4 ms·

> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

by sly010 9y ago

marcosdumay 9y ago
To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Or, maybe we are looking at it and deciding it is worth it.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get the product at the cheapest possible price and was either willing to take perfect care of it or tolerate it not being fully repairable if it were broken. But that's OK, because when regulating something the most important person to consider is the median user, noth the clumsiest/unluckiest nor the most skilled/luckiest. If the median user buys a car expecting to drive it for 5 years, and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component during that time, it would be pretty inefficient for said damage to cost more to fix than the cost of replacing the whole car, unless cars were to become so cheap that it was actually cheaper and better to scrap them - perhaps thanks to some breakthrough in large-scale 3d printing technology or so. That's what happened with computer keyboards; it used to be that they were fairly expensive and if someone spilled coffee into one it was worth dismantling, cleaning, and re-assembling, but then cheap membrane keyboards assembled with increasing levels of automation brought the price down faster and faster, and today you can get a PC keyboard for something ridiculous like $10. A few fetishists still pay out for old-style IBM Model M, but most people will just replace a damaged keyboard. But while cars remain relatively expensive and hard to dispose of, it makes sense to minimize the economic losses stemming for a lack of modularity and repairability across the market as a whole, rather than seeking to minimize the costs for the stingiest buyer.
  - bashinator 9y ago
    A lot of people use their computer keyboard more than any other single object they don't sleep on. There's finally (thank you Cherry MX) a supply meeting the presumably pent-up demand for decent keyboards. I hated those membrane things, and you could get them for under $10 as far back as 2003. These days you can get a perfectly good _repairable_ mechanical switch keyboard for about $35.
    - zanny 9y ago
      Don't give Cherry switches that much credit - they have been on the market for a very long time. They kept their keyswitches expensive to reap healthy margins, albeit from a limited market and thus they had limited economies of scale. Competition from non-Cherry keyswitches have forced Cherry to drop prices, such that nearly identical keyboards from 2008 now cost a quarter as much. Cherry was valuable for proving the technology in the premium market, and Cherry's competitors were valuable in bringing the prices down and driving economies of scale to make mechanical keyboards basically a "no brainer" purchase now.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Still though, if you pour orange juice into your keyboard and don't have the time/ability to repair it yourself, who's going to do it for under $35? I seem to remember that fixing a messed up one took 1-2 hours, but that was like >25 years ago when I was an eager whizkid and a new keyboard ran for $120 or something.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    > and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component What if the chance is actually 1%? What if the cost of repairing it is bigger than a new car? What if, as you said, cars got cheaper, but not so cheap to be disposable? What if making if repairable has the side effect of making it less durable? Just nobody upthread is asking any of those questions. It's not circular, it's a plain old and boring cost vs. benefit assessment to be done over government intervention.
    - 9y ago
lend000 9y ago
> all the otherwise externalized costs. What is the externality here? Trash left over when the product is discarded? Regulating the manufacturer is a classic progressive roundabout way of not regulating the externality directly. Instead, perhaps a better solution would be regulating the amount of wasted resources / complexity to recycling, such that the consumer is made very aware of the environmental impact of a product that is no longer in use. And if the consumer was truly bearing a non-environmental burden for cheap stuff that is hard to fix and breaks easily, they would keep name-brand businesses with durable products in business (and indeed, they do).

> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

by sly010 9y ago

> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

marcosdumay 9y ago

To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken. I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.

Joeri 9y ago
Or, maybe we are looking at it and deciding it is worth it.
anigbrowl 9y ago
No, you're assuming the regulation is an end in itself and coming to a tautological. Regulation is essentially saying 'wait, let's factor in these unaccounted-for-but-predictable costs (like repairability)' and you're saying 'but what about the costs of assessing the costs?!'. Yeah, incorporating some product standards is going to raise the cost of all units sold, which represents a loss to the buyer who hoped to get the product at the cheapest possible price and was either willing to take perfect care of it or tolerate it not being fully repairable if it were broken. But that's OK, because when regulating something the most important person to consider is the median user, noth the clumsiest/unluckiest nor the most skilled/luckiest. If the median user buys a car expecting to drive it for 5 years, and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component during that time, it would be pretty inefficient for said damage to cost more to fix than the cost of replacing the whole car, unless cars were to become so cheap that it was actually cheaper and better to scrap them - perhaps thanks to some breakthrough in large-scale 3d printing technology or so. That's what happened with computer keyboards; it used to be that they were fairly expensive and if someone spilled coffee into one it was worth dismantling, cleaning, and re-assembling, but then cheap membrane keyboards assembled with increasing levels of automation brought the price down faster and faster, and today you can get a PC keyboard for something ridiculous like $10. A few fetishists still pay out for old-style IBM Model M, but most people will just replace a damaged keyboard. But while cars remain relatively expensive and hard to dispose of, it makes sense to minimize the economic losses stemming for a lack of modularity and repairability across the market as a whole, rather than seeking to minimize the costs for the stingiest buyer.
- bashinator 9y ago
  A lot of people use their computer keyboard more than any other single object they don't sleep on. There's finally (thank you Cherry MX) a supply meeting the presumably pent-up demand for decent keyboards. I hated those membrane things, and you could get them for under $10 as far back as 2003. These days you can get a perfectly good _repairable_ mechanical switch keyboard for about $35.
  - zanny 9y ago
    Don't give Cherry switches that much credit - they have been on the market for a very long time. They kept their keyswitches expensive to reap healthy margins, albeit from a limited market and thus they had limited economies of scale. Competition from non-Cherry keyswitches have forced Cherry to drop prices, such that nearly identical keyboards from 2008 now cost a quarter as much. Cherry was valuable for proving the technology in the premium market, and Cherry's competitors were valuable in bringing the prices down and driving economies of scale to make mechanical keyboards basically a "no brainer" purchase now.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Still though, if you pour orange juice into your keyboard and don't have the time/ability to repair it yourself, who's going to do it for under $35? I seem to remember that fixing a messed up one took 1-2 hours, but that was like >25 years ago when I was an eager whizkid and a new keyboard ran for $120 or something.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > and there's a >50% chance that it will suffer some damage to some major functional component What if the chance is actually 1%? What if the cost of repairing it is bigger than a new car? What if, as you said, cars got cheaper, but not so cheap to be disposable? What if making if repairable has the side effect of making it less durable? Just nobody upthread is asking any of those questions. It's not circular, it's a plain old and boring cost vs. benefit assessment to be done over government intervention.
  - 9y ago

lend000 9y ago

> all the otherwise externalized costs. What is the externality here? Trash left over when the product is discarded? Regulating the manufacturer is a classic progressive roundabout way of not regulating the externality directly. Instead, perhaps a better solution would be regulating the amount of wasted resources / complexity to recycling, such that the consumer is made very aware of the environmental impact of a product that is no longer in use. And if the consumer was truly bearing a non-environmental burden for cheap stuff that is hard to fix and breaks easily, they would keep name-brand businesses with durable products in business (and indeed, they do).