5 ms·

> > I don't believe manufacturers should have to build things to be easy to take apart, to be replaceable or upgradeable, or anything else along those lines. >

> > I don't believe manufacturers should have to build things to be easy to take apart, to be replaceable or upgradeable, or anything else along those lines. > Why not? Because, 1) I personally don't care about this. 2) More important than 1, I don't think the law/government has any business deciding this. The market can decide (spoiler: it already has).

simion314 8y ago
Did the free markets ended slavery in US or under-age working? I remember many good things had to be forced with laws and not let to be decided by the big companies.
- kevinherron 8y ago
  Are you equating the "injustice" of not being able replace the battery in your iPhone with that of slavery?
  - simion314 8y ago
    No, I am invalidating the point of "Free markets" solve things, so you can ignore the slavery and put other things free markets did not solve like pollution,cigarettes etc but I assume someone would bring the excuse that the goverment was at fault all along and free markets were not free.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  > Did the free markets ended slavery in US In a very oblique manner it did. Industrialization (which was very much a product of free markets) of the Northern States made the economics of slavery untenable in the North. Once people were not as blinded by profits, they could actually see that slavery was a moral evil. In the South, the economics were very different and therefore a lot of rationalizations were formed as to why slavery was not that evil. In addition, Industrialization enabled larger population growth in the North as well as larger production. This is what gave the Union the advantage in manpower and material that allowed the North to win the Civil War.
  - simion314 8y ago
    How were the markets less free in the south? From what I know from history the difference was that south was more agriculture focused and this meant they had different interest then the north , I am not from US so I did not studied all the details of US history. Even if say free market solved the issue, is it reasonable to wait centuries for the free markets to solve things then dare to vote some laws ?
    - iguy 8y ago
      Well the labor market was certainly less free, for one :) It's worth knowing that the south was once considerably richer than the north, but industrialisation changed things in the 19th C, by the end of which the north was vastly richer (per capita), richer than anywhere had ever been before. In this sense free capitalism did vastly outcompete an unfree economy.
      - simion314 8y ago
        IMO not free market solved the problem.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    The mechanized cotton gin greatly increased the demand for slave labor in cotton fields.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > Once people were not as blinded by profits, they could actually see that slavery was a moral evil. It was actually quite the opposite. Pre-industrialization, serfdom and slavery were basically equivalent. You hand a local lord and if you worked for him you got food and shelter. Your alternative was to run off into the wilderness and fend for yourself, which frequently meant starving or freezing to death or being mauled by a bear. Unsurprisingly not many people chose that. Then factories show up and suddenly your alternative is to run off and go work in the factory. Naturally many people started preferring to do that, which turned the plantations upside down because their economic system was based on the workers not having anywhere else to go. Their response was brutal. Chains to keep slaves from running away, hunting runaway slaves with dogs, savage beatings, etc. None of that stuff was really commonplace before industrialization. The response to industrialization was what made 19th century slavery so much worse than traditional serfdom. But that response was as futile as it was brutish. The factories made slavery uneconomical. You can't defeat supply and demand with chains and whips. All they do is cause the slaves to want to run away more. The factories destroyed slavery directly, by out-competing it. It's questionable whether the war was even net positive -- that was a whole lot of blood spilled over an economic system that couldn't have sustained itself much longer in any event.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
> 2) More important than 1, I don't think the law/government has any business deciding this. Why? > The market can decide Does that mean that it should decide? > (spoiler: it already has). Has it? How did you determine that?
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
The issue here is that garbage is an externality. If the device can be repaired it remains in service, otherwise it goes to a landfill to be replaced by another device that will itself also end up there. Garbage is a problematic externality because if you try to charge true cost for it, people throw their garbage in the street or the ocean instead of paying. So we generally have subsidized trash pickup, and then "the market" literally overproduces garbage due to the subsidy. One solution to that is to require the devices to pay the recycling cost up front, but everybody hates that because it makes the device more expensive, moreso than making it repairable would. The other is to require it to be modular/repairable so that when one component fails or becomes obsolete it can be replaced or upgraded, which extends the life of the other components and reduces the total number of devices that have to be produced and ultimately end up in a landfill. This may actually increase the original purchase price of the device by quite a bit, because the manufacturer will end up selling fewer units (that's the whole idea) but still have to recover the same fixed costs. But then the user doesn't have to replace their device as often, so the net cost should be slightly lower (the gain being the actual reduction in waste).

