Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff | Hacker News Reader

Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

fastcoexist.com

547 pointsprawn329 comments

This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are:

1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive.

I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier for the competition to make compatible replacement parts so they are cheaper.

How many products don't we have where one stupid little plastic thing breaks and it becomes useless. Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install.

There's another angle too. For a long time the only tailor in town was basically a bridal tailor. They charged steep prices for simple work on everyday clothing, and wait times were long.

Fast forward to today. I had ripped holes in a few pairs of pants, and was wondering if it made sense to have them repaired- I was pretty sure I was going to be charged as much as the pants were worth for a fairly simple repair. Luckily there's a new shop in town, run by a group of older ladies who seem to have grown up tailoring, that charges sane prices.

Anyway, the point is repairing can be uneconomical simply because of lack of availability of repair resources.

As an example on the other side, Autozone has enabled countless mechanics with their tool library programs and other basic shadetree services like easy oil recycling.

(P.S. Maybe I should learn to sew & get an inexpensive sewing machine, but that isn't the point)

Repair services in any western country will be hideously expensive because it can't be automated and has to be paid western wages, while the products themselves are made in an automated fashion with third world wages.

For this repair stuff to work, we have to make it easier to do so that people can do it themselves.

It does depend on the product.

I have a KitchenAid blender and a KitchenAid stand mixer that I've had to repair. In both cases, the part was purchased for under $10 online and repair only took a few minutes. The alternative was buying a new $300 or $100+ product.

Sure, I did the repair myself, but a local KitchenAid service center (yes, they exist!) would probably have done the job even faster.

It boils down to cost/benefit. Would I have done the same thing with a $30 mixer? Not worth it; simpler to buy a replacement, but in this case, the products are built to last (both broken parts were "sacrificial" and designed to fail before something more expensive failed).

Sacrificial parts are great design IMO, specifically when they protect a much more expensive part. However, it does bother me that the parts are often very custom and only available from the manufacturer.

I enjoy listening to a conversation where some blowhard talks about was was obviously a shear pin breaking in some mechanical peice of equipment and then replaces it with a grade 8 bolt.

Well there is the desire for the consumer to keep an item they know works (ie, a good-fitting pair of jeans or shoes).

I think the incentives here will simply make that edge-case more viable.

In order to make a sea-change, Sweden and other countries will have to go to war against mass-market manufacturers.

For a lot of things and a lot of small repairs/modifications (even just cleaning in some cases), all that's needed to is to use standard screws that aren't super soft. They were invented to allow reservible fastening of things, and they're great, if you're not making them suck on purpose. Unless you're making it even easier than screws, make the screws rock solid and straight forward.

It's a little chicken and egg, the bridal shop was able to command high prices because they were the only game in town and served a luxury segment of the market. As a result less people want to repair clothes. But if there was high demand, there would be a competitive market of general purpose tailor, and repairing clothes would be cheaper & more attractive.

The one factor you're missing in the equation is that those products, made in automated fashion with third-world wages, have to be shipped across an ocean, and then shipped to distributors, and then sold in retailers that pay western wages, and which are owned by corporations that demand western profits. The retail mark-up of almost any item is enormous, probably at least half to 2/3 the cost.

When you repair something, you avoid all that retail mark-up. However any parts you buy will also have a big markup usually, plus shipping costs.

Nudie Jeans company in Sweden offer free repairs on their jeans. So that's another way to go. (I'm not affiliated with them)

https://www.nudiejeans.com/page/this-is-nudie-jeans

Nudie Jeans? Is that a subsidiary of The Emperor's New Clothes Company?

They also send you free repair kits too, which I'm about to use on my pair of them.

Two ideas since I hate things that breaks for no good reason:

I bought a "used" (actually just preowned, not used) but real sewing machine for about $50 last year .

Even simpler I also figured out that especially for jeans fabric glue is amazingly simple to get right (IMO, YMMW) and if I apply it before damage is done nobody even notices, just make sure you use another washed out fabric, apply fabric glue evenly and apply it to the inside of the knees etc.

Edit: removed unnecessary details

Isn't this better? Manufacturers can make rational decisions on tax breaks vs additional costs. Here, they have to compete with a "easily repairable!" label from a competing product. That's hard to price.

If that was an advantage when selling, they would already have done it.

The tax break for consumers makes it more advantageous.

If the cost of repair goes down via tax incentive, then the lifetime cost of a repairable product becomes marginally less expensive. That creates a new advantage for selling repairable products.

A student and an economics professor are walking across the quad.

"Look, a $20 bill!", says the student. "Someone must have dropped it."

"Nonsense!", replies the economics professor. "If there were a $20 on the ground, someone would have picked it up!"

>> Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install.

I'm running into this with some of my drones now.

The 3DR Iris Plus was released in 2014 and they've already ceased supporting it, less than two years after releasing it. This means no more OEM parts available and whatever is out there right now, is out there. I have found only one distributor who carries parts for this model - so I'm left with either being super careful and not crashing again (unlikely) or selling it to someone who doesn't know they can't get parts for it anymore.

I'm probably going to sell it. It was shocking to know they just dropped hardware support for this model after only two years of supporting it.

Yeah I think the key to this repair economy is cheap and easy to use 3D printers. They will allow us to make so many needed parts on demand as needed. Alternatively if 3D printing stores were more easily available and the 3D models for all sorts of plastic parts was easily available you could go to a 3D store and have the part printed.

In short I think we need to think a bit more about how to organize things than exclusively thinking about taxes.

Wouldn't manufacturers start using more patented, unique parts or DRM or some other solution in order to force continued planned obsolescence?

If only companies open sourced the 3D designs/models for products & parts they no longer care about - why not? Perhaps Sweden could incentivise exactly this outcome?

Incentivize the consumer and you incentivize the producer. The idea is that this will create a market need for easily repairable products.

Or just subsidizing an increase in cost of repair parts

>one stupid little plastic thing

I got into 3D printing recently and it's wonderful in this respect. I've made replacement parts for several different things.

3D modeling isn't as daunting as I expected either, at least in Fusion 360.

I think you're right about this, but I wonder how feasible this is in a country like Sweden where most of the complicated manufactured goods that break easily are probably produced elsewhere and the population is not big enough for foreign manufacturers to be bothered investing the requisite capital to redesign their products. It might be effective to do this kind of a thing at a European level, where the size of the market is big enough that producers will consider it worthwhile to substantially change production practices.

Sony still have offices there after the merger of their and Ericsson's mobile handset divisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mobile

Why tax incentives? We have too many of those already.

I'd hope that if that government had to spend less dealing with discarded products (aka trash/recycling) as a result of manufacturer actions/practices, they'd pass those savings on.

Why do you think that the government should pay for the externalities of discarded products? Shouldn't that be on the original manufacturer?

This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff".

It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain.

The only potential counter-argument I can see with this sort of policy is that the goals of minimising CO2 and minimising waste sometimes seem to be in competition with each other. Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.

Non-petroleum based plastics are a thing, but lag behind in many areas like strength, injection molding quality, UV resistance etc.

Recently Lego decided on moving to plant-based plastics, but they expect to need more than a decade of R&D by a team of 100 people, costing $150 million, before these materials are up to Lego's quality standards.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Pl...

If they can figure out how to make the stuff out of bamboo, then we have ourselves a carbon sequestration method. No more global warming.

Bamboo is made of cellulose, which is not what you would want to use for making plastics.

The problem with cellulose is that, because it is fibrous, there aren't really any efficient ways of breaking it down.

Wood is also cellulose, but it is an excellent substitute for plastic in many cases (i.e. chopsticks and eating utensils)

For silverware at least this is available: https://www.bambuhome.com/products/all-occasion-veneerware-k...

Expensive, though, for disposable stuff.

What I think is most sad about this is that we've come up with a material that can last nearly forever and is relatively easy to reuse and recycle (at least for simple thermoplastics like polyethylene which is what most plastic bags are made of), and yet we waste massive quantities of it. Biodegradable plastics just fuel the "disposable culture" and its resource consumption more, because they are deliberately designed to not last long.

I'm in two minds about biodegradable plastics. Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store, or get goods packed in biodegradable plastics.

While this is anecdotal, it is common amongst my peers for the biodegradable bags to be used as general household garbage bags. I think this feels much better than using the previous long lasting ones, but knowing what people put inside them - I wonder if it really makes a difference.

On the other hand, I can remember when the plastic supermarket bags were phased out, and it was impressive just how quickly people adopted reusable bags. This small change in behaviour must come with at least some increased awareness of resource consumption, surely?

> Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store

This used to be the case here as well (Slovenia), until supermarkets started introducing the self-service check-out machines. Those can't be used with re-usable bags (or sometimes can be, but with significant annoyance to everyone present, since an employee must manually check your bag).

Where I shop (Seattle, US), supermarkets have self-service check-out machines, and I've never had a problem with bringing my own, non-reusable bag.

The trouble with the reusable bag thing is that it takes about 300 bag reuses before the reusable bag is a win. Most of them aren't used that many times.

There's something profoundly wrong when it makes sense to us to extract oil from the ground in the Middle East, ship it to India, convert it into polymer, ship it to China, mould it into knives and forks, ship it to the West, use it once, and then bury it forever underground (or expend energy to smelt it down into lower grade polymer for use in something that will end up in the ground), all to avoid rinsing some metallic cutlery.

Not disagreeing with you, but this system does employ a lot of people in the Middle East, India, China, and the West.

If that's the goal, we might as well just pay people to dig a hole and then fill it back in again repeatedly, and it wouldn't produce as much CO2 in the end.

Or, you know, pay them to wash reusable silverware.

Yeah, but nobody in the west wants to do that?

I'm hoping for automated wash bots...

Some sort of machine... think we could have it wash dishes too?

So... a dishwasher?

Haha, yes, but with a little bit more of the pipeline automated. I would love to start with a messy stack of dishes on one end of a table, have the automation to sort out trash, then separate and rack silverware, dishes, cups etc into a 'dishwasher', then unrack it into a nice organized output area (where other staff could just pull clean items out of).

> all to avoid rinsing some metallic cutlery.

It's not that; it's that the capitalist/commercial way of life is naturally one-way: I sell you something and you go away. Anything after the sale is burdensome and unnatural, from a commercial point of view; so we get one-way cutlery.

What if it's actually tremendously efficient to do it this way, in a way that is not inutitive to the layperson? There are many many other uses for oil and polymer and shipping capacity, and the plastic cutlery industry can leverage these incredible economies of scale.

A problem I have with systems of such complexity is that it feels basically unknowable whether or not this is true. It totally may be. On the otherhand, it might just be that we're basically subsidizing an incredibly expansive practice by creating enormous and complex upstream costs that we ignore in our current accounting.

I remember reading stories several years ago of Scottish prawns being shipped to Thailand to be shelled by hand, and then shipped back for sale in the UK [0]. I have no idea whether this still happens, but I find it utterly mind-blowing that this process was the most efficient way of getting the job done. Globalisation sure does lead to some weirdly counter intuitive outcomes.

