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I appreciate companies making repairable products, providing repair manuals and avoiding proprietary screws etc. but I think it's overly simplistic to say repai

I appreciate companies making repairable products, providing repair manuals and avoiding proprietary screws etc. but I think it's overly simplistic to say repair is the default right choice. It makes sense to strive for efficiency. In some cases repair is the most efficient choice but in others it is not. There are always tradeoffs and sometimes durability and repairability are over-engineering for a particular use case. Individuals are not necessarily well placed to determine the most efficient choices directly. Prices act as a mechanism to incorporate information on efficiency of resource use and cheap disposable items are cheap in part because they take fewer resources to manufacture and transport. If they are sufficiently durable for their intended use then they may well be the efficient choice.

kijin 11y ago
The problem is that current market prices do not accurately reflect negative externalities such as pollution, exploitation of cheap labor, depletion of natural resources, and exacerbation of socioeconomic inequalities. We just dump our trash somewhere and hope that someone else will deal with it someday. If there's a reliable mechanism to make market prices better reflect such externalities, I'm all for it. But until we've found and implemented such a mechanism on a large scale, a bit of moralizing wouldn't hurt.
- mattnewport 11y ago
  Even to the extent that may be true, it does not follow that "As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer." as the article claims. There are almost certainly better things most individuals could do. I think moralizing is actually pretty harmful in the context of environmental issues. It leads to things like wasted resources on inefficient recycling programs, ill advised programs like ethanol subsidies, biased evaluation of the merits of the best options for power generation and other examples of schemes that prioritize moralizing and making people feel that they're doing something over actual positive results.
  - annnnd 11y ago
    I agree with you about moralizing - it can be (and often is) harmful. But in this case the advice is sound. Taking care of your stuff, not discarding it just because it is a bit worn around the edges, and trying to repair it instead of just discarding + buying new; is there something wrong with this approach? not sure it is a "single best thing", but it would make a difference. A large one imho.
    - mattnewport 11y ago
      It's almost certainly not economically efficient for a software engineer to be darning their own socks. Economic efficiency doesn't align perfectly with resource or energy efficiency in an environmental sense but in this example it is still likely true. There are economic and environmental costs to everyone having the tools, skills and supplies to repair a reasonable range of products. At the least it likely makes more sense to have a specialist perform any but the most basic repairs rather than doing it yourself. In some cases repairs make sense from an efficiency perspective, in some they don't. All I'm really saying is that it's better to evaluate the more efficient choice dispassionately rather than painting repair as somehow morally superior to buying new.
      - invernomut0 11y ago
        You can pay someone to repair your stuff and make the local economy grow instead of dumping and buying a shiny new toy from a big corporation. Buying new is often not optimal since the stuff you buy istantly is worth something like 20% less from the moment you buy it. You pay to avoid the risk of buying an used object, for example, but I'm not sure that buying new is the more efficient choice every time.
        mattnewport 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure that neither buying new nor repairing is the most efficient choice every time. I also think that it should be a decision based on efficiency and not moralizing. Buying new may or may not be optimal in any given situation but the resale value is only relevant if you decide to resell, it's not a general argument against buying new.
mipapage 11y ago
Sadly, I doubt that manufacturers are consciously thinking about durability and (more-so) repairability when planning. "In some cases repair is the most efficient choice but in others it is not." I doubt that choice - one way or another -is being made very often. If a tradeoff has been made, then it would be great to have that knowledge as a consumer and thus be able to make an informed decision.
- vlehto 11y ago
  Current trend in business to business trades is to rent the stuff you previously sold. Like pump manufacturer who previously sold pumps might now sell "liquid flow" and charge by cubic meter. Everybody wins.
- mattnewport 11y ago
  I've got absolutely no objection to the information necessary to make such decisions being available to consumers but relying on individual consumers to explicitly evaluate the environmental impact of every purchase is not a scalable solution to environmental problems. Using the price mechanism, if necessary using well designed taxes or subsidies to price in currently unpriced externalities, is both scalable and done right avoids unhelpful moralizing.
- violentvinyl 11y ago
  The inclusion of DeWalt got me thinking, because I own several DeWalt power tools. Arguably, these are contractor grade tools made to stand up to some abuse. I buy them because it's a well regarded brand name (for the reason above), but typically only after I've validated my need for a specific tool by breaking a cheap one from repeated use. Truth be told, I've never thought about having to repair it (which I could probably do, because I do know there are parts available for them) or sending it off for repair, because even after owning some of them for 10+ years and subjecting them to countless loanings and abuse, none of them have failed on me. I agree that there is a trade off, but I think it is this: I bought from a respected brand, so that in the event of failure, I can bring it back to the manufacturer (who will probably still be in business), and they can/will fix it (often under an extended warranty, and it's also not unheard of to find tool manufacturers specifically that will repair or replace tools under a lifetime warranty) rather than say something to the effect of "well, we can't fix that, you'll need to buy a new one". If the cost to me as a consumer for this privelege is that they feel the need to take measures that might prevent someone without the right tools from taking it apart so that they can ensure some revenue to keep their parts/repair services running, than I'm okay with that (as long as they aren't trying to sue people for making repairs). This whole thing conjures up the Apple mindset of providing a consistent user experience, and locking down a device to ensure that consistency. Unfortunately, a combination of factors (outdated legal frameworks, pricing models, etc.) seem to conspire against people who want both a quality product manufactured to a high standard and the ability to tinker and repair (ie. HN users).
