8 ms·

Beyond Repair – The potential downsides of right-to-repair laws

15 points by PopAlongKid 4y ago

PopAlongKid 4y ago
The reference paper is at: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4401 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4401
- Animats 4y ago
  That's fascinating. It assumes that the manufacturer has a monopoly and has unrestricted pricing power. So, if repairs reduce demand, the manufacturer can just raise prices. That's Apple. John Deere doesn't have a monopoly on tractors.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - zqf11 4y ago
    Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones. Unless you mean that Apple has a monopoly on iPhones, to which I will respond that John Deere has a monopoly on John Deere tractors.
    - LoganDark 4y ago
      Apple indeed has a monopoly on iPhones, which is a problem because they have a closed ecosystem that is not interoperable with devices from any other vendor. Once you're in the Apple ecosystem, in order to escape you have to buy yourself a whole new ecosystem.
      - supportlocal4h 4y ago
        If you stick with Apple you buy yourself a whole new ecosystem every three years anyway. I am not a fan of walled gardens and vendor lockin, but come on. Take some personal responsibility for your situation. Don't complain that it is Nintendo's fault that you've paid a lot of money for consoles, controllers, games, etc. and now you're trapped. You bought a BMW and all the add-on subscriptions for working radio, seat warmers, race mode. Now you're trapped. If you think Apple or John Deere or Coca-Cola are a problem, then switch. If you think there are no other options, you are wrong. You are just unwilling to suck it up and do what needs to be done. Sometimes it takes determination and effort to live up to principles. You may say thay one person cannot turn the tide. This is usually true. Thank goodness that millions of Ukranians haven't used that as an excuse.
        LoganDark 4y ago
        > If you stick with Apple you buy yourself a whole new ecosystem every three years anyway. Not true. I used my MacBook Pro for over five years and it still runs macOS 10.14 to this day. Unfortunately, it broke about 18 months ago and I had to buy a Windows laptop anyway (because Apple's computers are dumb now). I hate this computer. Windows laptops are awful - I have purchased a desktop to replace it after less than two years, but I still have to figure out a way to use that from bed, as I have a medical condition that prevents sitting all day. If I had an iPhone though (which someone offered me, and I rejected!), or a bunch of apps purchased from the Mac App Store, or files in iCloud, then I would have had to buy myself the Windows equivalents. The only reason I could switch so easily is because I wasn't stuck in the ecosystem. (Also, my Mac is still available over SFTP to transfer files.) I just used my Mac as a UNIX system with a great desktop environment and high-quality apps.
f1shy 4y ago
The best way to force right to repair, is customers favouring products with that kind of design at the time of buy. Doing it by legislation will go in the wrong direction. The problem is, maybe, most of consumers prioritise other aspects at the time of buying.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  Ability to repair for me is a nice to have, but like 5th or 6th on my list and not a must have. I can think of one or two times in the last decade I was disappointed I didn’t have it.
- black_puppydog 4y ago
  Given that "the electrorate" and "consumers" are two huge groups with huge overlap, one could argue that political action is, in this case and in the ideal case of any representative democracy, an expression of consumers' will. We have a bunch of problems (pollution, climate change, privacy...) where the incentives "in the moment of action" (buying, subscribing, choosing a mode of transport) are not great, and so individual responsibility as the sole recipe for change has failed miserably. It's okay for people to say "hey let's collectively through out the oreos."
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    > Given that "the electrorate" and "consumers" are two huge groups with huge overlap, one could argue that political action is, in this case and in the ideal case of any representative democracy, an expression of consumers' will. This is an excellent point. Political forces are market forces.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zanecodes 4y ago
  How do you know how repairable something is at the time of buy? It would be nice if companies were required to provide information about their products' wear parts, their expected lifetime, whether they're replaceable and what tools are necessary to do so, etc.
bee_rider 4y ago
> If independent repair was widely available, products would have a longer lifespan, making them more valuable. Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers. Even if this does lead to a higher price, “could this be cheaper at the cost of being more disposable” doesn’t seem like a good standard for consumer harm. If we’re paying more because we get longer-lasting more repairable products, we’ll still probably end up ahead. > Easier repair could also lead more consumers to use old, energy-inefficient products, resulting in a higher environmental impact, especially with cars, trucks, refrigerators, or other major appliances. Just impose carbon taxes to make sure that the ecological damage doesn’t get externalized and then let the market sort it out. Anyway, every time we talk about replacing gas cars with electric cars, there’s a lot of worry about the embodied carbon of a new electric car. So I guess by that argument, we should prefer to keep old devices running rather than replacing them, or at least people who want to replace the old devices need to prove that the benefit of cleaner running is higher than the cost of replacing the device.