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1534286/12000-mile-tr...

I'm pretty convinced this is less efficient than doing it locally. The issue here is that when you talk efficiency, you need to ignore monetary issues - moeny is exactly the bullshit complexity that makes those things turn out so weird.

So let's talk energy. Does this pipeline - oil from Middle East, through India, through China, to the West and to the ground makes sense? Probably not so much; I doubt the oil extraction and manufacturing scales that well to justify shipping bulk resources halfway around the world. And definitely nothing justifies just throwing the things away after one use.

What makes things less energy-efficient is monetary considerations. The current chain of production is established on monetary efficiency - which is based on labor costs, transportation costs, etc., which all stem from trade deals and political power of different countries.

Comparing what we have with what could be, the real (and too often forgotten) question is: can we do better? The emphasis is on "can". Maybe the current state of affairs represents close to the best we can reasonably achieve from where we are now. I don't know. Which honestly makes me want to throw my hands up in the air and give up. I don't see a simpler solution than "invent free fusion energy", or something.

It is only efficient because of the tragedy of the commons; The "plastic cutlery industry" can rake in all the profits of the (literal) garbage they produce, but the whole society is left with the cost of disposing it.

One would think that having people pay for the full cost of garbage disposal would steer companies into producing reusable, optimal-duration plastics... but the most likely outcome of this would be a endemic level of littering.

Sometimes the Invisible Hand needs herself a hand.

>The "plastic cutlery industry" can rake in all the profits of the (literal) garbage they produce, but the whole society is left with the cost of disposing it.

Where I live, the one who bought the plastic cutlery throws it into garbage and pays the full cost for the disposal of that garbage.

And it's converted to energy, finally.

The idea is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and unintended consequences.

What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired by replacing all the parts, except the power cord? How broken must something be before it can be repaired? Totally failed, failure imminent, or just worn? (Unintended consequence: people have their things fixed long before it's strictly necessary, leading to greater waste than if they'd just let the thing fail and bought a new one. Another one: appliances are only upgraded to newer, much more energy efficient ones much later than otherwise).

And for labour, where is the line drawn? Is the labour cost of diagnosing a problem covered? What if the problem is bigger than expected, and it isn't economical to carry out the repair? What if I have you upgrade the Foo (not a repair), which is trivial, while you've taken the widget apart anyway to fix the Bar (a repair)? What about repairing something, pocketing the tax break, then selling it (perhaps outside of the country)?

Once you have considered all of these questions, you either have a lot of loopholes which will make the tax break much more expensive, or have a very long body of legal texts, and some very exited lawyers and auditors which will impose an indirect cost on society broadly.

Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark. Sounds great, right? Hilarity ensued over mixed nuts (the accountants had a field day with that one, and IIRC all kinds of meat being taxed at the same level, and the tax was repealed after only 15 months.

I'm pessimistic too. However, the labour cost is so huge that it will offset some of your points and only give a slight edge to repair and second hand shops.

If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost. And replacement give you back a 2 years guarantee with faster turnaround.

Right, but the point of this legislation is to adjust the incentives so that repair becomes possible/economical in a greater number of cases.

Aren't we about to be abounding with mechanical inclined labor? Like aren't all truck drivers and car drivers about to be automated?

This seems like a nobrainer.

Relocating that labor surplus towards supporting a repairable mechanical/technological industry and commercial future seems really plausible.

That sounds like a decent job, troubleshooting and repairing the machines, designing machines to be repaired. Better than driving trucks.

How much is is worth? Assuming every "fixer" is competing with some industry robots somewhere, what is the ceiling on the fixer salary?

I was assuming in our little hypothetical utopia that most consumer goods are designed once again to be repaired and upgraded.

I was also imagining a bunch of truck drivers looking for jobs, since the robots took them all.

Further along in my thought experiment, I imagined that if I owned a sizable fleet of robot cars I'd rather repair and upgraded than replace them.

So I figured if you're into trucks, have basic the mechanical skills required to drive a truck (tire chains, flat tires, oil change, spark plug change) that a new job maintenaning, repairing and upgrading the new fleets of robot taxis and trucks might be right up your alley.

For some reason self repairing robots seem a bit further off.

> If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost.

I tend to repair everything, and let me say that's not true for the vast majority of my possessions, including cars, appliances, electronics, etc. It highly depends on the nature of the failure, but generally parts are cheaper than replacement. Here are a list of things I've recently repaired around my house + the parts to repair. I don't recall the parts costs, but all were far lower than replacing the entire thing:

Dishwasher: Control board

Garage door opener: Broken gear and sprocket

Hot tub: Two pumps and a pressure/flow sensor

AV receiver: Three capacitors

Rear projection TV: Convergence ICs

Attic fan: Fan motor

And probably tons more that I'm not recalling at the moment. The key is to stop throwing money away on labor costs. Even getting someone out to your house can cost $50-100 and that's before he even does anything. Total scam. I disagree with a lot of replies here--DIY repair is still a viable option for most things around the home.

I suspect I will do much more of that after I retire.

It's hard to motivate myself to spend much time on most such activities now. Now saying you don't have a point, just how the day flows sometimes.

Each of these repairs consisted of: an hour or so of diagnosis/research + order the parts online + go on with your life until delivered + a few hours or so to do the repair.

I spent more time finding the cheapest (+shipping) online source of garage door opener parts than I spent on actually repairing it.

I find that repairing it myself is often faster than getting a tech out to repair things. It seems to be a minimum of two appointments, one to diagnose things and order the part, another to come back to fix it. With the wait windows the repair services want, it's less time to do it myself.

For something like the AV receiver's three capacitors or the TV's convergence IC's, how did you track down the problem and source replacements?

Are there debugging manuals for that level of electronics failure, or was it just "hmmm, that capacitor probably shouldn't have all the goo around it"?

Forums + Youtube + Digikey for most electronics repair. The ICs were a little specialty, I think I got them on eBay. For most anything once you get a hold of the part number, you're good to go.

My approach as a learn-it-as-I-go-DIYer is basically:

1) Google part number and the symptoms, half the time somebody has blogged about the exact same issue. These consumer products often fail in the same way.

2) Google symptoms and look for issues with similar products. Faulty capacitors for example is a classic cause of problems for older electronics and can be observed by just looking at the PCB (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague)

3) Debug using Service Manual (note the User Manuals are typically useless / not detailed enough). Again just googling your part number will typically get you a PDF. If you still can't find the Service Manual you can buy it at these sketchy sites online for $10US, or buy the manual from the OEM (typically closer to $50US from my experience).

4) If still not sure what's wrong, buy a new logic board

5) Buy new gadget

Warning - depending on which appliance is broken irritation level of spouse may grow exponentially!

A big pain for DIY repairs (at least here in Canada) is part prices and shipping costs. I often see a 2-4x spread in prices when checking Amazon.ca and Amazon.com (often will not even ship to Canada).

It's still cheaper (and more satisfying) to DIY but it really hurts when you're paying $40 for a $10 garage door opener part!

Maybe you'd have better luck with eBay?

Wait does any of that include labour ? Because around here you won't find a technician working for less than 50 GBP an hour, parts not included. Or well, you can always find a "guy" that can come around, no guarantee of anything.

That's btw my key argument. If you repair yourself or live in an area with handy undeclared workers, yeah repairing is probably worth it.

A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway.

Right now it is profitable for many parties to extract non-renewable resources, assemble them in to something that has a short life cycle, and be sold to consumers who would rather keep buying the same thing over and over again than a single time. There have been big incentives on the government side for hitting GDP numbers, which has led to both low interest rates and an urgency to extract and process non-renewable resources as quickly as possible. Capital utilization numbers certainly doesn't account for any of this and very well exacerbate the problem.

I don't want to confuse cause and effect here, but the consumption of low quality products directly relates to the volume which they are produced. The actual costs have just been transferred to the future. In the future there will be both fewer resources to produce those goods and more pollution/ecosystem effects to account for it.

At Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder meeting this year Charlie Munger specifically said he thought all petrochemical reserves would be eventually exhausted to make things, not for fuel (there was a specific word he used which I never use and forgot.) Billionaires are thinking about resource exhaustion. Poor, uneducated people are not, unless they are still in hunter-gatherer societies and see problems first hand.

We often think of food and bio-products as renewables, but in many cases they are not. National Geographic (August 2016) ran a great article on the exhaustion of the Ogallala aquifer. California gets a lot of attention, but ground water is being drained globally. Longer term, there may be limits with phosphorus as well. Food production is going to become a lot more expensive, global warming or not.

I don't know about the returns, but Al Gore's Generation Investment Management philosophically probably has the right approach.

The flipside to all of this is that technology can make using the same resources much more efficient. My leading theme for the past 5+ years or so has been exponentially more efficient technology running head on in to global government policies -- of all political leanings -- of creating GDP growth at all costs. The two don't mix, and the results could be very ugly.

Currently companies externalize the cost of disposing their products. You and I having to pay a bigger garbage bill is not going to change the behavior of the companies making all of this trash. If it were possible to query everything that went into a landfill, and bill the entire value chain proportionally for its disposal cost, THEN we might start to have a fair system and see changes. Current incentives are to produce the cheapest thing that will barely work for long enough that someone will buy it.

Actually, they do. I believe at least electronics companies pay a small fee for every device to pay for its disposal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Waste_Recycling_Fee

That's a pretty blunt instrument though. It looks like it just hits retailers, not manufacturers, and the fee is assessed regardless of whether the device ends up disposed. Seems like such a fee would serve only to make everything more expensive, instead of actually incentivizing the production of longer-lasting goods.

Another idea (probably full of holes, I'm sure): Tax manufacturers based on the length of their products' warranties, say 100 minus YEARS. So no warranty means company pays 100% of the product's sale price in tax. 5 year warranty means company pays 95% of the product's sale price, etc. down to no tax if the company offers a 100 year or more warranty.

Biggest problem I can think of there can be answered with most of the warranty repairs I've ever had done.

"We don't have any parts for your $old_thing, here, have a $new_thing"

Great from the consumer standpoint, but useless when it comes to reducing the amount of trash. And I'd be willing to bet that once something doesn't have any parts, it's not gonna be refurbished, it's gonna be scavenged for useful parts (if that's even possible), if not outright destroyed.

In California there's a paint-use fee tacked onto the cost of a gallon of paint when you buy it.

Of course, its main purpose is to pay for programs that safely manage the disposal of unused paint (i.e. you can take your extra unused paint to paint retailers for proper disposal.) But, this price hike should, at least in theory, reduce demand for paint a little overall.

>Currently companies externalize the cost of disposing their products.

At least Nordic countries have a system which shifts this burden to manufacturers or importers of stuff. It's called "product responsibility (fee)". (Producentansvar).

Small companies are excluded, the threshold is somewhere around 1M€ per year turnover.

Not sure if there is any EU wide regulation.I wouldn't be surprised if even some U.S. states had something similar.

>A alternative approach could be taxing garbage.