yourapostasy 11y ago
It is your right to believe what you asserted. My experience points me in a different direction; my comments are not directed as criticism, just offering a different perspective. See my comment below that I'm well aware there are personalities for whom the perspective I offer are not suited for. > Prices act as a mechanism to incorporate information on efficiency of resource use and cheap disposable items are cheap in part because they take fewer resources to manufacture and transport. I consider the concept of pricing-conveying-information outdated in a world that moves much faster and is far more sophisticated and complicated than earlier ages. The modern drawback with relying upon pricing to convey information is there is a huge latency between pricing and customer-relevant information coming out about the product or service. This latency only gets larger as software-aided and -enhanced customers start grappling with an ever-larger constellation of externalities of the products and services they incorporate into their decisions, as do sellers. I don't want to find out the BuyItForLife tool I purchased for a premium price is not the same quality as a past generation of buyers bought and recommended, but only after half a decade of market pressure forces the manufacturer to lower prices as the news of their shoddier modern instances start to gradually filter through the public. I want to know before I buy it, and it is the Internet, not pricing, that is gradually forcing out that information asymmetry that exists between sellers and consumers in category after category. It is not pricing chiefly disambiguating the dozens of choices facing Amazon buyers, it is the recommendation data. Furthermore, repairability and durability in tandem are often consonant with modifiability. The Internet enables hundreds of thousands to millions of people to access and share with each other skills to modify all sorts of products, far faster than before. The barriers to entry to learn product hacking skills like soldering, welding, plastics molding, woodworking, etc., are far lower than someone born just 20 years ago can imagine, and we aren't nearly finished yet with that trend. Product modifiability is essential to not just keeping products out of the landfill, but also future-proofing and adaptability to a user's specific requirements. I hold that such adaptability is essential to confront the ever-complex future we all face. There is most assuredly a spectrum of trade-offs. In a resource-constrained setting (perhaps below about a middle-class First World standard of living, maybe lower?), I most heartily agree with you that over-engineering every product choice is premature optimization. But the "particular use case" mindset, even when the use case is say 20 years, is a subtle trap. That mindset is a much-scaled-up timescale version of the "why the poor stay poor" time-capital preference decisions. The farther out you can push that timescale, the more you (and your progeny) have an opportunity to escape that trap. Note I'm not saying buy over-engineered for every single product, even if you can afford that purchase behavior. For specific categories of products however, like objects that are intimately tied to physical human factors, it's a good bet to buy over-engineered where you can afford it and/or it has a positive impact on your productivity. For example, there is unlikely to be a quantum leap in wood planer technology akin to the transition from hand-held to power planers in the near'ish (20-100 years) future; a hand-held power planer you buy today can conceivably be handed down to a few future generations and still deliver the same functionality. Products that can enjoy a quantum leap in functionality from embedded software could be a big exception in the coming decades, though; change from a hand-held to a bench planer, and software could be a significant consideration in the future, for example. I don't advocate this purchase behavior for everyone. It works best if you have the personality who considers in advance the logistical tail of properly maintaining a purchased product, including proper stowage (often means climate-controlled or at least humidity-controlled), preventative maintenance, ancillary repair tools, and spare parts stocking (a lamentable side-effect of a minority purchase behavior is spare parts are not as readily obtainable in more remote locations, so stocking the most commonly wear and tear parts mitigates downtime). My rough rule of thumb is 1.5-2.0X purchase price for that logistical tail for the time that I own it before passing it onwards. If you don't plan on having children or a similarly close relationship with relatives from a younger generation (nephews/nieces for example), or mentees, then this purchase behavior applies less to you. And so on. Different strokes for different folks, there are no hard and fast rules here, just considerations to weigh. Finally, we all face the minimal quantums of time and energy in our lives. These products represent embedded time and energy not just to create them, but the buyer's time and energy, to evaluate, understand operation, adopt to idiosyncrasies, etc. Product switching costs these days are increasingly incorporating greater complexities. For an ever-increasing swath of products as software permeates across the physical landscape, it is no longer just a consideration of keeping embedded time and energy from a landfill.

