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Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
- titzer 10y agoWouldn't a high sales tax promote exactly that?
- eveningcoffee 10y agoSales tax also applies to the services. More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country with smaller labor costs.
- charlesdm 10y ago> More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country with smaller labor costs. Sounds like a very clear flaw in their economic and taxation model.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoThis flaw is called free trade. This problem used to be fixed by higher customs. But we generally prefer free trade, so they have to try other initiatives.
- ximi 10y agoSweden already has a Value Added Tax (somewhat equivalent to Sales Tax) of 25%
- jokoon 10y agoI fail to understand why Scandinavian politics always manage to make sense. Is that cultural, historical, economical, or does the tough climate force people to think a little bit more about how they manage their society?
- croon 10y agoI assure you we have stupidity here too, it's a global trait. While this one makes sense, there's also a proposed "Chemicals tax" for 2017, taxing electronics (phones/tablets/games consoles/etc) per weight, regardless of contents. So what we waste the most (phones/tablets) will barely pay for anything, while TV's which can last 5-10 years will get more expensive.
- berntb 10y agoYou are just too far away. Swedish politics is as sick a joke as in Italy. - The school and high school results are in a state of implosion. No real political reaction. - Because of internal political manoeuvres, the immigration policies were done so it will cost multiple times of the defence spending the coming years -- and risk a Spanish style housing crash. - Putin acts more or less like Hitler in the mid 1930s. The defence is a joke, despite the politicians knowing this for a long time. - For political reasons, there has been almost no building of housing over the last 20 years. During the same time, the population has increased by at least 10-15% because of political decisions... - The trains are a joke because of bad upkeep. The problem seems to be that increased repairs won't make them work better until after the next election, so all governments spend the money in ways that buy votes better. - And so on.
- aembleton 10y agoYou could be describing the UK.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoWhat we really need is financial penalties on companies that make stuff deliberately hard to repair. Set up a department of the Consumer Rights Bureau (or whatever it's called) where people can report devices the've been unable to fix due to deliberate obfuscation/etc., and that forces manufacturers to refund the consumer the entire purchase sum of that device no matter how old it is. Anecdote: my washing machine recently broke the main bearing, and I was going to fix it. Even found a nice teardown/reassembly vid on Youtube of the exact same model (a bit older than mine). After 2 hours of work, I discover Bosch has gone from using screws on the outer drum to plastic welding it shut. So fixing it means replacing the entire assembly, costing 2/3 of a new machine and with a four week delivery time for the part. I learned this is only done to screw consumers over, and that all manufacturers do it now. The drum still has all the mounting tabs for being screwed together, so they're literally just saving $0.30 on screws.
- J-dawg 10y agoThat is utterly infuriating. Stuff like this really shakes my faith in capitalism. To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem. I honestly wonder how they sleep at night. The market clearly can't fix this issue, so regulation must be the only option.
- vidarh 10y agoMarkets can fix the issue. But the market may need regulation to ensure externalities are captured. E.g. taxing energy and recycling costs, and taxing based on expected lifetime (e.g. a tax that reduces the longer full repair warranty you offer). For the "taxing recycling cost" we have an example in the case of bottles. Norway for example has a reducing bottle tax that starts at a certain rate for non-recyclable drinks containers or containers that are recyclable but aren't. The tax rate then drops proportional to your proven recycling rates, and falls away completely if your rate is high enough. Having distributors take back failed products is great, but it's insufficient in that they have no reason to encourage consumers to return broken products, and often have a strong disincentive to (they end up having to pay or the transport and recycling). Basically, we should expect companies to either make society good for environmental externalities related to their products, or pay what it costs society to make other arrangements, so that these costs end up getting priced into the products so we can make our buying decisions accordingly.