Ok, how do you keep people from dumping their garbage in someone else's garbage bin, or in some public place in the middle of the night?

This also doesn't really deal with the fact that different garbage has very different effects on the environment and society, and very different mass. "E-waste" frequently doesn't weigh that much, but has a lot of both valuable metals and also hazardous materials which can cause problems when dumped in a landfill. Mercury-bearing batteries are especially bad, but those don't weigh much at all. Some broken dishes, however, can easily weigh far more than old electronic gadgets or leaky batteries, but they're just pottery so they're completely inert and have zero negative environmental effects. And yard waste and kitchen waste isn't environmentally problematic at all, yet it can weigh a lot because much of it is water. It'd be better to compost it, but urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile.

> urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile.

Curb-side compost pickup.

Good luck getting the dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local governments in America to implement that.

San Francisco sends its (mandatory) curbside compost up to Napa to grow our wine, and having lived through a couple ballot initiatives and largely-self-infliciated absurdly high rents here, I can think of no municipality that is more dysfunctional or incompetent.

I had no idea that we sent it to Napa. I'm guessing we get paid pretty handsomely for it?

My dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local government (In America) has managed to pick up my curbside trash once a week, for years.

Over the past year and a half, it's also managed to pick up my curbside compost. It's also managed to provide both electricity, and running water.

Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what Randian fiction seems to claim.) Mandatory infrastructure tends to work, for some definition of working. (Now, if only the same could be said about Comcast...)

>Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what Randian fiction seems to claim.) Mandatory infrastructure tends to work, for some definition of working. (Now, if only the same could be said about Comcast...)

About half of it is. Visit the South sometime and you'll see. A lot of places still don't have recycling, much less compost pickup.

And as for mandatory infrastructure, the entire United States fails here: internet access is mandatory infrastructure in this day and age, just like running water was considered mandatory by the mid-20th century, and the US's internet infrastructure is pathetic (as you admit about Comcast).

Most of those places in the South don't have recycling precisely because they are too busy complaining about how terrible and inefficient and wasteful their government is, and how taxes and fines harm their freedom to throw whatever they want to in the garbage. To uncharitably generalize a bit.

There's that, and the belief that environmentalism is a communist plot, and that aluminum grows on trees.

If they wanted compost pickup, there'd be no reason why they couldn't have it. When you've solved curb-side garbage pickup, you've also solved curb-side recycling pickup, and curb-side compost pickup.

Comcast is a publicly traded firm.

Seattle does it.

The small (<40k residents) American city I live in already has weekly curbside compost/yard-waste pickup.

I live in Zürich. Here, you can only throw things away if they're in the proper bags, which cost about two francs for a 35 litre bag.

But taking stuff to the recycling centre is free, and there's usually one within five minutes walk of any given house.

The end result is that waste is basically self managed --- people are incentivised to recycle as much as possible and reduce waste. I remember hearing that disposal largely pays for itself, but I don't have a reference for that, so don't quote me.

(Fly tipping is basically unheard of.)

Many municipals in the US have similar policies with garbage, either pay for the special bags or pay per bin. Even at a small cost this often leads to dumping. I saw someone had dumped their trash in a cemetery. :(

Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places.

It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for disposal or haul their trash to a landfill (usually in more rural areas). So it's a very visible cost, making savage dumping more compelling.

Exactly this. We socialize the cost of garbage disposal in the first world to disincentivize dumping. Worth it, IMO.

Oakland, CA still has a dumping problem.

> A alternative approach could be taxing garbage.

There actually is a garbage tax (avfallsskatt) in Sweden. 500 SEK (59 USD) per ton.

This is in Swedish, but Google translate might help you. https://www.skatteverket.se/foretagochorganisationer/skatter...

> Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark.

Sorry, what? Not to derail, but this is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile unless I'm just missing something. The latest science has made it pretty clear dietary fat is quite good for you and simple carbs are what a healthy person should avoid.

"You optimize what you measure". Seems like incentivizing repair itself could lead to problems. Maybe the focus should be product longevity or components that can be repurposed, if the end goal is to reduce waste. In a totally different direction, share-ability could also do a lot to cut down on waste. There are a lot of products in the world where every individual doesn't need to own one, but only needs periodic access.

If anything, it seems like this might be a reasonably untapped area for innovation: making repairs more efficient.

Right now all of the business and efficiency gains seem to be invested in lowering production cost, selling fast and hard to gain market share.

It seems like a way to make repairs more efficient could be a solid way of attacking a market slowly with a quality product. Slower growth but you build a brand for resilience and your market share is more defined by customers who aren't looking elsewhere than new acquisitions.

My school offered a semester course titled "Design for Manufacturability". We looked at things like lowering fastener and part count, to reduce assembly time (and assembly errors, etc.). It was taught by a part time guy who had a lot of experience with it in industry.

I may have missed it, but I don't think there was a similar "Design for Service" course. It's not been entirely ignored, there are makes of cars that mechanics hate to work on because service was not particularly accounted for in the design, and there are cars that they like a lot.

I'm up against the car issue in a big way. I wanted to change a clutch in my 06 scion xb I'd need to suspend the engine and trans separately to get at the clutch in the middle. That's 2 big lumps of steel hanging over my head while I wrench.. I can't pull the assessmbly out the top because it doesn't fit through the opening! And it's only by a few inches!

In my 1973 240z I can practically stand in the enginebay with the engine in place and if I want to pull the motor and trans it's a job a single person could do if they had practice.

It's weird

If you do the math, it can be seen that a large enough software company, with a strong enough anti-recycling ("upgrade") program, could be responsible for more toxic chemicals being wasted compared to the chemcal waste from companies like Dow and DuPont.

And somewhat perversely, while a chemical plant's waste is concentrated in a single place, which makes it straightforward (if expensive) to contain and treat, the "industrial waste" embodied in consumer products gets spread across the entire planet, eventually landing in millions of unlined municipal landfills, bodies of water, and unsafe 'recycling' facilities.

The most straightforward solution would be a deposit covering the eventual disposal cost of products, which would then be refunded as the product was responsibly recycled (similar to aluminum cans in some parts of the US), but of course I don't expect to see anything like that in my lifetime. Much easier to pay lobbyists to allow you to continue externalizing your costs on the public.

I'm not so sure. We must consider the whole lifecycle.

My buddy, with genuine compassion, recycles used PCs and gifts them to communities in the third world. I've read some pretty strong arguments that it'd better for everyone if they simply received the newest, cheapest PCs.

Sweden's efforts could help (symbolically) by influencing the design of future goods, to be more serviceable, upgradeable.

Not sure what service your friend uses for gifting his electronics to African countries, but I believe most electronics are sent to Ghana then burned for various metals.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/

He and his students are the service. They deliver the PCs personally and then hang out to help set things up and train the locals.

Edit: Ah. I probably should have wrote that my friend refurbishes PCs for donation. My bad.

>This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer.

I have not heard any "cut VAT" scheme that doesn't sound really sensible.

My suggestion would be to cut VAT alltogether so we can save our souls from endless tax cut jungle. But that's not going to happen, because VAT is effectively barrier against foreign goods, important source of government income and can't go progressive. As a result conservatives love it to death.

The reason governments like it is because it is hard to avoid.

If cryptocurrency gets big, it's the first tax everybody avoids.

That last bit says to me that we need to:

a) figure out how to make washing plates more efficient

b) extend the lifetime of plates so their manufacture is amortized over more uses

(Or do you specifically call out china plates because they are known for seeing so little use?)

> It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain.

Reminds of: "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it."

https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8

> Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.

Only if you use a dishwasher. IF you do dishes by hand, the only cost is water and soap. Strictly speaking from an environmental point of view the time you spend doing it would be considered a "gain" instead of a "cost", given that you will be probably not engaging in modern electronic entertainment for the duration of the task.

In an industrial environment, such as a restaurant, the cost analysis would be non trivial, given the more complex supply chains that businesses have.

I'm not convinced. Where are you getting that water from? Maybe if you manually drew it from a well...

Water has to be processed and transported to your house, and then heated. A modern dish washer is more efficient than hand washing dishes because it uses less water.

No. Dishwasher uses less energy, less water and less detergent. [0]

Of course things depend on your use case - if you really have just that one cup and spoon, then handwashing may be better, at least if you are happy with some grease left in the dishes.

[0] http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-vs-handw...

The only problem with repairing devices is labour cost, nothing else.

I've had a broken subwoofer that I took to a small electronics shop(in UK), and was quoted 60 pounds to even have it looked at. Not repaired - looked at. The subwoofer cost me 80 pounds on ebay. So predictably, it went straight to the bin.

Same with washing machines, dryers, etc - I bought a Hotpoint washing machine for 220 pounds, but a standard call out charge for an engineer to come and have a look is at least 100 pounds. Plus any parts + cost of labour billed per hour = it's cheaper to just buy a new washing machine and at least have a warranty on it.

Now, I feel like this is exclusive to western countries, because people value their time a lot(as they should!) - but where I'm from(Poland) it would be stupidly cheap to get anything repaired. I had an old LCD TV repaired locally, the guy spent half a day fixing it, and only charged 100 zlotys(20 pounds/30 USD) - that included parts.

Not sure how we can change that, unless we get the labour cost down.

On your subwoofer, you can try listing that kind of thing on Freecycle/Freegle. Commonly someone technically competetent will pick it up to see if they can fix it.

Some cities also have repair cafes, where skilled idealistic people hang out with tools and help you try to fix it yourself.

We could start sending items to Poland for repair.

Part of the problem is globalisation. Things are made in places with cheap labour, and sold in places with expensive labour.

But it seems to me like the problem is equally that new goods are too cheap, rendering labour unable to compete.

There are many externalised costs to a new product not reflected in the price (or we wouldn't even be having this discussion) - the environmental cost of manufacture, the environmental cost of disposing of the thing it replaced, the raw materials we unsustainably mined.

Fixing this directly is politically untenable because we'd have to drastically raise the price of everything. This Swedish tax break scheme is actually sort of an underhanded way of doing just that - to compensate for the lost revenue other taxes will go up (or the currency will inflate - either way everything costs more).

> Not sure how we can change that, unless we get the labour cost down.

If my living was covered by basic income, playing electronics detective and fixing broken stuff sounds like a somewhat fun and fulfilling job (even though 90% of my day may be spent replacing caps). Or I may have just been watching too many electronics YouTube videos lately...

If cheap labor is the problem then it is also the solution. Ship the subwoofer to the country that produced it for cheap, and have the cheap labor there repair it.

Interestingly, I wonder if labor (a major factor in repair as you say) is essentially irrelevant to the climate, and thus make spending copious labor, in stiu of more shipping & manufacture, the best thing environmentally.

Shipping things around burns petroleum, but human labor costs mostly time (no climate impact) and calories, which are largely being burned anyway simply by existing. (Though this changes a little if we're talking hard manual labor instead of delicate work with the hands)

There are downsides to repairability. It means more fasteners to come loose, and more connectors to give trouble. It means more bulky devices; you can't cram everything in as tightly if it has to come out later.