kijin 11y ago

The problem is that current market prices do not accurately reflect negative externalities such as pollution, exploitation of cheap labor, depletion of natural resources, and exacerbation of socioeconomic inequalities. We just dump our trash somewhere and hope that someone else will deal with it someday. If there's a reliable mechanism to make market prices better reflect such externalities, I'm all for it. But until we've found and implemented such a mechanism on a large scale, a bit of moralizing wouldn't hurt.

mattnewport 11y ago
Even to the extent that may be true, it does not follow that "As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer." as the article claims. There are almost certainly better things most individuals could do. I think moralizing is actually pretty harmful in the context of environmental issues. It leads to things like wasted resources on inefficient recycling programs, ill advised programs like ethanol subsidies, biased evaluation of the merits of the best options for power generation and other examples of schemes that prioritize moralizing and making people feel that they're doing something over actual positive results.
- annnnd 11y ago
  I agree with you about moralizing - it can be (and often is) harmful. But in this case the advice is sound. Taking care of your stuff, not discarding it just because it is a bit worn around the edges, and trying to repair it instead of just discarding + buying new; is there something wrong with this approach? not sure it is a "single best thing", but it would make a difference. A large one imho.
  - mattnewport 11y ago
    It's almost certainly not economically efficient for a software engineer to be darning their own socks. Economic efficiency doesn't align perfectly with resource or energy efficiency in an environmental sense but in this example it is still likely true. There are economic and environmental costs to everyone having the tools, skills and supplies to repair a reasonable range of products. At the least it likely makes more sense to have a specialist perform any but the most basic repairs rather than doing it yourself. In some cases repairs make sense from an efficiency perspective, in some they don't. All I'm really saying is that it's better to evaluate the more efficient choice dispassionately rather than painting repair as somehow morally superior to buying new.
    - invernomut0 11y ago
      You can pay someone to repair your stuff and make the local economy grow instead of dumping and buying a shiny new toy from a big corporation. Buying new is often not optimal since the stuff you buy istantly is worth something like 20% less from the moment you buy it. You pay to avoid the risk of buying an used object, for example, but I'm not sure that buying new is the more efficient choice every time.
      - mattnewport 11y ago
        I'm pretty sure that neither buying new nor repairing is the most efficient choice every time. I also think that it should be a decision based on efficiency and not moralizing. Buying new may or may not be optimal in any given situation but the resale value is only relevant if you decide to resell, it's not a general argument against buying new.

mipapage 11y ago

Sadly, I doubt that manufacturers are consciously thinking about durability and (more-so) repairability when planning. "In some cases repair is the most efficient choice but in others it is not." I doubt that choice - one way or another -is being made very often. If a tradeoff has been made, then it would be great to have that knowledge as a consumer and thus be able to make an informed decision.

vlehto 11y ago
Current trend in business to business trades is to rent the stuff you previously sold. Like pump manufacturer who previously sold pumps might now sell "liquid flow" and charge by cubic meter. Everybody wins.
mattnewport 11y ago
I've got absolutely no objection to the information necessary to make such decisions being available to consumers but relying on individual consumers to explicitly evaluate the environmental impact of every purchase is not a scalable solution to environmental problems. Using the price mechanism, if necessary using well designed taxes or subsidies to price in currently unpriced externalities, is both scalable and done right avoids unhelpful moralizing.
violentvinyl 11y ago
The inclusion of DeWalt got me thinking, because I own several DeWalt power tools. Arguably, these are contractor grade tools made to stand up to some abuse. I buy them because it's a well regarded brand name (for the reason above), but typically only after I've validated my need for a specific tool by breaking a cheap one from repeated use. Truth be told, I've never thought about having to repair it (which I could probably do, because I do know there are parts available for them) or sending it off for repair, because even after owning some of them for 10+ years and subjecting them to countless loanings and abuse, none of them have failed on me. I agree that there is a trade off, but I think it is this: I bought from a respected brand, so that in the event of failure, I can bring it back to the manufacturer (who will probably still be in business), and they can/will fix it (often under an extended warranty, and it's also not unheard of to find tool manufacturers specifically that will repair or replace tools under a lifetime warranty) rather than say something to the effect of "well, we can't fix that, you'll need to buy a new one". If the cost to me as a consumer for this privelege is that they feel the need to take measures that might prevent someone without the right tools from taking it apart so that they can ensure some revenue to keep their parts/repair services running, than I'm okay with that (as long as they aren't trying to sue people for making repairs). This whole thing conjures up the Apple mindset of providing a consistent user experience, and locking down a device to ensure that consistency. Unfortunately, a combination of factors (outdated legal frameworks, pricing models, etc.) seem to conspire against people who want both a quality product manufactured to a high standard and the ability to tinker and repair (ie. HN users).