- J-dawg 10y agoThis idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff". 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. The only potential counter-argument I can see with this sort of policy is that the goals of minimising CO2 and minimising waste sometimes seem to be in competition with each other. Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoNon-petroleum based plastics are a thing, but lag behind in many areas like strength, injection molding quality, UV resistance etc. Recently Lego decided on moving to plant-based plastics, but they expect to need more than a decade of R&D by a team of 100 people, costing $150 million, before these materials are up to Lego's quality standards. http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Plastics.html http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Pl...
- ocschwar 10y agoIf they can figure out how to make the stuff out of bamboo, then we have ourselves a carbon sequestration method. No more global warming.
- barkbro 10y agoBamboo is made of cellulose, which is not what you would want to use for making plastics. The problem with cellulose is that, because it is fibrous, there aren't really any efficient ways of breaking it down.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- berntb 10y agoThis has probably more to do with Sweden having so high taxes on labour that repairs becomes impossible without a tax break. An average Swede gets ~ a third of the money the company pays for his wages. (30% tax, 30% in social charges etc.) If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the other costs here.) So, in sum, because of the taxes etc, a Swede have to work [at least] a full day to buy an hour of work time. (Reservation for the exact numbers. It was a while since I lived in Sweden. People might keep 40% or so now, but I also ignored a lot of extra costs.)
- vidarh 10y agoAccording to the OECD Taxing Wages report [1] for 2016, the total tax wedge for Sweden, including employer contributions, is 42.7%. (Note: for those who are confused about it: This is not the percentage tax paid out of contracted wages - the average tax paid on the contracted wages are much lower) > If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the other costs here.) That may be true, but not due mainly to taxes, but because you are also paying for "dead time", marketings costs and others. [1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxation/taxing-wages-2016_tax_wages-2016-en#page20 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...
- berntb 10y agoPlease see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-wage_labour_costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-wage_labour_costs https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbetsgivaravgifter_i_Sverige https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbetsgivaravgifter_i_Sverige I wrote "a third of the money the company pays for his wages", so I assume that is ignored in the "taxes" report you reference. Just these "social charges" (as I called them) is 31.42% already (just ten percent lower than the OECD report).
- vidarh 10y agoThose are included in the OECD total tax wedge numbers. EDIT: The reason your numbers don't add up is that you can't just add those numbers together with income tax numbers - you also then need to add the amount paid by the employer to the salary to get the gross amount paid for a worker, and recalculate the percentage from the total base.
- thght 10y agoHeaps of old stuff is broken because of planned obsolescence. Is it not a waste trying to repair that rubbish that was originally designed to break soon and hard and expensive to repair? Lowering tax for companies that produce sustainable products seems more efficient to me.
- flexie 10y agoThe rationale behind is sound but the trick is to design the rules so that all gains aren't lost in the cost for administering the rules. Differentiated VAT and/or deductions are notoriously expensive and prone for cheating. It is very difficult/expensive to check if a service provided was the repair of an existing item or a new item installed (or something else entirely).
- gambiting 10y agoThe only problem with repairing devices is labour cost, nothing else. I've had a broken subwoofer that I took to a small electronics shop(in UK), and was quoted 60 pounds to even have it looked at. Not repaired - looked at. The subwoofer cost me 80 pounds on ebay. So predictably, it went straight to the bin. Same with washing machines, dryers, etc - I bought a Hotpoint washing machine for 220 pounds, but a standard call out charge for an engineer to come and have a look is at least 100 pounds. Plus any parts + cost of labour billed per hour = it's cheaper to just buy a new washing machine and at least have a warranty on it. Now, I feel like this is exclusive to western countries, because people value their time a lot(as they should!) - but where I'm from(Poland) it would be stupidly cheap to get anything repaired. I had an old LCD TV repaired locally, the guy spent half a day fixing it, and only charged 100 zlotys(20 pounds/30 USD) - that included parts. Not sure how we can change that, unless we get the labour cost down.
- gmac 10y agoOn your subwoofer, you can try listing that kind of thing on Freecycle/Freegle. Commonly someone technically competetent will pick it up to see if they can fix it.