I restore old Teletype machines, which were designed to be 100% repairable. You can take them apart down to the individual parts and put them back together. Everything is attached with screws and lockwashers. Restoring an 80-year old machine is routine.

They are not low-maintenance. Each machine has over 600 lubrication points. There are hundreds of things to be adjusted. You need a sizable tool kit and two suitcases of parts for normal maintenance. And you have to study up on how to do all this. Few people want to bother with that level of detail any more.

Are those museum pieces, or are there some insane industries still using actual Teletypes?

Museum pieces. It's a hobby.

I fail to understand why Scandinavian politics always manage to make sense.

Is that cultural, historical, economical, or does the tough climate force people to think a little bit more about how they manage their society?

I assure you we have stupidity here too, it's a global trait. While this one makes sense, there's also a proposed "Chemicals tax" for 2017, taxing electronics (phones/tablets/games consoles/etc) per weight, regardless of contents. So what we waste the most (phones/tablets) will barely pay for anything, while TV's which can last 5-10 years will get more expensive.

Wouldn't the answer then be to apply the Chemical tax, divided by the expected lifetime of the device?

Sure, that would be better, but it's still not really related to the amount of (environmentally detrimental) chemicals in the devices.

You are just too far away. Swedish politics is as sick a joke as in Italy.

- The school and high school results are in a state of implosion. No real political reaction.

- Because of internal political manoeuvres, the immigration policies were done so it will cost multiple times of the defence spending the coming years -- and risk a Spanish style housing crash.

- Putin acts more or less like Hitler in the mid 1930s. The defence is a joke, despite the politicians knowing this for a long time.

- For political reasons, there has been almost no building of housing over the last 20 years. During the same time, the population has increased by at least 10-15% because of political decisions...

- The trains are a joke because of bad upkeep. The problem seems to be that increased repairs won't make them work better until after the next election, so all governments spend the money in ways that buy votes better.

- And so on.

You could be describing the UK.

" Putin acts" Are you describing Russia or Sweden?

I think the poster was referring to Sweden not spending on military despite having a potentially hostile neighbor (or near-enough; not sure if Sweden shares a border with Russia)

They don't; Finland is in between as a buffer. Traditionally, Finland had stronger land forces and guerilla warfare capacity, Sweden had stronger navy and air force. That's pretty much gone now.

Sweden is btw considering to bring back the draft (conscription), and now it would be both for men and women.

There's also lots of things wrong in Scandinavia. There's segregation between the "native" population and the immigrants/their descendants. Suspects for crime, including children are put into isolation by default. Strict drug laws, strict alcohol laws that lead to binge drinking instead of a normal enjoyment of beer/wine. A strong sense that they're the best in the world which they often actively carry outwards.

Still I really love it.

The binge drinking I've seen in Sweden is a shadow of the binge drinking I've seen in the UK, which has more lenient laws. Though I dread going to conference in England because their normal end-of-the-day social drinking is my binge drinking, so I'm perhaps not one to say.

I believe that it's common in many if not most countries for its citizens to have a strong sense that they're the best in the world. Forbes has an article from 8 year ago titled "World's Most And Least Patriotic Countries" describing a NORC/U. Chicago study. NORC lists Sweden as one of the least patriotic countries.

Given how much I knew Swedes love their country, and love flying their flag, either that study has methodological errors, or effectively all the citizens of a nation have a strong sense that their nation is the best in the world.

This reminds me of my time in Stockholm. I was there for a few months and saw quite a few homeless people. I don't remember a single one of them being a white "native" Swede. They all appeared to be immigrants. Swedes might brag about their good social welfare (and it's great if you can get it) but it doesn't seem to be applied evenly.

Those are migrants, not immigrants. They are allowed to stay for 3 months without a job (but there is no checks on how long they stay) and they do get a lot of free healthcare and other "benefits" they don't have in their originating countries. Scandinavia cannot help everyone. There is rules and an order in who to help first, and unfortunately for the migrants they are not at the top.

God how I hate the reputation these people give us. They are Roma people from Romania. We are drowning in them in Norway as well. We pay Romania a shitload to help them, but all the money disappears in corruption so Roma people actually find life easier begging for scraps in Scandinavia than living in the country where they have citizenship and their government is supposed to take care of them with Scandinavian money.

We can't just shelling out money and benefits to people who have no legal status in our countries. Then millions would pour in.

You sound like the Donald talking about Mexicans!

So sorry for your reputation. /s

I see why you and many others living outside of the region would think that. Sweden is very good at only extolling her perceived "virtues" and sweeping the rest under the rug. Waaaay under the rug.

There is a real moral and intellectual superiority among many Swedes that I find deeply distasteful. From environment to politics to how to bag your groceries, and yes--even close a door properly, the "Swedish way" is always promoted as the only "right way."

Out of curiosity where do you live? Perhaps this is a regional thing but down here in Skane people are very humble about being Swedish, almost as if they are ashamed of some sort of history.

They certainly wouldn't describe something as "the Swedish way" unless it was something about how the police are ineffective due to bureaucracy or something similar.

In general, Swedes are pretty self-depreciating people. But, down there, people might be just ashamed of being from Skåne :)

It seems a lot more complicated than either your view or the grandparents. If you watch Fredrik Lindströms "Världens Modernaste Land" it explores the question of the conflicting Swedish self-image pretty well (and the history of how it became what it is today), but I wouldn't know how to summarize it in a Hacker News comment.

From my US perspective, I don't think anyone here believes that Sweden (or any other Scandinavian country for that matter) is some kind of wondrous utopia of social democracy without its own problems. What is going on is more of a growing sense of despair and frustration as we see other Western countries moving forward with social progress as we remain stuck in the 20th century, unable to figure out even the basics. Having a conversation regarding the "disposable culture" would not even be a blip on the radar in our political environment (mind you, this is an environment in which one of the main political parties has put forth a candidate who publicly stated that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese[1]). So, to see other countries discuss issues such as these is both literally and figuratively a foreign concept.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/...

I'm with you. I see all kinds of progress and basic needs met in these other democracies. In the U.S., the situation is brutal for a lot of people with most political activity intentionally ignoring every real problem and solution we have to focus on side issues or outright superficial ones. That the corporate media makes money on the status quo and shapes its presentation accordingly means activists might never be able to get the solutions to enough people. I've pretty much given up on getting America in shape. Evaluating alternatives where their people at least try on a regular basis.

I really things swept under the rug more than in most other countries? If there really is such a huge issue I imagine there must be dozens of topics that are completely ignored in Sweden, and at the same time I have a hard time understanding how any reasonably well functioning society can ignore several important areas without more direct effect on the economy?

It's from the 1920s when the social democrats convinced the working person to ditch religion for a more 'rational' form of politics. Despite the other negative comments (nobody thinks their govt is doing good), politicans are held to account and policy is primarily driven by rational debate. For example, there was a strong rumour that a recent prime minister (Goran Persson) was religious. Being religious would obviously be a bad thing, as it might bias his policy - that is the consensus. And yes, it is a more consensus driven society. But without some level of consensus, how can you get your fellow citizens to help one another?

Not a rumour. When asked what profession he would have had he not gone into politics, he answered "priest".

That's true. Just proves the point that it was controversial that somebody with religious tendencies has the lever of power. I should also add Swedish newspapers are somewhat more responsible/rational than Anglo Saxon newspapers (Expressen/Aftonbladet excluded, of course). DN, DI, Dagbladet are all pretty fair to the 'other side'.

In the US it's the exact opposite. Saying you're not religious is political suicide!

Well saying you are not some form of Christian. Both an atheist and a Muslim would have no chance of being elected. Jewish seems to be generally okay. Not sure on Buddhist or other eastern religions.

As of 2010 there were two Muslims in the US Congress. There were also two or three Buddhists. (The number varies by source, I think because of confusion over how to categorize Soka Gakkai.) There were nine "Unspecified", which is probably what you'd put down if you were an atheist.

It is certainly helpful, and perhaps required, to be Christian (some flavor of Protestant, specifically) in many parts of the US if you want to be electable, but it is not as much of a political death sentence as is widely believed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_St...

Intriguingly, the WP articles on more recent Congresses don't have the religious demographics easily accessible. I'm not sure if that's just a Wikipedia thing or if the data isn't being reported.

That is surprising data in a good way.

President I think is a tougher nut to crack, because you need to cross all the different states.. some being more liberal, and some more conservative.

Christianity in the US, particularly in the Revolutionary period, usually meant mainstream Protestant sects. Indeed, in the mid-1700s, Maryland (originally set up as a Catholic colony during England's turbulent religious times) actually outlawed Catholicism and prohibited Catholics from serving public office. Only one Catholic (Charles Carrol) signed the Declaration of Independence. The first (and, to date, only) Catholic elected president was JFK.

Note that Mitt Romney is Mormon, which is sometimes considered non-Christian. Thomas Jefferson is probably the closest the US ever had to an atheist president (he wrote a translation of the New Testament that cut out all of the miracles)--in a time when church was actually held inside the US Capitol. I'm not aware of any viable non-Christian presidential candidates, although there have been Jews for the vice presidential nominee (Lieberman) or as primary candidates (Sanders).

Judging from polls that ask questions like "Would you vote for a president if he were an atheist?", an outright atheist would be unlikely to hold a successful run for the presidency, at least not for another century or so. Muslims would probably have a harder time than Buddhists or Hindus (as far as I know, there really haven't been any studies on the latter groups), but they'd have an easier time than atheists.

For less visible elected roles in the US, there are already Muslims and atheists who have been elected. The first Muslim representative in Congress was sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Koran.

Being a Catholic was a significant hindrance to JFK's presidential ambitions. You have to be the right kind of Christian.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1692060...

My gut says distrust of Catholics has gone down in the past 30 years, but I could not find data to back it up. But yes, many things factor into things..

The devil is in the details. For example the "chemical tax" is on the weight of the products, so when you buy consumer electronics you are supposed to be paying 120 kr/kg up to a maximum of 320 kr before VAT. This is blamed on environmnentally hazardous flame retardants on circuit boards. So the very design of this tax incentives less weighty electronic products, but I've learned that some electronic products longevity is correlated to its cooling, so you end up paying for the heat sink instead of the circuitboard. So it can even become a perverse incentive where you buy the cheapest possible product that might last a shorter compared to a heavier version that lasts longer.

The obvious question is then why they chose to tax the total weight and not the total amount of hazardous flame retardant (or what ever classification they want to categorize the environmentally hazardous chemicals").

Maybe the industry refuse on the ground of trade secrets, or maybe it would be too costly for the producer to produce the correct measurements, or maybe retailers has not enough pressure to get producers to follow such regulative requirements. Thus a imperfect solution with imperfect incentives, but which hopefully is calculated to do more good than harm in the cost-benefit analyses.

Yes but the imperfect incentives isn't punishing "consumption" of electronic devices. One clear example is the consumer version of a surround system with built in bluray. The day that the blu-ray drive gives up the consumer goes out buys a new one and throws out the old one. Now if we compare that to the enthusiast and buys a heavy receiver, separate speakers, and blu-ray player and is taxed individually on each component. What happens the day blu-ray gives up... he goes out and buys new blu-ray and keeps the old stuff.

