4 ms·

Right to repair legislation makes more sense to me for consumer products, where the individual bargaining power is quite low. The military has a much much stro

Right to repair legislation makes more sense to me for consumer products, where the individual bargaining power is quite low. The military has a much much stronger bargaining position, why don't they already require that their contractors provide repairable equipment?

zdragnar 2y ago
Simple answer: the people doing the buying aren't the people that are using. Slightly less simple answer: the amount of red tape around getting contacts is obscene, so the DOD has severely limited the number of places it can go to buy many bits of kit. There's a lot of incestuous relationships between the military and the companies that supply it as well. On the one hand, that's not strictly a bad thing. A former soldier knows rather well what it's like to be in the field, and supporting veteran run businesses is a good thing to do. On the other hand, what's more often the case is desk jockeys move into lobbying positions and / or join the large corporations after they put in some time and the network effect takes over in a rather invirtious cycle. There are literally consulting companies that exist to help you navigate the red tape to get contacts, because doing it on your own means losing to the big names (often for whom the very contacts themselves are tailored to).
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  > Simple answer: the people doing the buying aren't the people that are using. This doesn't work at all. The logistics desk jockeys also benefit financially from right to repair. The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the user/buyer divide, at least not the way we usually think of it.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    The rest of the post absolutely does, in that it explains why the people doing the buying aren't considering the needs of the people doing the using. It goes further to explain why their interests actively work against the kind of competition that might be inclined to offer right to repair as a selling point. I also highly doubt anyone doing the buying are having either their performance or their budget impacted by the cost of repairs. Those are certainly separate budgets, and the DOD has never passed a financial audit; for the last six years, it hasn't been able to provide auditors with enough information about its $4 trillion in assets to even form a qualified opinion.
noobermin 2y ago
Did you know medicare is unable to negotiate drug prices and usually pays through the nose to pharma companies on behalf of medicare beneficiaries? The Biden admin managed to negotiate down less than 20 drugs and this was hailed as a progressive victory which just highlights how broken it is. This for me is the strongest argument against single payer healthcare in America. As long as bribery is considered free speech, nothing where the government is the single payer (like the DOD is for military equipment and goods) can ever work without extensive graft. Repeat for things like roads, geneal infrastructure, the list goes on.

zdragnar 2y ago

Simple answer: the people doing the buying aren't the people that are using. Slightly less simple answer: the amount of red tape around getting contacts is obscene, so the DOD has severely limited the number of places it can go to buy many bits of kit. There's a lot of incestuous relationships between the military and the companies that supply it as well. On the one hand, that's not strictly a bad thing. A former soldier knows rather well what it's like to be in the field, and supporting veteran run businesses is a good thing to do. On the other hand, what's more often the case is desk jockeys move into lobbying positions and / or join the large corporations after they put in some time and the network effect takes over in a rather invirtious cycle. There are literally consulting companies that exist to help you navigate the red tape to get contacts, because doing it on your own means losing to the big names (often for whom the very contacts themselves are tailored to).

andrewflnr 2y ago
> Simple answer: the people doing the buying aren't the people that are using. This doesn't work at all. The logistics desk jockeys also benefit financially from right to repair. The rest of your post doesn't really have anything to do with the user/buyer divide, at least not the way we usually think of it.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  The rest of the post absolutely does, in that it explains why the people doing the buying aren't considering the needs of the people doing the using. It goes further to explain why their interests actively work against the kind of competition that might be inclined to offer right to repair as a selling point. I also highly doubt anyone doing the buying are having either their performance or their budget impacted by the cost of repairs. Those are certainly separate budgets, and the DOD has never passed a financial audit; for the last six years, it hasn't been able to provide auditors with enough information about its $4 trillion in assets to even form a qualified opinion.

noobermin 2y ago

Did you know medicare is unable to negotiate drug prices and usually pays through the nose to pharma companies on behalf of medicare beneficiaries? The Biden admin managed to negotiate down less than 20 drugs and this was hailed as a progressive victory which just highlights how broken it is. This for me is the strongest argument against single payer healthcare in America. As long as bribery is considered free speech, nothing where the government is the single payer (like the DOD is for military equipment and goods) can ever work without extensive graft. Repeat for things like roads, geneal infrastructure, the list goes on.