People's needs for products change, and products themselves improve to gain features, become more energy efficient, etc.
I do not want to be running the air conditioner I had from thirty years ago. It used tons of energy, was noisy as hell, was ugly, didn't have a thermostat or timer or any other features we take for granted today.
Same thing in the way all my lamps have been replaced with LED's, televisions became HD and then large screen and then 4K, office chairs got better ergonomics, and so forth. Making a CD player that lasted 4 decades would have been a total waste of resources.
I honestly think we're at a pretty good balance point today. When something breaks, more often than not it's the case that the new version is a significant upgrade that was worth getting anyways.
Our needs don't change, our expectations change, often due to marketing. Especially true for widgets that don't serve base needs. That's fine, we do want progress. But we should have the choice.
Wouldn't you want to be in control of the decision? If your air conditioning cools you and you are okay with it's current efficiency, you should be able to repair it. It's not like corporations are building short lived products out of environmental concerns about efficiency. If you leave it in their hands, then the consumer loses control, and companies do the obvious.
It also reduces competition and innovation in my view. Why try hard to R&D products people want to upgrade to, when you can just wait for their unit to break and sell them a mediocre upgrade.
Don’t we already have that right to repair in practice for ACs and related?
In the last 3 years, I’ve repaired 1 window AC (bad bearings on the motor shaft), 1 free-standing AC (bad bearings on the motor leading to motor failure), and 2 portable dehumidifiers (low refrigerant charge).
None were particularly difficult and I could source a used motor ($18.50 shipped from eBay), source the bearings by measurement (under $16 shipped for 8 bearings though I needed only 2), and R410a is a commodity ($300 for a 20# tank, used about 1.5 pounds total).
Would it be easier if Fuji and Samsung and LG and others ran a parts depot that I could buy from? Maybe, but I’m probably not going to buy new parts from them anyway.
Yes certain commodity parts are pretty easy to get and replace, in fact the wear items I usually find are quite available on big appliances in particular. But getting a replacement circuit board or perhaps a proprietary bracket is often not possible.
I don't think manufacturers should have to offer support in perpetuity though so it becomes an interesting problem. Like samsung shouldn't need to stock the front face of a washing machine for 15 years. Perhaps a better approach is making items that aren't possible to stock long term be made out of repairable materials so at least it can be repaired by a repairman.
Repairmen are expensive now because the skillset disappeared, when everything became so cheap that it was easier to buy new. But I think we can and should bring local repair services back.
Repairs are expensive because of extreme economies of scale. The marginal cost for Samsung to make another injection-moulded plastic front face for a washing machine is literally a few cents, including both material and labor; the cost for repairing it (no matter how repairable the materials are) or making a single new one in any other way than a mass-produced injection mold is easily at least 100 times more expensive, simply because it takes uncomparably more labor. This is a part where making and storing a huge excess of stock for the next 50 years is still cheaper than repairing even a tiny fraction of the parts.
Perhaps requiring the manufacturers to provide either spare parts or if they are out of stock and no intent to sell them anymore, then requiring to provide STLs to 3D-print them could be a reasonable option. It still would be an order of magnitude (or two) more expensive compared to making the original parts (due to the immense economies of scale for plastic manufacturing), but it would still be cheaper than custom repairs locally.
> Wouldn't you want to be in control of the decision? If your air conditioning cools you and you are okay with it's current efficiency, you should be able to repair it.
The point is, I don't want the things I buy to be 1.5x or 2x the price to ensure greater repairability than they have now. That's the conversation we're having.
> It also reduces competition and innovation in my view. Why try hard to R&D products people want to upgrade to
All available evidence points to the contrary. That might be true if there were only one manufacturer of an item, but competition ensures a constant stream of R&D and improvements. Which is precisely why I don't want to use my AC from 30 years ago -- the improvements since then have been massive.
The 30 year number is a bit disingenuous, appliances are conking out in 3-5 years which is why this is a conversation at all. In that time frame, innovation in most appliances is frivolous extras. Nothing fundamental about toasters has changed in decades. Fridges are adding TVs on the front because fridges are all the same technology and it's impossible to differentiate.
30 years for sure, that is a totally reasonable amount of time for an appliance to last. If it genuinely lasted that long I bet you actually did a few repairs in there too. Living the dream, actually even 10 years would be amazing. We could cherry pick examples of long lived products but the point for me is that people don't pay for longevity like you said, but we need it for other reasons. Reduce waste, improve consumer choice and power over their own objects.
In regards to efficiency, it's definitely more efficient not to produce a society worth of new appliances ever 5 years or so. Improved repairability aldo means improved recycling of the components too.
Not sure I can agree. You would replace your air conditioner once options with way less power usage or more comfort are available, but your still good machine will make someone else happy.
I still replace some older lamps with LEDs when they die. TVs just go on a rotation, replace your bedroom TV, make your grandmum happy, it is going to make someone else happy. People still look for quality CD players (especially AMP combis) in second hand shops around here.
Someone must be buying new devices so the second hand market can work. Without well working second hand market you need cheap china devices so people get access to technology. It's no problem for this approach if YOU want to buy new things.
Another example might be cars. Someone must have the need/enjoyment to drive a fully new car so I can buy that same car a year later at a much more reasonable price.
Problem is sometimes you can get by with an off-off-brand product (it’s hit and miss). Many folks don’t buy the “spend more and you will get something MUCH better that will last you for years!” sales pitch. Also a lot of people wouldn’t be able to start fronting (or financing) more money for a better, more repairable product.
Swiss here. I would argue we have a big 'buy good, don't buy twice' community because a high percentage simply can. Can confirm that our second hand markets are filled with great, high quality, often well taken care of, products.
I just think we should be clear about what tradeoffs are being proposed. This isn't all fairy dust and magic, and the average person doesn't have the background to understand the impact of proposals like this.
> the average person doesn't have the background to understand
yes agree - so there must be manufacturing standards and product testing. Similarly it is established law that some products are inherently unsafe. The law must always adapt to new techniques, materials and chains of distribution.
Any system of standards and testing can be gamed. It's better for the average person to better educate themselves on purchases. I don't know how realistic this is. Additional difficulty is added by the amount of (mis/dis)information available to consumers. Very few sources are trustworthy and your mileage may vary of course.
Adjacent to this issue is the broader issue that rampant capitalism encourages rampant buying of stuff - often stuff that we don't need, and surprisingly often stuff we don't even want. Think Gift Giving culture nowadays. With fewer things to purchase, more effort could go into the important purchases, I would think.
I've thought about this and there's no way to condense a multivariate notion of product quality into a scale. The best I've come up with is that all products should have to prominently advertise their years of warranty support. This creates an incentive for products to last longer than the warranty and makes comparison shopping easy.
That last much longer.