Same goes for the pc-gamer that builds his own PC. Buys individual components gets taxed on each, upgrades and replacements of components are taxed. But a regular consumer goes out and buys a flimsy laptop taxed less and throws away the laptop when it breaks.

which Is the problem with things like mandating maximum power for vacuum cleaners you just get a lower power motor which is run at 100% duty instead of a higher power one run at a lower duty cycle - with the effect of reducing the design life of the device.

Social Democracy/High Taxes

Culturally protestant but atheist/indifferent

Not big enough for perverse corruption.

It's probably more in line with what a democracy is supposed to be and it doesn't lend itself to corruption so easily. The thing is, it's our societies and our conceptions of stuff that are wrong and that's why it seems weird. They are right(also "Europe" has been devastated by war, ignorance, plagues, injustice for much longer than our 'newbie' countries, they had to learn something eventually. The population in general is much better equiped with education and civility), us new-worlders, we think we don't need that and that we'll be just fine :)

There seems to be plenty here that like the idea of lowering the Value Add Tax on repairs. Let me ask: Why stop at 12.5% VAT for repairs? If you'd go all the way down to 0% - the repairs could potentially be up to 25% cheaper than they are now.

Perhaps if they make repair too sweet, abuse will skyrocket asymptotically.

Or, perhaps it transforms from "incentive" to "subsidy".

What we really need is financial penalties on companies that make stuff deliberately hard to repair. Set up a department of the Consumer Rights Bureau (or whatever it's called) where people can report devices the've been unable to fix due to deliberate obfuscation/etc., and that forces manufacturers to refund the consumer the entire purchase sum of that device no matter how old it is.

Anecdote: my washing machine recently broke the main bearing, and I was going to fix it. Even found a nice teardown/reassembly vid on Youtube of the exact same model (a bit older than mine). After 2 hours of work, I discover Bosch has gone from using screws on the outer drum to plastic welding it shut. So fixing it means replacing the entire assembly, costing 2/3 of a new machine and with a four week delivery time for the part. I learned this is only done to screw consumers over, and that all manufacturers do it now. The drum still has all the mounting tabs for being screwed together, so they're literally just saving $0.30 on screws.

That is utterly infuriating. Stuff like this really shakes my faith in capitalism.

To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem. I honestly wonder how they sleep at night.

The market clearly can't fix this issue, so regulation must be the only option.

Markets can fix the issue. But the market may need regulation to ensure externalities are captured. E.g. taxing energy and recycling costs, and taxing based on expected lifetime (e.g. a tax that reduces the longer full repair warranty you offer).

For the "taxing recycling cost" we have an example in the case of bottles. Norway for example has a reducing bottle tax that starts at a certain rate for non-recyclable drinks containers or containers that are recyclable but aren't. The tax rate then drops proportional to your proven recycling rates, and falls away completely if your rate is high enough. Having distributors take back failed products is great, but it's insufficient in that they have no reason to encourage consumers to return broken products, and often have a strong disincentive to (they end up having to pay or the transport and recycling).

Basically, we should expect companies to either make society good for environmental externalities related to their products, or pay what it costs society to make other arrangements, so that these costs end up getting priced into the products so we can make our buying decisions accordingly.

To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem.

Alternatively, they know that very few people did repair the old versions (barely anyone know how to do it themselves, and labour costs in the developed world make it uneconomical to call someone) and they decided to reduce waste (and costs, win-win) by cutting down on the number of screws.

I don't know what actually happened, but it's unproductive to assume malice. The reality is that for the most part, markets optimize for what's valued for the consumers, and "easily repairable" is not a feature people value that much.

Bosch were, I believe, one of the external contractors implicated in the VW "defeat device" scandal.

> 1. Screw over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem.

Those are both tremendously effective ways of making money in a capitalist system. That's why so much is spent on lobbying against regulation.

So fixing it means replacing the entire assembly, costing 2/3 of a new machine and with a four week delivery time for the part. I learned this is only done to screw consumers over, and that all manufacturers do it now. The drum still has all the mounting tabs for being screwed together, so they're literally just saving $0.30 on screws.

Alternatively, it's telling you to cut it open and screw it back together. If they really didn't want you to repair it, they'd omit the mounting tabs entirely. This sort of arrangement is not uncommon in the automotive world, where the factory will glue/weld something shut but still leave provisions for you to reassemble with different fasteners. The fact that official service manuals will show the procedures for doing this mean it's not that they want you to replace the whole part.

Yeah, I started trying to cut it open, but it soon became clear I would never be able to put it back together and have it 100% watertight. Which is kind of a hard requirement in this case.

If the channel for the rubber gasket is still there, you could. The old way was a rubber gasket (think "gigantic O-ring") and screws. The new model's plastic welding obviated the need for the gasket, but I bet the provision is still there if the screw bosses are still there.

Also, if you're tackling this repair, it's wise to make sure you can get the old bearings off the "spider" and that the spider isn't cracked from vibration. On our washer, I couldn't get the large bearing off the spider without trashing the spider and back half of the tub, and that made the repair overall uneconomical.

If you can get yours off, then order the parts. This also suggests replacing the bearings when they first start to make noise (a bit of a growl) or when the inner tub has some axial play relative to the outer tub (not to the door seal or frame of the washer, as that's from the suspension system). It would suck to order $50-75 worth of parts and not be able to do the repair anyway. You "have" to replace the seal and large bearing. I don't think it makes any sense not to replace the small bearing as well while you're in there. I also buy the tub seal gasket, though I've never felt the old one wouldn't have been fine to re-use (if present).

Silicone sealant, the "universal gasket", should also work to seal the joint, as the tub is not under high pressure.

3m 5200 Marine Sealant is my go-to for permanent sealing solutions (they do a slightly less-permanent version - 4200 - that might be more appropriate)

It's not "only" to screw consumers over. IMEstimation, vanishingly few consumers would repair a washer with a bearing failure, most because they assume the service call and repair would be $400+ and the new machine only about double that, so might as well just buy a new one. And the failure mode either sounds dramatic (like a jet engine coming apart in the spin cycle) and/or the machine starts putting brown grease onto the clothes, making people believe the problem is not a simple one.

I went through this with my in-laws who were all set to buy a new one when I noted that I could get the parts for under $100 delivered and tackle it when they came in. Most people just "call a guy" or "buy a new one" rather than tackle disassembly of their washer. (And that part is pretty daunting; when replacing them, I always assume that they start with the bearing and seal at the beginning of the assembly line and build the rest of the washing machine around that. :) )

In addition to saving money on the screws, the manufacturer could save money on the rubber tub gasket that seals the two tub halves together when fastened with screws, and save over a dozen assembly operations, all of which are likely manual (inserting the gasket, and inserting and tightening 12+ screws) That might save the manufacturer $5-7, which appears as $20-30 by the time the machine hits the retail floor.

Consumers will buy a $799 washer before they'll buy an otherwise seemingly identical $819 washer. If consumers want repairable items, they need to be willing to buy (and sometimes/often pay more) based on that preference.

For every consumer that lost money by having a hard to repair in the field tub, a few dozen saved $20+ on the initial purchase. It's unclear whether consumers won or lost overall on the trade, because that seal and then washer failure does seem to be what tends to do in the front loaders. It's pretty clear that the Earth lost, but that there might be more to gain by "training" people to repair their old stuff (or accept slight imperfections in old gear rather than discarding at the first hint of imperfection). That's a form of "nudging" as stated in the article.

>>And the failure mode either sounds dramatic (like a jet engine coming apart in the spin cycle) and/or the machine starts putting brown grease onto the clothes, making people believe the problem is not a simple one.

Great insight. I wonder how far we (as in general society) have come from the science/technology aspects of our day to day life. Even repairing simple machines like a washing machine is almost beyond the ability of most people even with the availability of all tools needed.

I conjecture that despite the availability of information, the percentage of people with hacker-mindset is declining. Companies are to blame for this (obfuscation etc), no doubt, but societal culture also seems to play a very important role here.

The society doesn't seem to value such knowledge anymore much. Am I missing something?

The availability of tools is far from a given as well.

It appalls me how few people will tackle what seem to me to be utterly basic repair tasks. I may be on the extreme end, but I think some people would pay someone to change a lightbulb in their house (and I'm sure a great many DO pay someone to replace a headlamp or tail light bulbs).

I'm trying to do my part, ensuring that my kids are exposed to the DIY/maker/hacker ethic/experience, and even went into to teach my daughter's kindergarten class the (very) basics of electricity and we "built" flashlights together (mostly, the kids did a life-scale real "electricity" game with banana jack cables to make a complete circuit and a light to light from a 12V battery and then they put stickers with their name on it around the batteries of pre-built flashlights with a bare wire to the negative terminal as the "switch".) That was 2 years ago, and the kids still talk about it sometimes when I see them at pickup. My son (3 at the time, 5 now) can explain from that how a switch works and that electricity "has to make a whole circle" in order to work.

This was the prototype version we made at home. The production version was more robust and looked better, but worked the same basic way.

http://static-s3.sokoloff.com/random/kids/flashlights/flashl... http://static-s3.sokoloff.com/random/kids/flashlights/flashl... http://static-s3.sokoloff.com/random/kids/flashlights/flashl...

How to change a light bulb on a Renault Megane: http://www.meganeownersclub.co.uk/changingmeganebulb.php

There are Audis where you need to remove the front bumper to change the headlamp. (Less of a concern with HID and LEDs, but some of them are still halogen.)

I had one of those, at least according to the repair manual. In that case I found that the local garage were able to change the bulb without dismantling anything by putting the car over their inspection pit and reaching up through a narrow gap between the engine and headlight (having small hands helped here). This was only 5 minutes' work for them and so the charge was very low, and it was easier for me to pay that than to attempt to jack the car up on my driveway and crawl under.

What really appalls me is that in some parts of the world, it is likely there are people who would seriously be scared upon seeing something like that, with thoughts of "is that a bomb?"

On the other hand, you can still find pockets of the DIY ethic in many places. A while ago I remember watching on YouTube an automatic transmission being rebuilt, and two rather young (around 8-10) kids were helping their father with it. That was cute and inspiring.

Tools? There is a minimal set of tools that will cover a very large number of common household and automobile repairs.

I have had a great track record with nothing but a pair of vice-grips and a 4-bit combination screwdriver (2x flathead, 2x Phillips).

Add to that a claw hammer, pocketknife, roll of duct tape, can of WD-40, toilet plunger, needle-nosed pliers, and a few cheap plastic-coated wire coat hangers, and you should be able to bodge or jury-rig anything long enough to get a real repair done over the weekend.

For instance, did you know that one arm of the tweezers in a Victorinox pocketknife can tighten eyeglasses screws?

I am a small time DIY'er and a small time fix-it-yourself person. I came to realize the importance of such tools rather late in my life. Greatly appreciated.