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  The idea that manufacturers would raise prices simply because a product lives longer flies in the face of Econ 100. Any time you raise prices you increase the opportunity for competition. Any improvement without raising prices gives you a competetive advantage. It may be that the longer life comes at some cost to the manufacturer. That can safely be added to the price because any competitor would also incur similar costs to add similar value. However, if the additional cost adversely affects the price per unit of life it could very well hurt the manufacturer. A $10 wrench that lasts 10 years could be perceived as a better choice than a $15 wrench that lasts 12 years. And of course it would be a better purchase than a $12 wrench that lasts 15 years for somebody who loses their wrenches about every 8 years. So single-factor Econ 100 homework might be over-simplified, but the principle should not be ignored.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I would expect that, at least for companies that aren’t woefully poorly run and are in fairly competitive markets, creating more durable/repairable good will result in higher costs. I mean, if they could make a better device for less or the same amount of money, it seems they are just giving up a competitive advantage for no reason, and somebody would eat their lunch, right? But of course the consumer gets the benefit of a better device. It seems really industry specific how the pros and cons would balance out. If anyone is making predictions for how it would work out for the whole market, I’m pretty suspicious that they are overstating their level of confidence.
sugabush 4y ago
Does this writer work for Apple or Samsung or who? Feels like propaganda
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Repairability requires space for interfaces and other things. How does this jibe with SOC trends? Is this going to interfere with miniaturization and very dense/small devices? I’ve not followed the trend very well, sorry if it’s a stupid question.
autoexec 4y ago
> With low-cost products, the strategic response for manufacturers would be to lower new product prices and flood the market, thus reducing the appeal of repair. This isn't a bad thing. Let them sell their products as cheaply as they want, but as long as the repair option is cheaper than the buy new option, most people will repair. Even if it's cheaper to buy new many will still repair if that repair is easy enough. It's a lot easier to stick with something you know works, fits your needs, and is already in place than it is to throw it away and replace it by rolling the dice on some cheap electronic good from china which might not work at all, and may not do everything as well. The lazy/safe option is very attractive to consumers. > If independent repair was widely available, products would have a longer lifespan, making them more valuable. Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers. That doesn't make much sense. If everyone can just keep using their valuable old thing, companies will have to bring down the price on the new thing to get them to buy it. Even people who do buy the new version can sell their valuable old one to someone else who now doesn't have to buy the new one. In the face of reduced demand for a new product, raising the price for it would be crazy.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  <grandpa voice> When I was a child </grandpa> our home used the same phone for 20+ years. Now they are stocking stuffers every year. And it's not because they got dirt cheap. Somehow somebody convinced us that life with an old phone is unbearable, even if it still works the same as it did on day one.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Apple turned phones into status symbols and some people really will look down on you if you don't have the newest iphone or worse, any model at all of an android device. Apple also made batteries irreplaceable and forced iphones to slow down as they aged which I'm sure didn't hurt. Not everybody is buying into it, but I've seen both adults and children genuinely struggle with the social pressure they faced to have only the newest and most expensive iphone at all times and it was just depressing. When I was a child, nobody cared what phone you were using. You generally didn't care either as long as it could be used out of earshot of the rest of the family. For all the problems cell phones cause us, at least it's been a long time since kids had to suffer the pain of having to stand in their family's kitchen for every telephone conversation with friends and romantic partners.
DaveExeter 4y ago
>With low-cost products, the strategic response for manufacturers would be to lower new product prices and flood the market, thus reducing the appeal of repair. >Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers So to sum it up, right-to-repair could lead to lower or higher prices, which are both bad!
recycledmatt 4y ago
The larger concern is that the manufacturers would change how you ‘purchase’ hardware - one possible circumvention is that they make it so you don’t purchase your electronics any more, you’re just long term leasing them.
deviantbit 4y ago
I would be willing to bet anything that Apple funded this "research" with a goal in mind.

