Reducing a 25% tax on repairs is seen as an insightful and brilliant way to incentivize repairs? Well knock me over with a feather. Where is the previous article about how that level of tax is crazy to begin with?
Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
281–290 of 336 posts
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#282This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier…
Incentivize the consumer and you incentivize the producer. The idea is that this will create a market need for easily repairable products.
Or just subsidizing an increase in cost of repair parts
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
For arguments like this, it is easier to look backwards than forwards. So let's take a 20 year old car, and pretend it was future proofed to take more upgrades. Would you want it today? * The style wouldn't be right at all. So let's pretend that we are globally willing to accept out of style things for the sake of the environment. Which is a big if, but let's go with it. * The steering wheel may or may not have airba…
A better software analogy would be calling an API method whose signature has never changed over 20 years. It would be like making a call to the Windows API, one that has been available since DirectX 2.0a, to play a sound clip. Styling and design still have room to work if your engine compartment standard does little more than define a minimum volume of unobstructed interior space and several fixed mount point locatio…
I think you skipped all my points on safety advances, that there is no way could have been future proofed for. Using a 20 year old windows api is different in that it doesn't put your life in danger. A 20 year old crumple zone and 20 year old airbag technology DOES increase your risk of death.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#284If a company made a extremely enduring and time-resistant valuable product, wouldn't it make more sense for the company to lease the product out to the customers - and for the state to support this model by making it tax-free after a time?
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#285Impermanence could be considered a value in certain cultures. "Disposable Culture" vs. "Repairing Old Stuff" isn't a useful dichotomy. Everything has an expiration date, and often that date is carefully considered as part of a product's design. The goal shouldn't be fixing old stuff, but finding out how to increase efficiency either by making product's expiration dates further in the future, or compromising having an imminent expiration date by making the product easy to recycle.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flip side is so the math Old units are much less efficient. I think last time I did the math my old fridge is rasing my power bill by $50 a year over a new one. So over 10 years that's $500 burned up in smoke and global warming. So then it's buy a new fridge for $900 vs fix old one for $100 plus $500 in burned coal over 10 years. Now if power rates doubled then it would always win to buy the new fridge even if no…
Yeah I did some math on that too but it's a bit more complicated than that. First of all, I don't trust a new fridge these days to last 10 years but I can easily see this one purring for another 20 with minor repairs. Secondly, this is a combo fridge+freezer unit, with 2 compressors. New ones only seem to have one compressor, which makes them somewhat more efficient but if it dies, both my freezer and fridge die with…
More efficient? It should be the opposite: two compressors should be more efficient than one. Yes, smaller compressors are a little less efficient than bigger ones, however unless you always open both the fridge and freezer doors, it's more efficient to cool them separately. The big downside to dual compressors is cost and complexity.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. What I think is most sad about this is that we've come up with a material that can last nearly forever and is relatively easy to reuse and recycle (at least…
I'm in two minds about biodegradable plastics. Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store, or get goods packed in biodegradable plastics. While this is anecdotal, it is common amongst my peers for the biodegradable bags to be used as general household garbage bags. I think this feels much better than using t…
The trouble with the reusable bag thing is that it takes about 300 bag reuses before the reusable bag is a win. Most of them aren't used that many times.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's another angle too. For a long time the only tailor in town was basically a bridal tailor. They charged steep prices for simple work on everyday clothing, and wait times were long. Fast forward to today. I had ripped holes in a few pairs of pants, and was wondering if it made sense to have them repaired- I was pretty sure I was going to be charged as much as the pants were worth for a fairly simple repair. Luc…
Repair services in any western country will be hideously expensive because it can't be automated and has to be paid western wages, while the products themselves are made in an automated fashion with third world wages. For this repair stuff to work, we have to make it easier to do so that people can do it themselves.
The one factor you're missing in the equation is that those products, made in automated fashion with third-world wages, have to be shipped across an ocean, and then shipped to distributors, and then sold in retailers that pay western wages, and which are owned by corporations that demand western profits. The retail mark-up of almost any item is enormous, probably at least half to 2/3 the cost.
When you repair something, you avoid all that retail mark-up. However any parts you buy will also have a big markup usually, plus shipping costs.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#289Impermanence could be considered a value in certain cultures. "Disposable Culture" vs. "Repairing Old Stuff" isn't a useful dichotomy. Everything has an expiration date, and often that date is carefully considered as part of a product's design. The goal shouldn't be fixing old stuff, but finding out how to increase efficiency either by making product's expiration dates further in the future, or compromising having an…
What cultures value impermanence? The only one that comes to my mind is the US -- and we're unsustainable, burning through resources on an unprecedented scale. Take the time to do things properly, and they endure: Caxtons are the gold standard of book collecting in England today, and Albrecht Duerer's house still stands in Nuremberg.
(You also spend less money by building, or generally making, to last. Western and Central Europe have a lower GDP than the US but a comparable standard of living...)
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but the point of this legislation is to adjust the incentives so that repair becomes possible/economical in a greater number of cases.
Aren't we about to be abounding with mechanical inclined labor? Like aren't all truck drivers and car drivers about to be automated? This seems like a nobrainer. Relocating that labor surplus towards supporting a repairable mechanical/technological industry and commercial future seems really plausible. That sounds like a decent job, troubleshooting and repairing the machines, designing machines to be repaired. Better…
How much is is worth? Assuming every "fixer" is competing with some industry robots somewhere, what is the ceiling on the fixer salary?