I always has been. Even 30 years ago most people didn't know how to fix those machines. People fixing cars or plumbery have been popularized by TV and books, but really they were a minority, for the simple reason learning a skill takes time. And most people invest their time in only a limited set of things.

I think there was a lot of DIY in the post-Depression, wartime, and immediately post-war economy. Could be just my family experience, but both sets of my grandparents had a very strong "use it up, wear it out, make it do" philosophy and that included fixing/bodging when appropriate.

> Even 30 years ago most people didn't know how to fix those machines.

True, people would use washing machine repair shops. Today you can't do that because the machines have been designed to not be repairable. They come with sealed tubs. People can replace the tubs, but that's a lot more expensive than replacing just the bearings.

Over half the 70 year old guys I know can repair 1960's era cars. First they where relatively simple, second they broke down often. If you made a lot of money then pay someone else, otherwise you where on the sliding scale.

Basically it was like PC repair before laptops. Even if you did not know how to do it working from a good book you would muddle through it.

Even if you didn't know how to fix that car or washing machine, there was a good chance someone in or close to your family - your uncle, your son's girlfriend, etc. - could do that for you. Many of such people started repair shops that could fix pretty much any device of a given category. This secondary repair market is what's disappearing thanks to stuff being less serviceable and more disposable.

It's not only a matter of ability, but also of opportunity cost.

For instance, when I was a teenager, I always fixed my bicycle by myself. Nowadays, I guess I could do it if I had too, but I prefer to pay $50 and have somebody else do it for me. Same goes for washing machines or similar appliance, I'm sure many people could manage to fix them by themselves by spending enough time, but is it worth it?

I agree but I think it is worth considering what the opportunity cost of letting those skills atrophy.

Can you still fix your bicycle? Like if you had no money or were stuck somewhere distant could you still do it?

Is it just because you're older now and have income that you pay someone to do it or is it something society in general does? Do children's parents just get someone to fix their bike or throw it away and get a new one?

What does it cost us as a society when a generation loses those skills?

>>What does it cost us as a society when a generation loses those skills?

This. This is a lot to do with today's society. We don't seem to appreciate the problem at all. People just think that they can throw some money at someone and get the things repaired and so they don't need to learn anything.

Society as a whole may have to bear a huge cost, and by the time they realize this they might have already lost their time.

Manufacturers are a lot to blame but today's lifestyle of "it's just a matter of few bucks, so why waster time?" is also to blame.

I think there's some kind of sliding scale that needs to be teased out. eg, for your bicycle example; if I cycle an hour from home, then have a puncture; I'd rather be able to swap a tube out myself, than walk it home. Even if I can call someone out to me, I can probably do it myself in the time it'd take them to arrive.

Once you can admit there's some level you'd rather be able to do yourself, all you need to do is keep stretching that envelope little by little.

It depends on your definition of opportunity cost.

Recently my ~20 year old fridge stopped working and I spent the better part of the day diagnosing the issue, getting a replacement part and fixing it. Sure, I could have spent that time doing wage labor, call someone to fix it or even get a new fridge and I would have ended up with a net profit. But to me personally, the bigger opportunity cost would have been missing the chance to tinker, learn about fridge circuits, compressors, thermistors, diagnose and fix the issue and enjoy success.

The flip side is so the math Old units are much less efficient. I think last time I did the math my old fridge is rasing my power bill by $50 a year over a new one. So over 10 years that's $500 burned up in smoke and global warming.

So then it's buy a new fridge for $900 vs fix old one for $100 plus $500 in burned coal over 10 years.

Now if power rates doubled then it would always win to buy the new fridge even if nothing to repair.

Yeah I did some math on that too but it's a bit more complicated than that.

First of all, I don't trust a new fridge these days to last 10 years but I can easily see this one purring for another 20 with minor repairs.

Secondly, this is a combo fridge+freezer unit, with 2 compressors. New ones only seem to have one compressor, which makes them somewhat more efficient but if it dies, both my freezer and fridge die with it.

And lastly, it's not my fault we're still burning coal :/ I'm planning to invest in personal solar...

Perhaps.. but lets say in 10 years efficiency goes up another 30%. So yes even if your current fridge COULD last 20 more years, with efficiency gains the best thing for the environment COULD be to melt it down for scrap and get a newer model.

To me this is the really interesting part in all of this. If there was no efficiency gains generation to generation.. say a piece of clothing.. seems pretty obvious to make slightly better if it can last 100% longer for 20% more material/energy/cost.

Things like cars/ fridges / AC units? The math is complex. Think of all the cars on the road right now where 30 year old cars. The air in LA and SF would be like the air in Beijing or Mexico City. It is in fact both good AND bad for the environment at the same time that things are slowly retired and replaced with newer models.

But for example gas furnaces have slowly improved from 50%??? efficient to 99.9% efficient. Clearly they can't get better. But for example, heat pumps can get > 100% efficient.

On the other hand, clean energy is getting cheaper and more widespread globally so power efficiency probably matters less for electric appliances. At the same time, I'm not sure how efficiently humanity is dealing with waste and if we can expect any significant improvement any time soon.

But yeah, it's definitely an interesting balance to think about.

On the other other other hand, there is no such thing as "clean" power.

Wind power takes up land that could be better used for nature or growing food, and kills birds. The turbines are made out of materials that have the same problems as other things. Clearly reducing demand for power is still a good thing, even if we got to 100% renewable power. (And at current low renewable power levels, 1 extra KW of electricity is directly coming from oil or coal or something nasty)

The problem is that the insulated cabinet portion of the fridge could easily last 100 years, just by replacing the door seals every now and then. Why would you want to throw that out with the parts that should be upgraded every 10 years for energy efficiency reasons?

Those old cars could be made as efficient as new ones by replacing every part in them other than the chassis. That's prohibitively expensive now, but mostly because there's no standard for engine compartment size and mount point locations. If I could order a "Type 2A" replacement engine instead of a "year T brand X model Y" replacement engine--or even get a 5-years-used-and-refurbished "Type 2A" engine from someone upgrading their "2011 Brand M Model N" commuter sedan, and put it in my "2001 Brand X Model Y" commuter sedan--that would solve a lot of the vehicle obsolescence problems. Moving mechanical parts wear out a lot faster than fixed structural parts. Why throw them all out at the same time?

For arguments like this, it is easier to look backwards than forwards.

So let's take a 20 year old car, and pretend it was future proofed to take more upgrades. Would you want it today?

* The style wouldn't be right at all. So let's pretend that we are globally willing to accept out of style things for the sake of the environment. Which is a big if, but let's go with it.

* The steering wheel may or may not have airbags. The doors and seats would certainly not have side impact airbags. The doors and seats would not be designed to take these advances. You would need to basically replace the doors and seats to upgrade these new safety features. But what if these new safety features made the door 2 inches thicker? Since you aren't replacing the frame, you now lost 2 inches of internal space. Maybe the driver would still fit, maybe it wouldn't.

* Engines were much much less efficient 20 years ago. New engines have all kinds of things that a mechanic can better explain. Things like carburetors are gone, things like computer controller ignition are in. Would the upgradable car have known about all these future changes? Maybe, maybe not.

* Frames have gotten much stronger / more crash proof in the last 20 years. Think of better crumple zones. So if you wanted to upgrade that 20 year old car to be as safe as a modern car, how would you change the crumple zones within the frame itself?

* Metal itself rusts over time. Things can slow it, but there will always be some rust. What do you do if the frame has rusted in ways that can't be fixed?

* Crashes can permanently damage cars. Say your frame is bent in a crash. Insurance companies write this car off as totaled, and declare it no longer safe to drive. Can you always fix this kind of thing? Perhaps sometimes. Would you want to drive a frame that has been welded back together after a crash? I would not.

This is not an exhaustive list but it partially proves a point. In a field where innovation is happening, it is VERY hard to future proof your hardware. If you disagree and are a programmer, show me an active codebase that has never had a refactor. By going down this path, you are basically saying the contents of a given method can be swapped out, but we can never refactor the codebase. So show me a 20 year old C++ project with no refactor ever done, just methods being swapped out like your replaceable car analogy.

A better software analogy would be calling an API method whose signature has never changed over 20 years. It would be like making a call to the Windows API, one that has been available since DirectX 2.0a, to play a sound clip.

Styling and design still have room to work if your engine compartment standard does little more than define a minimum volume of unobstructed interior space and several fixed mount point locations. You can make an ATX computer case look like practically anything, so long as the screw holes are in the right place, the I/O shield is the right size, and you leave enough internal clearance for the CPU cooler and video card.

The mount point locations became standard on outboard motors in the 80s, when Yamaha decided to use the same pattern as BRP (then OMC), who had in turn copied the pattern used by Evinrude in the 60s. So you could possibly buy a 50-year-old boat and mount a new outboard motor onto it without drilling any new holes or replacing the transom. The outboard motor bolt hole pattern standard does not affect the thickness of the seat cushions, or the size of the docking cleats, or anything else. You can have many different standards that are not mutually incompatible.

The idea is that auto manufacturers would add to a list of standards, rarely obsoleting some. Maybe the 20-year-old car only conforms to the engine compartment standard and the front-wheel-drive automatic transmission standard. The 15-year-old car conforms to those and to the steering wheel (with airbag) standard. The 10-year-old car conforms to those, plus a side-impact standard and a rollover safety standard. So you might not be able to upgrade the 20-year-old car to be as safe as the new car, but you could certainly upgrade it to be as fuel-efficient or as powerful, which might be all you really care about until the frame rusts out. If you are lucky, the old car might have been the basis for a newer standard, and you could upgrade some things as though it were conformant to begin with. A new car would certainly conform to all the existing standards, and if its standards-conforming side-impact air bags were recalled 3 years later, any mechanic would be able to replace them, instead of just the dealers for one maker.

Any given standard would only be replaced by an improved standard, and that might still be backwards compatible to the old standard. So I certainly would take that future-proofed 20-year-old car with a brand-new off-the-shelf powertrain in it, especially if it cost only $8k instead of the $24k I might otherwise have to spend on an entirely new vehicle.

I think you skipped all my points on safety advances, that there is no way could have been future proofed for. Using a 20 year old windows api is different in that it doesn't put your life in danger. A 20 year old crumple zone and 20 year old airbag technology DOES increase your risk of death.

It is up to the consumer whether it would be better to spend their limited budget on upgrading an older car where safety retrofitting is not possible, or on migrating to a newer car.

You can't have a standard for a technology that doesn't exist yet. But anything that does have a standard can likely be repaired and upgraded more cheaply in the future. It preserves more of the value in the used cars.

If someone really needs those side-curtain air bags, they would be able to trade in their old vehicle, at a higher price, to someone who doesn't value safety features as highly, and use the proceeds to help pay for a newer vehicle with more of those features.

Some fridges achieve energy efficiency by insulation upgrades and/or by pulling a vacuum against the seal to limit air leakage. Those enhancements might not be easy or possible to retrofit.