- kaybe 10y agoSome cities also have repair cafes, where skilled idealistic people hang out with tools and help you try to fix it yourself.
- aembleton 10y agoWe could start sending items to Poland for repair.
- dTal 10y agoPart of the problem is globalisation. Things are made in places with cheap labour, and sold in places with expensive labour. But it seems to me like the problem is equally that new goods are too cheap, rendering labour unable to compete. There are many externalised costs to a new product not reflected in the price (or we wouldn't even be having this discussion) - the environmental cost of manufacture, the environmental cost of disposing of the thing it replaced, the raw materials we unsustainably mined. Fixing this directly is politically untenable because we'd have to drastically raise the price of everything. This Swedish tax break scheme is actually sort of an underhanded way of doing just that - to compensate for the lost revenue other taxes will go up (or the currency will inflate - either way everything costs more).
- Shivetya 10y agoAnyone can reuse old fully workable products in their every day life, it really is super easy and in many cases can be cheaper. While I do go occasionally go into thrift or antique stores, I also hit up garage sales, but my main source is ebay. Besides the good feeling from putting something back into service that would other wise be junked there can be some serious nostalgia involved. Examples, I have a Toastmaster 1b16 fully automatic toaster like my grandparents had in the 50s, works perfect regardless how many slices pass through it. Old glass plates (morgantown, crinkle, etc) that we use every day for eating. Milk glass spice dispensers, salt & pepper, and old glass water containers in the fridge for ice tea. You can even buy old tupperware or ceramic and glass storage for the refrigerator. My favorite has to be a the vintage fans, a six bladed brass Emerson (blades look like ship propeller) is flawless in use and over a hundred years old. About the only things I won't use are higher tech electronics, efficiency aside the older items may not even be usable because of software or serviceability
- s3krit 10y agoI really like this idea. I collect old videogame consoles, so I'm pretty used to paying Ebay for nostalgia. However, I wonder if old electronics are much less efficient and end up using more electricity - thus actually causing more harm to the environment than a newer but more disposable plastic model.
- CPLX 10y agoI was happy to see that the author did pause to note the irony of this policy being implemented by the same country that brought the world IKEA.
- _of 10y agoIt was not the government of Sweden that brought the world IKEA.
- ogrisel 10y agoNot everything is crappy at IKEA: you can get cheap mass pine wood furniture that looks pretty decent (if you paint it to fit your tastes). The cost of such furniture is often cheaper at IKEA than buying the planks of wood at a consumer store. There is also a tone of crappy pressed wood furnitures that will slowly decay and look ugly 5 years later or will just break and cannot be repaired.
- sotojuan 10y agoIKEA furniture is my parent's house is about ten years old and doing well. Not sure what people do with theirs, but ours lasts.
- ska 10y agoBesides the category error of conflating corporate and state implementations - complaining about the existence of IKEA is a bit like complaining about the existence of fast food. Clearly there is massive demand for both, so lobbing darts at the most successful producers of same avoids all of the interesting questions.
- CPLX 10y agoI don't detect any complaining in my post. Just noting the (considerable) irony in Sweden leading the charge against "disposable culture", as did the article's writer.
- ska 10y agoPerhaps I read more into it than you meant - fair enough. You are still conflating Sweden and IKEA, which is just silly. Also IKEA's m.o. is more cheap and cheerful than disposable, so what irony there is, is a bit weak.
- ab5tract 10y agoCorrect me if I am wrong, but under ISDS rules (a la TPP/TTIP), companies could now sue Sweden for potential lost profits as a result of this legislation, right? (Assuming Sweden is signed onto an ISDS treaty, which it probably is not).
- danohu 10y agoThey will be once the EU signs CETA next month.
- pathy 10y agoISDS aren't exactly new. I believe current trade deals already include them so CETA would not materially change that. ISDS is a red herring
- pathy 10y agoWhat makes you think that? Tax breaks on repairs would not adversely and unfairly impact companies possibility to sell in Sweden.