simion314 8y ago

Did the free markets ended slavery in US or under-age working? I remember many good things had to be forced with laws and not let to be decided by the big companies.

kevinherron 8y ago
Are you equating the "injustice" of not being able replace the battery in your iPhone with that of slavery?
- simion314 8y ago
  No, I am invalidating the point of "Free markets" solve things, so you can ignore the slavery and put other things free markets did not solve like pollution,cigarettes etc but I assume someone would bring the excuse that the goverment was at fault all along and free markets were not free.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
> Did the free markets ended slavery in US In a very oblique manner it did. Industrialization (which was very much a product of free markets) of the Northern States made the economics of slavery untenable in the North. Once people were not as blinded by profits, they could actually see that slavery was a moral evil. In the South, the economics were very different and therefore a lot of rationalizations were formed as to why slavery was not that evil. In addition, Industrialization enabled larger population growth in the North as well as larger production. This is what gave the Union the advantage in manpower and material that allowed the North to win the Civil War.
- simion314 8y ago
  How were the markets less free in the south? From what I know from history the difference was that south was more agriculture focused and this meant they had different interest then the north , I am not from US so I did not studied all the details of US history. Even if say free market solved the issue, is it reasonable to wait centuries for the free markets to solve things then dare to vote some laws ?
  - iguy 8y ago
    Well the labor market was certainly less free, for one :) It's worth knowing that the south was once considerably richer than the north, but industrialisation changed things in the 19th C, by the end of which the north was vastly richer (per capita), richer than anywhere had ever been before. In this sense free capitalism did vastly outcompete an unfree economy.
    - simion314 8y ago
      IMO not free market solved the problem.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  The mechanized cotton gin greatly increased the demand for slave labor in cotton fields.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > Once people were not as blinded by profits, they could actually see that slavery was a moral evil. It was actually quite the opposite. Pre-industrialization, serfdom and slavery were basically equivalent. You hand a local lord and if you worked for him you got food and shelter. Your alternative was to run off into the wilderness and fend for yourself, which frequently meant starving or freezing to death or being mauled by a bear. Unsurprisingly not many people chose that. Then factories show up and suddenly your alternative is to run off and go work in the factory. Naturally many people started preferring to do that, which turned the plantations upside down because their economic system was based on the workers not having anywhere else to go. Their response was brutal. Chains to keep slaves from running away, hunting runaway slaves with dogs, savage beatings, etc. None of that stuff was really commonplace before industrialization. The response to industrialization was what made 19th century slavery so much worse than traditional serfdom. But that response was as futile as it was brutish. The factories made slavery uneconomical. You can't defeat supply and demand with chains and whips. All they do is cause the slaves to want to run away more. The factories destroyed slavery directly, by out-competing it. It's questionable whether the war was even net positive -- that was a whole lot of blood spilled over an economic system that couldn't have sustained itself much longer in any event.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago

> 2) More important than 1, I don't think the law/government has any business deciding this. Why? > The market can decide Does that mean that it should decide? > (spoiler: it already has). Has it? How did you determine that?

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

The issue here is that garbage is an externality. If the device can be repaired it remains in service, otherwise it goes to a landfill to be replaced by another device that will itself also end up there. Garbage is a problematic externality because if you try to charge true cost for it, people throw their garbage in the street or the ocean instead of paying. So we generally have subsidized trash pickup, and then "the market" literally overproduces garbage due to the subsidy. One solution to that is to require the devices to pay the recycling cost up front, but everybody hates that because it makes the device more expensive, moreso than making it repairable would. The other is to require it to be modular/repairable so that when one component fails or becomes obsolete it can be replaced or upgraded, which extends the life of the other components and reduces the total number of devices that have to be produced and ultimately end up in a landfill. This may actually increase the original purchase price of the device by quite a bit, because the manufacturer will end up selling fewer units (that's the whole idea) but still have to recover the same fixed costs. But then the user doesn't have to replace their device as often, so the net cost should be slightly lower (the gain being the actual reduction in waste).