More efficient? It should be the opposite: two compressors should be more efficient than one. Yes, smaller compressors are a little less efficient than bigger ones, however unless you always open both the fridge and freezer doors, it's more efficient to cool them separately. The big downside to dual compressors is cost and complexity.

Here's the thing - the more disposable and non-serviceable the stuff becomes, the less likely it is you'll find someone to pay that $50 - instead of going to the repair shop down the street, you have to find the Licensed Repair Shop of the vendor, pay $200 and hope it'll be done before next month. And a new bike will cost you $199 anyway.

Yep...who repairs shoes or clothes now a days? Go out and buy a new shirt for less than $10. Furniture repair? With Ikea and other compressed wood furniture, it's not worth it to repair furniture. Consumer printers? Just buy a new one.

Heck, I can buy a brand new photo printer for cheaper than it takes to buy the ink (after rebates, of course).

I'm also surprised by this: The proposed legislation would cut regular tax on repairs of bikes, clothes, and shoes from 25% to 12%.

I can't imagine paying a 25% tax on someone's labor (I live in the U.S)

It isn't always so simple. Money and lifestyle often plays a role in what folks can and can't do.

>... even with the availability of all the tools needed.

This is often a first problem, actually. I've had a few times in my life where I've been completely without handtools. Upon first moving out, for example, upon moving out again: After splitting with my ex, and moving to to a new country.

So if I would sit here and start looking at a washing machine that is broken, I have to buy parts, hope it is user-serviceable, plus make sure I have the handtools or buy them. Afterwards, I know there is a bit of risk that I've repaired this badly or that the source for the instructions were wrong. In addition, if I had to replace a large part, I also have to deal with disposal (not all places will take large items often).

If I'm limited on money, there are generally other choices. A used washer from a dealer or a new, bottom-of-the-line washer on clearance or something sometimes runs the same money - plus I get some sort of promise it'll work or be replaced. It might be possible to repair it if there is a repairman in the area, but I'm gonna balance that out with the cost of the other options.

In addition, with something like a washing machine, I have to figure out if I can wait 2-3 weeks on a part. Do I have time to go to the laundry place? Can I afford both the part and to pay to do laundry? Can I do it over at a friends house for a few weeks? If this doesn't fix the machine, can I afford to try again with a another part? (this last statement is often a sore point when folks are fixing their own vehicles).

And this is assuming someone is mechanically inclined enough to do it or try it, if they think it is a reasonable risk (don't want the washer catching fire) and other things I'm sure I'm missing.

> If this doesn't fix the machine, can I afford to try again with a another part? (this last statement is often a sore point when folks are fixing their own vehicles).

Spot on! I can't even remember how many times I had to bike or bum a ride to a parts store midway through a repair.

The parent underestimated the costs, you're underestimating the saving.

Whilst the first consumer saves €20, or whatever, the item can't be repaired by an onward buyer either making its second-hand cost approach zero. They save €20 off the purchase and lose €100 of the sale at the end of their ownership.

Moreover the societal cost is vastly increased as the machine gets dumped (or possibly stripped for reusable parts but less likely as there are fewer machines that are repairable; maybe parts will be recycled for the metal).

Also as there's no second-hand market pressure to reduce prices is removed. Good news for launderettes! Meaning the original saving probably just gets shifted in to profits for the company owners.

Probably if the seal and washer are a common failure mode then the company need to spend a few more pence on the washer or accurately torquing the screws -- there's a good chance this fault mode has been designed in. IME of trawling for second-hand machines bearings are a more common failure (machine overloading?). The most common appear to be "computers" and other control modules; then it seems to be pumps and motors (eg brushes).

The seal that fails is the small seal on the back of the drum that keeps the grease on the outside of the tub and the caustic wash water from the bearing. It runs (with a spring backer) between the fixed part of the machine and the tub at full RPM, with hot, slightly caustic wash water in it. Those simply aren't lifetime seals and can't reasonably be made to be so.

It's the seal here: https://www.amazon.com/Front-Washing-Machine-Bearing-Repair/...

Not the tub seal, nor any other place where accurate tightening of screws can influence.

PS: I agree with you to a point on the second hand market value keeping some amount of tabs on the pricing pressure in the brand-new market, but I also don't think that very many people actually cross-shop brand-new and second-hand to really keep those markets' prices linked.

Ah, presumably then that's the main source of the bearing failures? TIL, thanks.

Yes, I believe so, in that the typical failure mechanism is the failure of that seal, letting wash water (inherently full of degreasing agents) against the bearing, where it eventually (over perhaps hundreds of wash cycles) washes out enough of the lubrication in the bearing to get steel on steel in the bearing.

From there, the rumble and looseness quickly follows.

The bearings themselves I believe would run for fifty of years in the typical washer duty cycle (~8 hours a week, 400 hours a year, 20,000 hours in a half-decade), if they were running in a typical (non-washing) machine setting.

I inherited a 35 years old washing machine, it is used about once a week. Every 10 years the bearing needs replacing and I had to replace the water pump one time. Still going strong...

That's about 20€ in spare parts every 10 years. The savings in electricity and water with a new machine are tiny compared to savings by not having to buy a new machine in the first place and then replace it every 5 years...

are they, though? I have an older (less than 10 year old) Panasonic washing machine and if the ratings of newer machines are to be believed, when comparing with the dedicated water meter I have connected to the current one, a new one might pay for itself in water savings in about 4 years.

I'm just not sure I believe the newer models ratings. mine is much more efficient in water use on paper than what the water meter clearly states.

It depends how expensive water is for you. I would not trust the ratings at all though.

Funny story about new "more efficient" machines... a neighbor bought a new BEKO machine (before that she had a CANDY I think). She says the new machine uses so little water you cannot even see the actual water inside. All you see is soaked clothes.

She says that the results are worse compared to the old CANDY and that the clothes get damaged more easily.

Due to EU regulations there is no more "add extra water" feature like in older machines.

So what she does is she waits for the machine to pump water inside then she pours 6L of water through the detergent dispenser. Now that's progress :)

> Due to EU regulations there is no more "add extra water" feature like in older machines

Not sure I buy this, I just bought a new Miele (to replace the broken Bosch) that has a dedicated "Water Plus" button.

France recently passed a law that makes it illegal for companies to take deliberate steps to reduce the shelf life of a product in order to increase its replacement rate. Of course in practice it will be difficult to prove, but still having a law is a good start.

No. Just do not buy stuff from companies that make hard to repair goods. Or make campaigns about it.

On the other hand, I've repaired my Bosch washing machine twice in the last year. Once to replace the pump (somehow it ate a pair of tweezers - still not sure how!), and once when one of the mounting brackets for the main drum suspension springs failed. Both were remarkably easy repairs, though the design of the mounting bracket seemed like it was designed to eventually fail after a certain amount of use (or perhaps abuse). The important thing was that although Bosch don't sell the parts anymore, compatible parts were easily available online from a third-party parts supplier. The Internet seems to have really enabled such niche suppliers to thrive.

Some parts on a washing machine are definitely designed to break. For example, the couplings [1] on a washing machine are usually made of a plastic material. They are designed to break when introduced to various amounts of stress. Breaking under stress protects the motor from damage (which is a lot more expensive to replace). It's definitely frustrating when the washer breaks down for this reason, but the repair is extremely cheap (< $5 for the actual part, more for labor) if you do it yourself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupling

In my old washer this coupling will routinely break almost each year. After ten years I have mastered the replacement process (removing the case, turning machine upside down, and detaching the motor) in under 15 minutes.

Pro tip: if you decide to DIY, order half a dozen of these [1] couplings in advance.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/3364003-3364002-REPLACEMENT-KITCHENAI...

I'm no communist, but sometimes I wish there was less model churn "innovation". Just have a standard "Model T" washing machine that covered 95% of the market. Patents expired, several generic manufacturers, economies of scale, new and used parts readily available, websites dedicated to it...

Anyone can reuse old fully workable products in their every day life, it really is super easy and in many cases can be cheaper. While I do go occasionally go into thrift or antique stores, I also hit up garage sales, but my main source is ebay.

Besides the good feeling from putting something back into service that would other wise be junked there can be some serious nostalgia involved. Examples, I have a Toastmaster 1b16 fully automatic toaster like my grandparents had in the 50s, works perfect regardless how many slices pass through it. Old glass plates (morgantown, crinkle, etc) that we use every day for eating. Milk glass spice dispensers, salt & pepper, and old glass water containers in the fridge for ice tea. You can even buy old tupperware or ceramic and glass storage for the refrigerator. My favorite has to be a the vintage fans, a six bladed brass Emerson (blades look like ship propeller) is flawless in use and over a hundred years old.

About the only things I won't use are higher tech electronics, efficiency aside the older items may not even be usable because of software or serviceability

I really like this idea. I collect old videogame consoles, so I'm pretty used to paying Ebay for nostalgia. However, I wonder if old electronics are much less efficient and end up using more electricity - thus actually causing more harm to the environment than a newer but more disposable plastic model.

This is a very nice move to see.

Other people have discussed washing machines below, but there's even more to say on them. Washing machines used to have long warranty periods. Nowadays they tend to be sold with a 2 year warranty, which I believe in the EU is the required minimum. And these manufacturers (Bosch, for example) even have the gall to claim that their products are high quality and that this warranty period somehow proves this, or is in any way a long period.

AFAIK washing machines used to have 10 year warranties, but they cost more along the lines of £800. Now we have £250 washing machines with 2 year warranties. One way of reducing costs is to reduce the number of parts. Sealed tanks, as mentioned below, are one such example. This directly impairs the repairability of the product.

I suspect also that models are released at greater frequency, possibly due to a need to take advantage of price fluctuations in wholesale parts markets (if you can make a washing machine using Part A or Part B, and one month A is more expensive than B, and then this inverts, this creates pressure to constantly design new models to minimise pricing). Though this is just a suspicion, it would make sense: I do know that the (monolithic) spare parts are stocked for a particular model for less time, which means that the prices of the spares which are available are very high.

Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse properly. At other times the actual temperature of the water on the '60 degree' setting has been tested and found to be rather on the low side. (Supposedly all of this efficiency regulation, rather pathetically, only tests the 60 degree programme in the first place, putting a certain degree of competitive pressure on energy efficiency for this setting.) This is particularly insane given that the environmental cost of these quasi-disposable 2-year-warranty washing machines must be much higher than the environmental cost of their resource consumption.

I think consumer goods legislation should recognise that different minimum warranty periods are appropriate for different kinds of product. A legally required minimum warranty period of 6 or 8 years for washing machines, for example, would instantly create pressure on manufacturers to increase the longevity and repairability of their machines.

>just to get one which will rinse properly Much easier to do what I do - run the rinse cycle a 2nd time.

It might be better to run a wash cycle with an empty detergent drawer. Repeating the same rinse cycle with inadequate water won't necessarily help. (Though it wouldn't surprise me if the standalone 'rinse' programme used more water than rinsing as part of a wash programme...)

