6 ms·

What if our intuition is wrong about the relative costs, both economical and environmental of some repairs? In particular, just because a small part of a large

What if our intuition is wrong about the relative costs, both economical and environmental of some repairs? In particular, just because a small part of a larger whole is broken, doesn't mean repair is the more economical or environmentally friendly act. To take a facetious example, suppose I broke 300 random pixels of a 1000x1000 LCD display that cost $100. On visual rough intuition, it's seems clear that less than 1% of the screen is broken, it intuitively would seem absurd to toss the LCD screen versus fix it. But automated manufacturing technology is so good that it really doesn't cost a lot to make a totally new one. On the other hand, your time is relatively valuable, as are some replacement parts. Suppose you spend 10 hours ordering parts, soldering wires, debugging, testing, etc to get it to fully functional. Why not spend a fraction of that time at work, and another fraction of time volunteering at park cleanups or buying carbon offsets? The numbers above may be off in one way or another, and depends on the product, your pay, and belief of environmental impact of things like throwing stuff away vs volunteering / carbon offsets. But one point seems clear to me -- which is that if I broke what visually seems like 10% of a $100 product, the fully-burdened real economic and environmental cost is a lot more than $10 to repair it. And the lynchpin is the automated production makes new stuff relatively cheap.

sharpercoder 9y ago
You make a fair point. The same is observed in lowering quality of produce; this intuitively reasons that "the throwaway economy is bad". However, cheap produce with considerable lower product lifetime can be better as it may typically endure the intended lifetime, whereas overengineered products may last far longer, the invested energy does not pay itself back (the product may be thrown away much earlier). The cost for newly produced items is almost always underappreciated in popular economics. That's because many factors such as environmental impact, logistics (and its side-effects), resource-mining are not included. Your LCD panel may cost $100 in store, but the government in the country it is produced may pay decades long to cleanup production sites. The government of the country producing minerals may pay years-long in healthcare for badly treated workers.
conanbatt 9y ago
People understand opportunity cost: thats why they repair their car and not buy a new one. The repair obsession is not economical, its moral. People perceive that you protect the environment this way, and thus find any excuse to do it.
- sgtmas2006 9y ago
  I think you're over-estimating the amount of people that consider the environment when choosing to repair or not.
esturk 9y ago
I'm not sure if you crafted such an edge case to dispel the notion that a repair culture is bad or the repair culture doesn't always make sense. Because the latter is true since no one is pushing this out in an absolutist manner. But you cut out the whole point of the article which is the middle repair man. If someone can offload the fixing to another and after doing cost been fit analysis shows it's worth it, there's plenty of opportunity out there and as such the repair culture is warranted.
lostlogin 9y ago
This is presumably why I see multiple people using broken phones everyday. How they don’t slice their fingers is beyond me.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  As someone with a single crack across his phone, i assure you u do not slice anything.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I bought my kid a smashed phone, if he wants an unsmashed one I've offered to help repair it. Hope he takes the bait.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Screen protectors?
- lagadu 9y ago
  That's because the glass that shatters is (usually) not the top layer of a touchscreen. Next time you spot someone you know with a shattered phone screen, ask to give it a try and you'll see.
biztos 9y ago
Yes, but if you buy the new display and throw away the old one you have added ($DISPLAY * 1) to the global landfill. It's not just about the relative value of our time or the relative cheapness of the products.
opencl 9y ago
Clearly some things are not worth repairing, and there is a cost-benefit analysis to be done but there is just a staggering amount of stuff that is easily repairable that gets thrown away. TVs get thrown away that need a few dollars worth of power supply capacitors. Phones get thrown away over a $10 battery. Refrigerators get thrown away over a $20 thermocouple. Graphing calculators get thrown away because TI was too cheap to solder the battery contacts and the spring contacts get loose after a while. I think these types of cases are far more common than people putting a ton of effort into something that isn't really worth repairing.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  If there really is such lost value on this, then maybe a startup could capture it, by re-purchasing things, fixing them and reselling them. But there is a reason why that is not such an easy business. Take for example startups that buy furniture when you move out and have to re-sell it: furniture is worn but usable, and it is very hard to sell at a profit after handling it. Many times we can see a market "inefficiency" or lost opportunity value,but its not easy to make it real.
  - detritus 9y ago
    Why must such things be driven by start-ups and not simply culture?
    - tzakrajs 9y ago
      I am going to guess that people secretly like when their gadget breaks because it gives them an excuse to buy something new.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Because billions upon billions is spent on reinforcing the idea that we should throw away something that's "out of fashion" and have a new thing, because new things make you feel great. You want to feel great, right? So throw away that old thing - get a new thing. Being able to find a part to fix something makes me feel way better about myself than increasing the pile of junk being sent to be re-mined in some Chinese junk-yard.
lorenzsell 9y ago
I’m not sure your point about the fully burdened real economic and environmental cost being higher than the repair cost makes sense. First, you’re assuming a world of infinite resources where production and disposal have no burden beyond their direct consumer cost which is simply not the case. Common consumer goods have massive externalized costs that are not reflected in the final price tag. And second, the idea that I can offset environmentally detrimental choices by volunteering elsewhere also assumes that we live in a world where those original choices don’t compound.
- improbable22 9y ago
  No, I don't think fanzhang's point assumes infinite anything. To give a more concrete example than GP's repair of an LCD, let's think about repainting a car. Doing this in your back yard like your grandfather might have done it certainly has much higher environmental costs than the original paint job. You'll spill paint-stripper on the grass. You'll buy two tins of paint and throw the leftovers away when you move house. You won't have the factory's precisely monitored spraying, and air filtration. Of course the point of repairing is that it saves all the other parts (like the engine!) so the balance may well be positive. But we should not assume that any options are zero-cost.
  - zeth___ 9y ago
    They are assuming that prices reflect the costs of the products. Externalities however are completely mispriced, so comparing the monetary value of buying new vs repairing is very misleading.
euroclydon 9y ago
Big environmental goals for me: 1) belching less into the air to combat climate change and acid rain. 2) less industrial and agricultural runoff to keep the seas more healthy. I used to be worked up about making less waste, but as long as we have good landfills that don’t leak much, I’m not too concerned directly with the amount of waste. Recycling is kinda a joke.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  People can now go spend their afternoon repairing goods to offset the carbon footprint of their lunch hamburger.
dade_ 9y ago
You are using an bad example: First, there is nothing to repair. You either live with dead pixels or you replace the panel, which is essentially the TV. Also, if you spend 10 hours fixing a TV, you don't know what you are doing. A common and reasonable example: a failed power supply circuit in a television. Could be a few dollars in parts and an hour to repair. The key skill is soldering the parts, which is easy for someone experienced. The value of time is relative, I could have repaired a TV instead of responding to comments on HN. Now, also consider the carbon of shipping a TV across the ocean, then to the local retailer. The trip to the store is the same as the cafe, so I would consider it the same.
- QasimK 9y ago
  To be fair, I don’t think most people know how to repair things when they need to repair something. For example, I wouldn’t even know where to get started with a TV, so 10 hours in total seems reasonable to me