- bendbro 10y agoIt would advsersely affect profits and the argument would be that it's unfair
- celticninja 10y agoBut not to the detriment of any one specific company.
- s_kilk 10y agoBut any one company could claim to have been affected, and produce the paperwork/numbers to back it up.
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- Pigo 10y agoCould a company hypothetically create an extremely solid phone with interchangeable parts when upgrades become available, and it's not done just because they profit more with the current model? Or is this just not feasible?
- brbrodude 10y agoI'd guess probably so but the issue is that this company would not be able to compete and would die since the other model lets the other companies be more aggressive in R&D, marketing, releasing new products frequently, etc, etc.
- Sharlin 10y agoYes, but it would be huge and expensive and nobody would want to buy it. Plus modularity and BW compatibility requirements would severely limit the design space available for further evolution (both look and feel and internal hardware aspects). Highly integrated hardware and systems-on-a-chip do have several advantages but are pretty much the antithesis of modularity.
- PaulHoule 10y agoOdd that appliances are on the list because we're likely to see another wave of changes for refrigerants. Back in the bad old days people used refrigerants such as HCFCs that were bad for the ozone layer. Now they use straight HFCs (no chlorine) but those are potent global warming gases. At some point there is going to a push to replace those with fluoroketones. So repairing old air conditioners, refrigerators and such may not be such a great idea.
- ap22213 10y agoWhat is it about Nordic countries that allows them to avoid corruption and political decay? As an outsider, it seems that they're always experimenting with new approaches and evolving the government and laws to keep up with the changing needs of the citizenry. In the US, I felt like we were starting to get somewhere back in the 90s, but it's been a downward fall since then. Now, corruption permeates even at the local levels. Many of the people that I talk to blame the lack of time. I don't know - but there's major apathy and cynicism, and it seems to be getting worse.
- hlandau 10y agoThis is a very nice move to see. Other people have discussed washing machines below, but there's even more to say on them. Washing machines used to have long warranty periods. Nowadays they tend to be sold with a 2 year warranty, which I believe in the EU is the required minimum. And these manufacturers (Bosch, for example) even have the gall to claim that their products are high quality and that this warranty period somehow proves this, or is in any way a long period. AFAIK washing machines used to have 10 year warranties, but they cost more along the lines of £800. Now we have £250 washing machines with 2 year warranties. One way of reducing costs is to reduce the number of parts. Sealed tanks, as mentioned below, are one such example. This directly impairs the repairability of the product. I suspect also that models are released at greater frequency, possibly due to a need to take advantage of price fluctuations in wholesale parts markets (if you can make a washing machine using Part A or Part B, and one month A is more expensive than B, and then this inverts, this creates pressure to constantly design new models to minimise pricing). Though this is just a suspicion, it would make sense: I do know that the (monolithic) spare parts are stocked for a particular model for less time, which means that the prices of the spares which are available are very high. Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse properly. At other times the actual temperature of the water on the '60 degree' setting has been tested and found to be rather on the low side. (Supposedly all of this efficiency regulation, rather pathetically, only tests the 60 degree programme in the first place, putting a certain degree of competitive pressure on energy efficiency for this setting.) This is particularly insane given that the environmental cost of these quasi-disposable 2-year-warranty washing machines must be much higher than the environmental cost of their resource consumption. I think consumer goods legislation should recognise that different minimum warranty periods are appropriate for different kinds of product. A legally required minimum warranty period of 6 or 8 years for washing machines, for example, would instantly create pressure on manufacturers to increase the longevity and repairability of their machines.
- intrasight 10y ago>just to get one which will rinse properly Much easier to do what I do - run the rinse cycle a 2nd time.
- ersii 10y agoThere seems to be plenty here that like the idea of lowering the Value Add Tax on repairs. Let me ask: Why stop at 12.5% VAT for repairs? If you'd go all the way down to 0% - the repairs could potentially be up to 25% cheaper than they are now.
