy Windows machines over Apple or Linux desktops. But that is a false statement, because not everyone is aware of the intricacies of operating system design or that different options exist, or how they differ etc etc. Extrapolating _just_ from commercial success to use as data in an argument is a fools errand because of the thousands of variables involved in a large diverse group making a purchasing decision.

>Sure, okay, but history is rife with examples of people telling markets to do things better and things not getting better,

Hmm I'm curious.. can you provide a sampling of those incidents that apply to our discussion here?

>and it's helpful to think about why markets haven't gotten to better on their own.

They almost never do. Systems typically evolve to coalesce around a local maxima. All around the world (in democracies anyway), citizens have always installed regulations to make the market serve us, rather than the other way around. For e.g. in the US - child labor, minimum wage, consumer product safety, etc, antitrust laws, etc etc. Before each of those laws got passed, I'm sure people made arguments against it with "well the market has accepted it". (You seem like a decent bloke, so I'm not suggesting that you personally would be against those regulations, just making a general point)

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#204

Post by civilitty »

bonzini wrote: post #140
azag0 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

Isn't that how RoHS already works?

RoHS is a limit on toxic chemical concentrations in materials used for electrical equipment to limit environmental and public exposure to a few egregiously toxic compounds (i.e., the solder in a radio can have a maximum of 1000 ppm of lead, but no more). You're probably thinking of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive which is the one that set recycling goals for electronic waste.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#205

Post by lliamander »

anigbrowl wrote: post #200
lliamander wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made some thoughtful points, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. In short, repairability is too nebulous of a target for effective regulation. I think the appropriate angle for government intervention is to protect a "right to repair". > 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...R…

reduce the regulatory and tax burden faced by small repair shops. Increased competition and lower overhead costs will drive down prices. I think manufacturer hostility to third party repairers is a much bigger burden than state-imposed overhead. It's not like all manufacturers are super-open and eager to share the schematics of their products with hackers, is it?

Whether manufacturer hostility is in fact bigger than state-imposed burdens, I agree it is a significant factor. I thought about elaborating this point with my comment about "right to repair" but left it out for the sake of brevity.

I think an aspect of this "right to repair" would be the ability to seek legal action against manufacturers who deliberately interfere with this right.

However, the relationship between repair shops and manufacturers need not be hostile. I don't know the stats for this, but would it not be reasonable to think that many people purchase cars based on the recommendation of a trusted mechanic? I certainly do. Mechanics are generally going to recommend vehicles that are either easy to work on or aren't in the shop often (or both).

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#206

Post by pilsetnieks »

cwyers wrote: post #169
ksk wrote: post #166

Earlier 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…

Introducing a constraint like this, however, motivates the manufacturers to innovate making user-replaceable parts better instead of discarding the entire concept just because they can.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#207

Post by adamsea »

lliamander wrote: post #160
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…

You've made some thoughtful points, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion. In short, repairability is too nebulous of a target for effective regulation. I think the appropriate angle for government intervention is to protect a "right to repair". > 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...R…

> Is it better to use a paper towel is biodegradable and produced through sustainable tree-farming, or use a reusable cloth towel that increases demand for environmentally unfriendly washing machines and laundry detergent (and spend money on sewing machines and thread to repair holes)?

If someone has gone to the effort to buy responsibly sourced paper towels, I think they would also own responsibly sourcfed and environmentally friendly detergent. And of course the cloth would usually be washed with other items, and so not that much more water would be used. And, is thread really a cost here for home repairs?

I think the more realistic version of your scenario is:

"Is it better to use a non-biodegradable paper towel which was not sustainably produced, or to use a resusable cloth which needs to be thrown in with the other laundry occasionally, and which after many months of use may be relegated to a toolkit grease-towel, or thrown out and replaced?"

Lastly -- the OP may have been over-specific in talking about "full environmental and social cost", but there is plenty of room to move from where we are now to "enough social costs so that poor people don't leave near factories which give them asthma and lower their life expectancy, and to mitigate the effects of human-caused global warming."

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#208

Post by Noos »

The EU will have fun then with much more expensive consumer goods, and businesses keeping flagship lines of products out of them for sale. More likely this is just another tax increase worded as "consumer protection." No business will really design products based on government say, but will just raises prices to cover whatever penalty fee they issue.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#209

Post by bashinator »

anigbrowl wrote: post #198
marcosdumay wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get…

A lot of people use their computer keyboard more than any other single object they don't sleep on. There's finally (thank you Cherry MX) a supply meeting the presumably pent-up demand for decent keyboards. I hated those membrane things, and you could get them for under $10 as far back as 2003. These days you can get a perfectly good _repairable_ mechanical switch keyboard for about $35.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#210

Post by ptaipale »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #117
ptaipale wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you get with your wages has changed. Real estate is more expensive; you get less of that with your wages. Mass-produced electronics and other consumer goods is much, much cheaper; you get more of that with your wages.

There's a great Fed press briefing where William Dudley mentions this, and someone heckles him "I can't eat an iPad!" https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/blogs/lookout/fed-officia...

More appropriate would be to heckle "I can't live in an iPad".

As far as I can know, food prices in America have gone down a little bit in the long term in comparison to general price index; 1982 food price index was 100 and now it is 90. Where I live (north Europe), the price drop has been more substantial.

The biggest health problem that poor people face in the U.S. is obesity.

But even if food is not problem, the real issues are housing and health care costs.

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