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Listen, I get it. It would be amazing if every product was of perfect quality, highly repairable, had an instantly available supply chain of spare parts, was 10

Listen, I get it. It would be amazing if every product was of perfect quality, highly repairable, had an instantly available supply chain of spare parts, was 100% carbon neutral, had zero profit margins, could turn itself into gold, and was in fact free! Am I the only person who is skeptical of how this will turn out long term? Not every company is Apple with insane profit margins and insane economies of scale. The only rational outcome for this is increased prices, less choice, more corporates merging into giants, and less competition for EU consumers. You can’t change one side of the economic equation without affecting the other.

piltdownman 3y ago
CSR left to the altruism of companies motivated solely by their shareholder returns is a puerile fantasy. It's like that old adage from Upton Sinclair “It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." We've tried leaving it to private enterprise - and seen that the rational outcome is eWaste and planned obsolescence. Now we try it the EUs way - which is focused on Societal rather than Economic results, much to the dismay of many US Commentators - and which also has supporting legislation to ensure more rather than less competition for EU consumers. If a company can't manage their BOM and supply chain sufficient to offset the larger societal cost, then their business model is nonviable. We've already introduced the "Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)" act which enforces things like Retailers taking responsible for recycling eWaste on-demand from Consumers, and making it harder for exporters to disguise illegal shipments of WEEE. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-weee_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
- pembrook 3y ago
  You're falling for the original sin of central planning..."if it reduces competition, we'll just create legislation to ensure more competition!" I'm sorry. It just doesn't work that way. I'd recommend looking into some of the classical failings of centrally planned economies. You don't even have to look beyond Europe, there's numerous "fun" examples of communist and/or dictator-driven central planning (USSR, Yugoslavia, Albania, Spain, etc).
  - piltdownman 3y ago
    What's Godwin's law for discussing European legislation with American Capitalists? "As an online discussion about the EU grows longer, the probability of a false-equivalence with Communism being made approaches 1." Simply put, it works exactly the way its intended - with a legislative lag due to fierce lobbying. The song and dance made about EU Foreign Subsidy legislation in Q4 of last year is testament to exactly that https://www.wsj.com/articles/multinationals-slam-new-eu-foreign-subsidy-laws-reporting-rules-874b3e83 https://www.wsj.com/articles/multinationals-slam-new-eu-fore... Or we can look at the €8 Billion in anti-trust Rulings against Google - like in 2017, where it was found guilty of abusing market dominance and was fined €2.4 billion. Or how about in 2018 where they fined them €4.8 billion over Android and mandated the following which were implemented in October 2018? * Charging a licensing fee for the store, without requiring installation of Google apps, but making it free to pre-install the Google apps if they want. * Allowing Google's hardware partners to market devices in the EU that run rival versions of Android or other operating systems. * European users of Android phones are given an option of which browser and search engine they want on their phone at time of setup

piltdownman 3y ago

CSR left to the altruism of companies motivated solely by their shareholder returns is a puerile fantasy. It's like that old adage from Upton Sinclair “It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." We've tried leaving it to private enterprise - and seen that the rational outcome is eWaste and planned obsolescence. Now we try it the EUs way - which is focused on Societal rather than Economic results, much to the dismay of many US Commentators - and which also has supporting legislation to ensure more rather than less competition for EU consumers. If a company can't manage their BOM and supply chain sufficient to offset the larger societal cost, then their business model is nonviable. We've already introduced the "Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)" act which enforces things like Retailers taking responsible for recycling eWaste on-demand from Consumers, and making it harder for exporters to disguise illegal shipments of WEEE. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-weee_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...

pembrook 3y ago
You're falling for the original sin of central planning..."if it reduces competition, we'll just create legislation to ensure more competition!" I'm sorry. It just doesn't work that way. I'd recommend looking into some of the classical failings of centrally planned economies. You don't even have to look beyond Europe, there's numerous "fun" examples of communist and/or dictator-driven central planning (USSR, Yugoslavia, Albania, Spain, etc).
- piltdownman 3y ago
  What's Godwin's law for discussing European legislation with American Capitalists? "As an online discussion about the EU grows longer, the probability of a false-equivalence with Communism being made approaches 1." Simply put, it works exactly the way its intended - with a legislative lag due to fierce lobbying. The song and dance made about EU Foreign Subsidy legislation in Q4 of last year is testament to exactly that https://www.wsj.com/articles/multinationals-slam-new-eu-foreign-subsidy-laws-reporting-rules-874b3e83 https://www.wsj.com/articles/multinationals-slam-new-eu-fore... Or we can look at the €8 Billion in anti-trust Rulings against Google - like in 2017, where it was found guilty of abusing market dominance and was fined €2.4 billion. Or how about in 2018 where they fined them €4.8 billion over Android and mandated the following which were implemented in October 2018? * Charging a licensing fee for the store, without requiring installation of Google apps, but making it free to pre-install the Google apps if they want. * Allowing Google's hardware partners to market devices in the EU that run rival versions of Android or other operating systems. * European users of Android phones are given an option of which browser and search engine they want on their phone at time of setup