yourapostasy 11y ago

It is your right to believe what you asserted. My experience points me in a different direction; my comments are not directed as criticism, just offering a different perspective. See my comment below that I'm well aware there are personalities for whom the perspective I offer are not suited for. > Prices act as a mechanism to incorporate information on efficiency of resource use and cheap disposable items are cheap in part because they take fewer resources to manufacture and transport. I consider the concept of pricing-conveying-information outdated in a world that moves much faster and is far more sophisticated and complicated than earlier ages. The modern drawback with relying upon pricing to convey information is there is a huge latency between pricing and customer-relevant information coming out about the product or service. This latency only gets larger as software-aided and -enhanced customers start grappling with an ever-larger constellation of externalities of the products and services they incorporate into their decisions, as do sellers. I don't want to find out the BuyItForLife tool I purchased for a premium price is not the same quality as a past generation of buyers bought and recommended, but only after half a decade of market pressure forces the manufacturer to lower prices as the news of their shoddier modern instances start to gradually filter through the public. I want to know before I buy it, and it is the Internet, not pricing, that is gradually forcing out that information asymmetry that exists between sellers and consumers in category after category. It is not pricing chiefly disambiguating the dozens of choices facing Amazon buyers, it is the recommendation data. Furthermore, repairability and durability in tandem are often consonant with modifiability. The Internet enables hundreds of thousands to millions of people to access and share with each other skills to modify all sorts of products, far faster than before. The barriers to entry to learn product hacking skills like soldering, welding, plastics molding, woodworking, etc., are far lower than someone born just 20 years ago can imagine, and we aren't nearly finished yet with that trend. Product modifiability is essential to not just keeping products out of the landfill, but also future-proofing and adaptability to a user's specific requirements. I hold that such adaptability is essential to confront the ever-complex future we all face. There is most assuredly a spectrum of trade-offs. In a resource-constrained setting (perhaps below about a middle-class First World standard of living, maybe lower?), I most heartily agree with you that over-engineering every product choice is premature optimization. But the "particular use case" mindset, even when the use case is say 20 years, is a subtle trap. That mindset is a much-scaled-up timescale version of the "why the poor stay poor" time-capital preference decisions. The farther out you can push that timescale, the more you (and your progeny) have an opportunity to escape that trap. Note I'm not saying buy over-engineered for every single product, even if you can afford that purchase behavior. For specific categories of products however, like objects that are intimately tied to physical human factors, it's a good bet to buy over-engineered where you can afford it and/or it has a positive impact on your productivity. For example, there is unlikely to be a quantum leap in wood planer technology akin to the transition from hand-held to power planers in the near'ish (20-100 years) future; a hand-held power planer you buy today can conceivably be handed down to a few future generations and still deliver the same functionality. Products that can enjoy a quantum leap in functionality from embedded software could be a big exception in the coming decades, though; change from a hand-held to a bench planer, and software could be a significant consideration in the future, for example. I don't advocate this purchase behavior for everyone. It works best if you have the personality who considers in advance the logistical tail of properly maintaining a purchased product, including proper stowage (often means climate-controlled or at least humidity-controlled), preventative maintenance, ancillary repair tools, and spare parts stocking (a lamentable side-effect of a minority purchase behavior is spare parts are not as readily obtainable in more remote locations, so stocking the most commonly wear and tear parts mitigates downtime). My rough rule of thumb is 1.5-2.0X purchase price for that logistical tail for the time that I own it before passing it onwards. If you don't plan on having children or a similarly close relationship with relatives from a younger generation (nephews/nieces for example), or mentees, then this purchase behavior applies less to you. And so on. Different strokes for different folks, there are no hard and fast rules here, just considerations to weigh. Finally, we all face the minimal quantums of time and energy in our lives. These products represent embedded time and energy not just to create them, but the buyer's time and energy, to evaluate, understand operation, adopt to idiosyncrasies, etc. Product switching costs these days are increasingly incorporating greater complexities. For an ever-increasing swath of products as software permeates across the physical landscape, it is no longer just a consideration of keeping embedded time and energy from a landfill.