15 points by PopAlongKid 4y ago

The reference paper is at: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4401 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4401

Animats 4y ago
That's fascinating. It assumes that the manufacturer has a monopoly and has unrestricted pricing power. So, if repairs reduce demand, the manufacturer can just raise prices. That's Apple. John Deere doesn't have a monopoly on tractors.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zqf11 4y ago
  Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones. Unless you mean that Apple has a monopoly on iPhones, to which I will respond that John Deere has a monopoly on John Deere tractors.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    Apple indeed has a monopoly on iPhones, which is a problem because they have a closed ecosystem that is not interoperable with devices from any other vendor. Once you're in the Apple ecosystem, in order to escape you have to buy yourself a whole new ecosystem.
    - supportlocal4h 4y ago
      If you stick with Apple you buy yourself a whole new ecosystem every three years anyway. I am not a fan of walled gardens and vendor lockin, but come on. Take some personal responsibility for your situation. Don't complain that it is Nintendo's fault that you've paid a lot of money for consoles, controllers, games, etc. and now you're trapped. You bought a BMW and all the add-on subscriptions for working radio, seat warmers, race mode. Now you're trapped. If you think Apple or John Deere or Coca-Cola are a problem, then switch. If you think there are no other options, you are wrong. You are just unwilling to suck it up and do what needs to be done. Sometimes it takes determination and effort to live up to principles. You may say thay one person cannot turn the tide. This is usually true. Thank goodness that millions of Ukranians haven't used that as an excuse.
      - LoganDark 4y ago
        > If you stick with Apple you buy yourself a whole new ecosystem every three years anyway. Not true. I used my MacBook Pro for over five years and it still runs macOS 10.14 to this day. Unfortunately, it broke about 18 months ago and I had to buy a Windows laptop anyway (because Apple's computers are dumb now). I hate this computer. Windows laptops are awful - I have purchased a desktop to replace it after less than two years, but I still have to figure out a way to use that from bed, as I have a medical condition that prevents sitting all day. If I had an iPhone though (which someone offered me, and I rejected!), or a bunch of apps purchased from the Mac App Store, or files in iCloud, then I would have had to buy myself the Windows equivalents. The only reason I could switch so easily is because I wasn't stuck in the ecosystem. (Also, my Mac is still available over SFTP to transfer files.) I just used my Mac as a UNIX system with a great desktop environment and high-quality apps.

f1shy 4y ago

The best way to force right to repair, is customers favouring products with that kind of design at the time of buy. Doing it by legislation will go in the wrong direction. The problem is, maybe, most of consumers prioritise other aspects at the time of buying.

dwighttk 4y ago
Ability to repair for me is a nice to have, but like 5th or 6th on my list and not a must have. I can think of one or two times in the last decade I was disappointed I didn’t have it.
black_puppydog 4y ago
Given that "the electrorate" and "consumers" are two huge groups with huge overlap, one could argue that political action is, in this case and in the ideal case of any representative democracy, an expression of consumers' will. We have a bunch of problems (pollution, climate change, privacy...) where the incentives "in the moment of action" (buying, subscribing, choosing a mode of transport) are not great, and so individual responsibility as the sole recipe for change has failed miserably. It's okay for people to say "hey let's collectively through out the oreos."
- nerdponx 4y ago
  > Given that "the electrorate" and "consumers" are two huge groups with huge overlap, one could argue that political action is, in this case and in the ideal case of any representative democracy, an expression of consumers' will. This is an excellent point. Political forces are market forces.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
zanecodes 4y ago
How do you know how repairable something is at the time of buy? It would be nice if companies were required to provide information about their products' wear parts, their expected lifetime, whether they're replaceable and what tools are necessary to do so, etc.

bee_rider 4y ago

> If independent repair was widely available, products would have a longer lifespan, making them more valuable. Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers. Even if this does lead to a higher price, “could this be cheaper at the cost of being more disposable” doesn’t seem like a good standard for consumer harm. If we’re paying more because we get longer-lasting more repairable products, we’ll still probably end up ahead. > Easier repair could also lead more consumers to use old, energy-inefficient products, resulting in a higher environmental impact, especially with cars, trucks, refrigerators, or other major appliances. Just impose carbon taxes to make sure that the ecological damage doesn’t get externalized and then let the market sort it out. Anyway, every time we talk about replacing gas cars with electric cars, there’s a lot of worry about the embodied carbon of a new electric car. So I guess by that argument, we should prefer to keep old devices running rather than replacing them, or at least people who want to replace the old devices need to prove that the benefit of cleaner running is higher than the cost of replacing the device.