- sliverstorm 10y agoPerhaps if they make repair too sweet, abuse will skyrocket asymptotically. Or, perhaps it transforms from "incentive" to "subsidy".
- iamgopal 10y agoI think ideal way is to charge people for dumping the waste, and use that money to properly recycle all the material therein. May not be ideal in terms of energy efficiency, but its highly workable solution.
- barisser 10y agoShould the state really presume to sway cultural trends? It seems strikingly arrogant and likely to be counterproductive.
- hammock 10y agoSo the opposite of Cash for Clunkers.[1] Would a Keynesian then expect these tax breaks to crash the economy? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Dowwie 10y agoI guess they'd need to explicitly de-classify commonly repaired items from this?
- jernfrost 10y agoThis 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 for the competition to make compatible replacement parts so they are cheaper. How many products don't we have where one stupid little plastic thing breaks and it becomes useless. Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install.
- sliverstorm 10y agoThere'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. Luckily there's a new shop in town, run by a group of older ladies who seem to have grown up tailoring, that charges sane prices. Anyway, the point is repairing can be uneconomical simply because of lack of availability of repair resources. As an example on the other side, Autozone has enabled countless mechanics with their tool library programs and other basic shadetree services like easy oil recycling. (P.S. Maybe I should learn to sew & get an inexpensive sewing machine, but that isn't the point)
- jernfrost 10y agoRepair 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.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoIt does depend on the product. I have a KitchenAid blender and a KitchenAid stand mixer that I've had to repair. In both cases, the part was purchased for under $10 online and repair only took a few minutes. The alternative was buying a new $300 or $100+ product. Sure, I did the repair myself, but a local KitchenAid service center (yes, they exist!) would probably have done the job even faster. It boils down to cost/benefit. Would I have done the same thing with a $30 mixer? Not worth it; simpler to buy a replacement, but in this case, the products are built to last (both broken parts were "sacrificial" and designed to fail before something more expensive failed).
- grizzles 10y agoTo truly fix the situation would probably require: 1) Tracking every single saleable physical asset 2) Paying manufacturer's a small fixed income type subsidy for every extra year their product lasts. 3) Charging manufacturer's a small penalty tax when their product becomes waste. #2 is essential because otherwise manufacturing obsolescence into the product will be more profitable for the company. The economic reward of long lasting product & enduring customer relationship needs to be better than sell one every few years.
- macandcheese 10y ago"Own few but good things" - love everything about this as it relates to living "modestly minimal" as I call it. Buy a small amount of high quality possessions, and take care of them.
- yig 10y agoRepairs are uneconomical because they have to compete with the assembly line. Assembly lines are an incredibly productive way to make identical things. Repairs are typically different. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
- dmix 10y agoYou can adjust assembly lines to make your products easier to repair though. For ex: it's far easier to fix my old thinkpad laptop than my newer X1. Part of this is the demand for smaller/thinner products but I also feel it's a lack of effort by the manufacturers these days. They are almost incentivized to make repair difficult and deprioritize longevity in favour of the customer buying new devices each year. Which is about as long as any of my cell phones typically last before I break or lose them (1-1.5yrs), although I'm a bit clumsy and forgetful (a symptom of ADD :P).
- sjg007 10y agoFunny... I tried to fix an IKEA lamp and finding parts was impossible.
- maerF0x0 10y agoIMO the only reason we do not have a culture of repairing is because we subsidize the waste processing stream and thus we only see lower upfront costs. If I had to pay an extra $25 disposal fee upfront on a microwave, maybe I'd be incentivized to buy a quality item or maybe repair it in the first place. As well, repairing/reusing is a function of average cost of a worker. If a repair man has a fully loaded cost of $50 an hour, then you're not going to see many repairs happen. If its $5 an hour then you might see more. Expensive labor leads to all kinds of seemingly insane behavior.
