> If there was a market demand for repairable products, companies would make them. That sounds very nice, but I see a few practical implementation problems tha

> If there was a market demand for repairable products, companies would make them. That sounds very nice, but I see a few practical implementation problems that reinforce each other: 1) Market demand for a product that doesn't exist is an undefined value, and estimating its hypothetical value ranges in reliability from back-of-the-envelope to astrology 2) Economies of scale often require that total demand reach a threshold for a product to even have a chance to be profitable/competitive, i.e. there is some demand below which vendors are effectively forced to round it down to zero. 3) For high-tech products especially, a handful of big vendors agreeing on the way things are done can create massive network effects among suppliers that make it unduly expensive or outright infeasible for an erstwhile competitor to do things any other way. For example, good luck building a smartphone with leaded chip packages instead of leadless (a decision having a great deal to do with concerns about reliability, repairability, and component reuse).