supportlocal4h 4y ago
The idea that manufacturers would raise prices simply because a product lives longer flies in the face of Econ 100. Any time you raise prices you increase the opportunity for competition. Any improvement without raising prices gives you a competetive advantage. It may be that the longer life comes at some cost to the manufacturer. That can safely be added to the price because any competitor would also incur similar costs to add similar value. However, if the additional cost adversely affects the price per unit of life it could very well hurt the manufacturer. A $10 wrench that lasts 10 years could be perceived as a better choice than a $15 wrench that lasts 12 years. And of course it would be a better purchase than a $12 wrench that lasts 15 years for somebody who loses their wrenches about every 8 years. So single-factor Econ 100 homework might be over-simplified, but the principle should not be ignored.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I would expect that, at least for companies that aren’t woefully poorly run and are in fairly competitive markets, creating more durable/repairable good will result in higher costs. I mean, if they could make a better device for less or the same amount of money, it seems they are just giving up a competitive advantage for no reason, and somebody would eat their lunch, right? But of course the consumer gets the benefit of a better device. It seems really industry specific how the pros and cons would balance out. If anyone is making predictions for how it would work out for the whole market, I’m pretty suspicious that they are overstating their level of confidence.

sugabush 4y ago

Does this writer work for Apple or Samsung or who? Feels like propaganda

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Repairability requires space for interfaces and other things. How does this jibe with SOC trends? Is this going to interfere with miniaturization and very dense/small devices? I’ve not followed the trend very well, sorry if it’s a stupid question.

autoexec 4y ago

> With low-cost products, the strategic response for manufacturers would be to lower new product prices and flood the market, thus reducing the appeal of repair. This isn't a bad thing. Let them sell their products as cheaply as they want, but as long as the repair option is cheaper than the buy new option, most people will repair. Even if it's cheaper to buy new many will still repair if that repair is easy enough. It's a lot easier to stick with something you know works, fits your needs, and is already in place than it is to throw it away and replace it by rolling the dice on some cheap electronic good from china which might not work at all, and may not do everything as well. The lazy/safe option is very attractive to consumers. > If independent repair was widely available, products would have a longer lifespan, making them more valuable. Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers. That doesn't make much sense. If everyone can just keep using their valuable old thing, companies will have to bring down the price on the new thing to get them to buy it. Even people who do buy the new version can sell their valuable old one to someone else who now doesn't have to buy the new one. In the face of reduced demand for a new product, raising the price for it would be crazy.

supportlocal4h 4y ago
<grandpa voice> When I was a child </grandpa> our home used the same phone for 20+ years. Now they are stocking stuffers every year. And it's not because they got dirt cheap. Somehow somebody convinced us that life with an old phone is unbearable, even if it still works the same as it did on day one.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Apple turned phones into status symbols and some people really will look down on you if you don't have the newest iphone or worse, any model at all of an android device. Apple also made batteries irreplaceable and forced iphones to slow down as they aged which I'm sure didn't hurt. Not everybody is buying into it, but I've seen both adults and children genuinely struggle with the social pressure they faced to have only the newest and most expensive iphone at all times and it was just depressing. When I was a child, nobody cared what phone you were using. You generally didn't care either as long as it could be used out of earshot of the rest of the family. For all the problems cell phones cause us, at least it's been a long time since kids had to suffer the pain of having to stand in their family's kitchen for every telephone conversation with friends and romantic partners.

DaveExeter 4y ago

>With low-cost products, the strategic response for manufacturers would be to lower new product prices and flood the market, thus reducing the appeal of repair. >Manufacturers would be incentivized to raise new product prices, which hurts consumers So to sum it up, right-to-repair could lead to lower or higher prices, which are both bad!

recycledmatt 4y ago

The larger concern is that the manufacturers would change how you ‘purchase’ hardware - one possible circumvention is that they make it so you don’t purchase your electronics any more, you’re just long term leasing them.

deviantbit 4y ago

I would be willing to bet anything that Apple funded this "research" with a goal in mind.