- mhb 10y agoReducing 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?
- Pica_soO 10y agoIf 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?
- bgammon 10y agoImpermanence 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.
- clock_tower 10y agoWhat 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...)
- jwatte 10y agoOne side effect of building for repairability is that objects will be bigger and clunkier, which will use more materials and cost more (and burn more fuel) to transport. I'm all for repairability, and even better, building things that will last 25 years, not 25 months. But that will come at a different price than perhaps many expect, and in some cases, it actually won't make sense. Money is how we measure and gate access to scarce resources. If it costs more to build repairable items, and then repair them, then it is likely the case that those repairs actually waste more resources! However, insofaras the resource being wasted is human work time, there is of course a trade-off to be made.
- acd 10y agoGlobalisation vs the environment Globalisation means consuming cheap stuff made in a low cost country that does usually not last that long and transported over long distances. Built to consume in cellphones are integrated batteries and cheap components that by design fail after three years so we buy a new phone. Integrated storage of a limited size that you cannot expand. Making things that does not last is more profitable than making things that last long why is that? How 16 container ships pollute more than all the cars in the world. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1... On one hand economists wants us to blindly consume as much stuff as possible since that is good for the economy. The other hand says we pollute the earth and use to much energy which means we need to consume more durable goods which lasts longer. How do we integrate the environment in the economy?
- devdas 10y agoTaxes. Externalities can be factored into the price. Build the price of recycling into the product, and make the vendor liable.
- Animats 10y agoThere are downsides to repairability. It means more fasteners to come loose, and more connectors to give trouble. It means more bulky devices; you can't cram everything in as tightly if it has to come out later. I restore old Teletype machines, which were designed to be 100% repairable. You can take them apart down to the individual parts and put them back together. Everything is attached with screws and lockwashers. Restoring an 80-year old machine is routine. They are not low-maintenance. Each machine has over 600 lubrication points. There are hundreds of things to be adjusted. You need a sizable tool kit and two suitcases of parts for normal maintenance. And you have to study up on how to do all this. Few people want to bother with that level of detail any more.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 10y agoAre those museum pieces, or are there some insane industries still using actual Teletypes?
- Animats 10y agoMuseum pieces. It's a hobby.
- a-no-n 10y agoMy MagSafe adapter has probably 5 packets of Sugru, both preventative (anti-drop and strain-relief) and repairs, on it and some two-part epoxy to fix some minor nicks in the small cable. The one of the cable winding "wings" just broke, but it still works. I might buy a second in 2018.
- dvtv75 10y agoAt this time, I am fighting with a Samsung Syncmaster 2333SW Plus. It started fading to white every time blue was displayed, then it would overflow back to a normal image and fade to white. I'm told this is a fault in the t-con (timing controller) board - some people have noted it's just a bad solder connection, so I'm going to have a look before I replace the board. I have a donor screen that I got apart (the 2333HD) in about four hours, but the 2333SW Plus... I've been trying for at least 12 hours to get that thing apart. (I've sanitized this post.) The sides of the casing are free, but the top and bottom edges just won't let go, and I can't afford to break the internal clips. I honestly can't decide between RageGuy and Samir's rage at the printer not printing properly.
- rumcajz 10y agoAlternative approach: Require people keep everything they buy for 10 years. They'll be quickly fed up with their houses full of old broken gadgets, cardboard boxes and used wrapping foil.
- Gravityloss 10y agoBasic income + no minimum wage would make it much more attractive to do local repairs instead of manufacturing stuff far away where wages are lower or labor and environmental regulation much more lax. In my country, youth unemployment is around 20%.
- kwhitefoot 10y agoNever mind repairing old stuff; just make it easier to pass on stuff. I suspect that Sweden is similar to Norway (where I live) and immense amounts of current electronic gear is thrown away. A lot of it is in usable condition (for some value of usable anyway) but I am not allowed to take it away from a recycling station.