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EU Parliament Calls For Longer Lifetime For Products (eubusiness.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Europe's Parliament called on the Commission, Member States and producers Tuesday to take measures to ensure consumers can enjoy durable, high-quality products that can be repaired and upgraded. At their plenary session in Strasbourg, MEPs said tangible goods and software should be easier to repair and update, and made a plea to tackle built-in obsolescence and make spare parts affordable. 77 per cent of EU consumers would rather repair their goods than buy new ones, according to a 2014 Eurobarometer survey, but they ultimately have to replace or discard them because they are discouraged by the cost of repairs and the level of service provided. "We must reinstate the reparability of all products put on the market," said Parliament's rapporteur Pascal Durand MEP: "We have to make sure that batteries are no longer glued into a product, but are screwed in so that we do not have to throw away a phone when the battery breaks down. We need to make sure that consumers are aware of how long the products last and how they can be repaired."
As long as people are willing to pay 2-3x the current cost, they can have a TV with replaceable parts and the infrastructure required to support it. Of course, many people won't be able to buy these products, but boy howdy, if they do, it will really be great.
Hit the manufacturers with a "life cycle tax" to cover the true cost of the ENTIRE life cycle of the product - including disposal in a landfill or the ocean.
Pros: You'd be able to repair a lot of stuff because it'd be cheaper to sell. And the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(es) would stop growing pretty quick. McDonald's Happy Meal toys would either be made of wood or disappear altogether.
Cons: Implementing it would be difficult - full of more regulations to comply with. And stuff would go way up in price. McDonald's Happy Meal toys would either be made of wood or disappear altogether.
77 per cent of EU consumers would rather repair their goods than buy new ones
And what percentage would be willing to pay significantly more for those repairable products than they are paying now for the non-repairable versions?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So get out. Your Radiant Socialist Future awaits, comrade.
Being someone who spent a number of years repairing Other People's Broken Shit (and profited intellectually thereby, believe it or not; knowing how things break and how they could be made better is of great practical use), I appreciate and agree with the sentiment behind this from the EU, but as with so many things technological, the politicians in this case don't have an appreciation for the technical problems associated with it. Many of the devices they'd like to be repairable aren't manufactured in a way that makes them easily repairable in the first place. Much surface-mount component technology itself makes it almost impossible to diagnose problems down to the component level (BGA packaged integrated circuits especially). Then there's the cost associated with diagnosis and repair of a circuit board; in many cases it might cost more to do that than a new unit would cost. Changing the way things are manufactured to facilitate repair might not be possible, at least without going backwards, having devices that are larger and bulkier, so that repairs can even be made. As-is, some devices can be 'repaired' just by replacing an entire circuit board, which while it irks my sensibilities is the most cost-effective solution; defectives can either be recycled or repaired in bulk in a factory setting for much cheaper than as a one-off. Your smartphone, on the other hand, is more-or-less one circuit board to start with, is very densely packed with components, most/all of the VLSI ICs are BGA packages, and the PCB itself might not even survive the removal/replacement process, even if you can manage to diagnose the problem; there's no real way to make them repairable short of replacing entire assemblies, which in many cases might cost more than half of what a new smartphone costs. Many other portable devices are in the same boat. Appliances, vehicles, $LARGE_THINGS? There's little reason why they can't be made repairable, it's just company policies that prevent it (I'm looking at you John Deere). I'd hope that the EU is really going to target that class of 'device' than any other.
A free market requires unrestricted competition and balanced bargaining power. If certain groups have much better bargaining power than others, then it is not a free market.
Large corporations have more bargaining power when they can flood the market with cheap shoes, where less experienced people simply purchase cheaper shoes because they can't really tell which one is actually better. Thus it's actually corporations that speak on behalf of consumers by pricing better options out of the market.
It worked as far as Trump wanting to Make America Sick Again (tm).
Speaking of health care, that's not a free market either. Just one pharmaceutical company creates an essential product (e.g. Epipen), makes it a requirement for organizations to have them on-hand, then jack up the price. This would be a non-issue in any other western nation with socialized medicine - only the USA is the one still having trouble with health care.
Breaking Bad would be a 5-minute short if it took place in any sane country. "You've been diagnosed with lung cancer, but our socialized medicine system can take care of you, plus you have life insurance that doesn't cancel because you suddenly got sick."
If I break the screen on my iPhone given how it's built it's easier and less expensive(?) to go out and buy a new iPhone. If the battery stops holding the charge I need to get a new iPhone because the current one is glued in. The point is that the phones and other items like it should be manufactured so that if something goes wrong to a component like one of those then it should be easy to take the phone in to be repaired. It would be nice to be able to upgrade your storage after purchasing a phone but they aren't even calling for that.
If there was something wrong with anything on the motherboard then you would just take out the board and replace it with an new one. Even that is a lot better than replacing the whole phone. But it's hard to do when manufacturers use special screws and slather glue everywhere.