sharpercoder 9y ago

You make a fair point. The same is observed in lowering quality of produce; this intuitively reasons that "the throwaway economy is bad". However, cheap produce with considerable lower product lifetime can be better as it may typically endure the intended lifetime, whereas overengineered products may last far longer, the invested energy does not pay itself back (the product may be thrown away much earlier). The cost for newly produced items is almost always underappreciated in popular economics. That's because many factors such as environmental impact, logistics (and its side-effects), resource-mining are not included. Your LCD panel may cost $100 in store, but the government in the country it is produced may pay decades long to cleanup production sites. The government of the country producing minerals may pay years-long in healthcare for badly treated workers.

conanbatt 9y ago

People understand opportunity cost: thats why they repair their car and not buy a new one. The repair obsession is not economical, its moral. People perceive that you protect the environment this way, and thus find any excuse to do it.

sgtmas2006 9y ago
I think you're over-estimating the amount of people that consider the environment when choosing to repair or not.

esturk 9y ago

I'm not sure if you crafted such an edge case to dispel the notion that a repair culture is bad or the repair culture doesn't always make sense. Because the latter is true since no one is pushing this out in an absolutist manner. But you cut out the whole point of the article which is the middle repair man. If someone can offload the fixing to another and after doing cost been fit analysis shows it's worth it, there's plenty of opportunity out there and as such the repair culture is warranted.

lostlogin 9y ago

This is presumably why I see multiple people using broken phones everyday. How they don’t slice their fingers is beyond me.

