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>When repair labor costs more than automated production, then it's cheaper to replace whole units than mend parts We're not there yet. There are profitable bus
by macspoofing 6y ago
>When repair labor costs more than automated production, then it's cheaper to replace whole units than mend parts
We're not there yet. There are profitable businesses that can do repair and/or replacement of broken soldered IC chips in laptops and smartphones (see YouTube channels of Jessa Jones and Louis Rossmann). So cost of repair is not a barrier in many cases.
The problems they highlight, that should be very easy to fix through regulation, is lack of access to technical manuals, lack of access to diagnostic equipment and tech giants (like Apple) bullying their suppliers to prevent sale of replacement parts to independent repair shops.
- Scoundreller 6y agoYes and no, supply chain restrictions leads to some funny outcomes. When I parted out my 2012 MacBook Air in 2016, I came close to covering the full cost of my brand new 2016 MB Air.
- macspoofing 6y agoSure - there are repairs where the costs are higher than replacement. There are repairs where the costs are lower than replacement. The latter should be a low-hanging fruit for regulation to assist with. And we have a model how this could be done - car repair. Because of historical factors, there are regulations that mandate car manufacturers to provide diagnostic tools and replacement parts to independent mechanics and though car manufacturers gripe about it, the system works well. And yes, in some cases, your mechanic will tell you that a particular repair isn't worth it because the car isn't worth it. Independent mechanic shops are also a sizable market (around 150k+ businesses in US alone) providing good paying blue-collar jobs for hundreds of thousands of people .. and this competition also lowers repair costs for consumers. No reason why it couldn't be the case for electronics.