Slashdot Mirror
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."
Being a US Citizen, I feel I am being dragged into some backwards Theocratic Police State where the common person has no rights, has no say and is there to serve solely as a profit center for the All Mighty Capitalists
In the EU, they proactively look after the interests of their people and society
Sure, they pay higher taxes and they ave plenty of downsides, but I find that far more acceptable than living in the US
Except that most of the time manufacturers actually go out of their way to make products less repairable. They don't use weird screws because they're cheaper, but to fuck with costumers. If everybody was using the same set of standardized parts, that would simplify both design and manufacturing, while mass production of said parts would push their cost down. This is exactly a case where regulation can be useful for breaking the prisoner's dilemma scenario and helping everybody. PCs didn't become unaffordably expensive just because they are built out of interchangeable parts, quite the opposite.
Engineers have been capable of building devices that are easier to repair all the time - but only when that's one of the goals. Built-in obsolescence has been a thing for decades. Desktop computers are a lot easier to diagnose and repair than the original PC. Laptops? Ha!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
How do you know that repairability is so much more expensive? For the products I've repaired, small design changes would make it much easier to do common repairs.
It might also make them easier and faster to assemble in the first place. Some of the designs I've seen feel like the designer never actually worked with the thing.