conanbatt 9y ago
As someone with a single crack across his phone, i assure you u do not slice anything.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
I bought my kid a smashed phone, if he wants an unsmashed one I've offered to help repair it. Hope he takes the bait.
userbinator 9y ago
Screen protectors?
lagadu 9y ago
That's because the glass that shatters is (usually) not the top layer of a touchscreen. Next time you spot someone you know with a shattered phone screen, ask to give it a try and you'll see.

biztos 9y ago

Yes, but if you buy the new display and throw away the old one you have added ($DISPLAY * 1) to the global landfill. It's not just about the relative value of our time or the relative cheapness of the products.

opencl 9y ago

Clearly some things are not worth repairing, and there is a cost-benefit analysis to be done but there is just a staggering amount of stuff that is easily repairable that gets thrown away. TVs get thrown away that need a few dollars worth of power supply capacitors. Phones get thrown away over a $10 battery. Refrigerators get thrown away over a $20 thermocouple. Graphing calculators get thrown away because TI was too cheap to solder the battery contacts and the spring contacts get loose after a while. I think these types of cases are far more common than people putting a ton of effort into something that isn't really worth repairing.

conanbatt 9y ago
If there really is such lost value on this, then maybe a startup could capture it, by re-purchasing things, fixing them and reselling them. But there is a reason why that is not such an easy business. Take for example startups that buy furniture when you move out and have to re-sell it: furniture is worn but usable, and it is very hard to sell at a profit after handling it. Many times we can see a market "inefficiency" or lost opportunity value,but its not easy to make it real.
- detritus 9y ago
  Why must such things be driven by start-ups and not simply culture?
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    I am going to guess that people secretly like when their gadget breaks because it gives them an excuse to buy something new.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Because billions upon billions is spent on reinforcing the idea that we should throw away something that's "out of fashion" and have a new thing, because new things make you feel great. You want to feel great, right? So throw away that old thing - get a new thing. Being able to find a part to fix something makes me feel way better about myself than increasing the pile of junk being sent to be re-mined in some Chinese junk-yard.

lorenzsell 9y ago

I’m not sure your point about the fully burdened real economic and environmental cost being higher than the repair cost makes sense. First, you’re assuming a world of infinite resources where production and disposal have no burden beyond their direct consumer cost which is simply not the case. Common consumer goods have massive externalized costs that are not reflected in the final price tag. And second, the idea that I can offset environmentally detrimental choices by volunteering elsewhere also assumes that we live in a world where those original choices don’t compound.

improbable22 9y ago
No, I don't think fanzhang's point assumes infinite anything. To give a more concrete example than GP's repair of an LCD, let's think about repainting a car. Doing this in your back yard like your grandfather might have done it certainly has much higher environmental costs than the original paint job. You'll spill paint-stripper on the grass. You'll buy two tins of paint and throw the leftovers away when you move house. You won't have the factory's precisely monitored spraying, and air filtration. Of course the point of repairing is that it saves all the other parts (like the engine!) so the balance may well be positive. But we should not assume that any options are zero-cost.
- zeth___ 9y ago
  They are assuming that prices reflect the costs of the products. Externalities however are completely mispriced, so comparing the monetary value of buying new vs repairing is very misleading.

euroclydon 9y ago

Big environmental goals for me: 1) belching less into the air to combat climate change and acid rain. 2) less industrial and agricultural runoff to keep the seas more healthy. I used to be worked up about making less waste, but as long as we have good landfills that don’t leak much, I’m not too concerned directly with the amount of waste. Recycling is kinda a joke.

tzakrajs 9y ago
People can now go spend their afternoon repairing goods to offset the carbon footprint of their lunch hamburger.

dade_ 9y ago

You are using an bad example: First, there is nothing to repair. You either live with dead pixels or you replace the panel, which is essentially the TV. Also, if you spend 10 hours fixing a TV, you don't know what you are doing. A common and reasonable example: a failed power supply circuit in a television. Could be a few dollars in parts and an hour to repair. The key skill is soldering the parts, which is easy for someone experienced. The value of time is relative, I could have repaired a TV instead of responding to comments on HN. Now, also consider the carbon of shipping a TV across the ocean, then to the local retailer. The trip to the store is the same as the cafe, so I would consider it the same.

QasimK 9y ago
To be fair, I don’t think most people know how to repair things when they need to repair something. For example, I wouldn’t even know where to get started with a TV, so 10 hours in total seems reasonable to me