Supposedly the 'extra rinse' or 'rinse plus' buttons which you see on washing machines only started appearing at the same time they stopped rinsing properly, which is pretty telling.

While in a rental between moves I bought a very cheap ($50), used Maytag. Made in the USA, just over 20 years ago. That thing was built like a tank. They lady who sold it had raised 8 kids. This was her first and only washer to date and it never needed a repair - or so I was told. She replaced it because her adult kids bought her a fancy new LG washer for her birthday. After hauling this tank to my apartment and trying it out - it worked great! Much better than our Bosch front load that we sold before moving. It worked so good I was tempted to take it on the next leg of our move. I give it 2 years before that lady would pay to get her old washer back. In about that long I'll wish I had brought it with me.

I'm sick of disposable products. I have a small collection of "broken" things that I don't have time to get to. If they were built with repair in mind I think they'd be fixed by now, but I'm not sure that laws will get us there. One can hope.

Maybe durable goods should be taxed inversely based on the length of the warranty.

That's an awesome idea - but the tax difference would have to be high enough to incentivize people to choose the products with long warranty, and hence to push the companies to provide long warranty.

However, there's too big chance that all the producers might have an unwritten deal to propose the same length of warranty anyway :(

Buy MIELE, those survive for decades.

Probably the least worst option unless you want to buy (very expensive) commercial/industrial models.

The main downside to Miele that I'm aware of is that unlike other manufacturers they monopolise repairs, i.e. only Miele repairmen can repair Miele machines, AFAIK.

Also while Miele machines are better built they still use short warranties. Here Miele claims to test their machines to 20 years equivalent use: http://www.miele.co.uk/domestic/washing-machines-1566.htm?ma...

Yet they still only offer 2 years warranty as standard. IIRC they occasionally offer free 10 year warranties for brief periods for promotional purposes. So they sometimes put their money where their mouth is, but only occasionally.

Actually, in Germany all better models come with 10 year warranties, and they allow most people to repair them.

(We got a Miele washing machine in 2006, and after good experiences with that, we also switched our dishwasher in 2009 to Miele)

Thanks for the clarification re: repairs.

But I checked the (UK) Miele website just now and it seems like warranties there are 2 years by default, with extended warranties of 10 years available. So maybe this varies by region. Maybe German consumers are savvier than UK consumers and demand longer warranties?

I am only aware of one brand of washing machine that explicitly claims to be designed to be repairable by the end-user--Staber. I have never actually owned or used one before, so I'm not sure how fit for purpose it may be otherwise.

I have successfully repaired other brands of washing machine, dryer, and refrigerator, though. It isn't that difficult, but obtaining the replacement parts is absolutely ridiculous. The first-party site for ordering replacement parts often charges 50-80% of the MSRP of a complete new appliance for just one replacement part.

If any country wanted to encourage repair over replacement, tax incentives are probably not the best way to do it. Publish national standards for appliance form factors, such as case dimensions, screw hole placement, subassembly dimensions, connectors, drive belts, elastic ring sizes, etc. Then phase in requirements that all new appliances must conform to the standard by 20xx.

If all washing machines conform to standard WM-S, WM-M, WM-L, WM-I, or WM-X, and those standards only have three different sizes of drive motor and one kind of power connector and one control connector, then manufacturing third-party replacement motors becomes more economically possible than the current situation, where a Brand X replacement motor might not even fit correctly in two different Brand X models.

The chassis, outer panels, and drum of a washing machine just don't really need to be replaced, unless the paint chips and they rust out. Bearings, seals, motors, belts, control electronics, and knobs, on the other hand, those wear out.

Perhaps I have just been spoiled by ATX standards for computer parts, and connector standards for ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIe, ATA, SATA, SCSI, M.2, and USB. All those standards mean that third-party manufacturers don't have to maintain separate silos for Apple, Dell, HP, Compaq, Tandy, Amstrad, etc. The third-party motherboard manufacturers can just conform to Intel + ATX to sell a product, and maybe also micro-ATX and mini-ITX to cater to small-system builders. It is not difficult at all to assemble a working computer where the CPU + chipset, motherboard, case, power supply, system memory, SSD, hard drive, removable disk drive, graphics card, monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, speakers, wi-fi, and Bluetooth are all made by different companies.

But if you try to replace a single-phase AC 120V 60Hz 5A 0.5hp motor in an appliance with another of a different brand with exactly the same power rating, it probably won't work. The taxes are not the problem--it's getting the parts. As long as the only reliable source of usable replacement parts is the original manufacturer, of course repairing won't be viable. They would much rather sell you an entirely new product!

I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard.

I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory, companies will need to be able to stock replacement parts for much longer if they don't want to have to replace the machine outright with a newer model when it breaks. They may then find that standardising parts is in their interests, etc.

Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies suddenly change direction.

When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much as they needed another PCI slot. ISA is still a standard. Nobody uses it because PCI was better. Likewise, AGP appeared, and then went away, because PCIe is better. Wi-fi standards have likewise evolved, from A, to B, to G, to N, to AC. Many devices are backward-compatible.

But an ATX motherboard manufactured last week will still fit in the ATX tower case I bought in 1999, with a power supply I bought in 2009. The original manufacturer of that case does not need to stock parts for it, or even still be in business, because if I want another 120mm case fan, 10 different companies can sell me a new one that will fit (and 20 more would be willing to buy a fan from one of the former 10, stencil a logo on it, and resell it to me at a markup).

Perhaps it would be better to enforce a mandatory standard for 10 years, to establish it in the market, then make it voluntary again, so that innovation could occur. Once a standard exists, there has to be a really good reason for deviating from it, otherwise the market quickly allows the non-standard thing to fail. If it succeeds, it becomes a new de facto standard, and the official standard is likely to either adopt it outright or make the next version compatible.

I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist. But after it exists, it is largely self-enforcing.

To buck off the standard entirely, you literally have to be the size of Apple. And even then, I know for certain that there is at least one person alive that refuses to buy Apple hardware in part because of their proprietary connector shenanigans in a world where USB is a standard.

Non-standards can lead to standards. AMD's Mantle graphics API, for example, was donated to the GLnext effort, which was then renamed Vulkan. If not for this kick start, GLnext would probably still be figuring out a decent API design. Companies need to have the prerogative to do their own thing for a while, because it can lead to better standards.

>I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already exist.

I think I actually had this idea recently, with regard to print cartridges. The idea is that the government would mandate inkjet printers to adopt an open standard for print cartridges, but the law would expire after a number of years. The idea is that once it's established, no company is going to be able to get out of it without damaging their position in the market, but genuine innovation is allowed to appeal to consumers on its own merits, weighed against the downside of divergence from an established standard.

The ATX standard is the reason why no one bothers buying desktop computers any more except extremists and gamers. These computers are way too large and inefficient and ridiculously noisy too, because they aren't properly engineered for sound and ventilation (because they're held back by the 90s-era ATX standard).

Everyone's just given up on it altogether and now they use laptops, or worse, tablets.

Even corporate desktops abandoned ATX ages ago and went to proprietary SFF cases.

I am moving from a laptop as my at-home computer to a quiet-build mini-ITX system literally this week, after the last parts arrive from Newegg.

I think the ongoing market fragmentation resulting from the incompatible proprietary laptop form factors is pushing the whole industry towards consolidation and mergers, and will result in less consumer choice in the long run. I have been privately railing against this crap ever since Dell started shipping not-ATX-but-looks-like-it-at-first-glance power supplies in late 1990s. And Apple has always almost gratuitously used proprietary connectors and form factors, even when a perfectly usable standard already existed. They can all go to a Hell where nothing can interoperate without at least two adapters, and you never have both.

I was driven to the custom build when the headphone jack on my laptop broke. I opened up the case and desoldered the broken one, and the microphone jack, and resoldered the unbroken jack into the headphone jack's place. That worked for a while. Then the laptop keyboard stopped responding to about 5 keys--all of them rather indispensable for typing words. So I replaced the keyboard, and the replacement is just a millimeter too small, so it constantly pops out of its recess whenever it shifts and the plastic clips disengage. Then the headphone-jack-formerly-microphone-jack broke like its predecessor. I already knew the component itself was impossible to find to replace it, so I looked to replace the motherboard. That would cost more than a newer, more capable laptop, if the part had even been in stock.

So I'm building a system such that if anything breaks, I can just replace that one part. I can't get decent repairability without building it myself, and I can't build it myself if there aren't any rassafrassin' standards! I would have built my own clamshell computer (not even necessarily a "laptop"), but no one mass-produces an empty clamshell case for consumer sales, because there is no laptop-standard form factor. Replacement parts for laptops are always expensive, and frequently out of stock.

I did something of the opposite: I used to have a big desktop. I got a laptop later so I could do stuff at coffee shops and elsewhere. But I eventually got tired of the size and noise of the desktop (even though it was loaded with big, slow 120mm fans), and of the syncing issues with the laptop. I had wanted to build a quiet miniITX system, but finally gave up on that idea because of everything I've seen with "standard" ATX and ITX cases: they just are not engineered for quietness. The best you can do is go to water cooling, and I find it ridiculous that I'd have to go to those lengths for some quiet.

So instead I've just gone the laptop route. I can buy a Dell enterprise-level Latitude laptop on Ebay for $150 easily, that's only a few years old, and it's portable and quiet and reliable. It even comes with a magnesium chassis. And if it breaks, I can buy a new one for $150 and resell the old broken one on Ebay to someone who wants the parts. These laptops are extremely ubiquitous (because they're used by so many businesses), so the parts are readily available if I want to just repair it, plus they're built to be fairly easily serviced (the older E6400 and E6410 had only one screw on the back panel). If you were buying consumer laptops, that was your problem: those things are crap and not made for easy servicing. You complain about "if the part had even been in stock": on my Dells, I can easily buy any part I want on Ebay: a new screen, a new motherboard, a new keyboard, a bare back panel, a speaker grill, anything. Everything is in stock.

You don't need to build a laptop yourself to get decent repairability; you just need to get a decent laptop and not a consumer-grade POS.

Then, so I can have a nice workstation, I got a docking station that supports dual DVI/DisplapyPort monitors, USB3, etc. These docking stations are standardized for Dell business laptops, so I can plug a huge range of them into it.

> Standards can change when necessary

When they are mandated by law, they can't. At least not easily and not without giving lawmaking powers to a group of private entities.

An alternative to mandating standard designs is to mandate open designs -- royalty-free licenses and documentation must be adequate for third parties to manufacture and improve all parts.

Regarding rinsing of clothes. People tend to use WAY more detergent then they need. If you look at what consumers reports suggests and what detergent manufacturers suggest, there is a 4 to 1 ratio.

> There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing.

In 99.9% percent of those cases, the problem is that they're used to the quantities of detergent the old non-HE washers take and refuse to reduce the amount, or (in the case of horizontal axis washers) are confused by the lack of suds in modern detergents and overload the machine with detergent. The latter is an especially common problem in laundromats serving low-income areas. Sometimes the machines were so caked with old detergent that I could run a load with plain water and it would come our perfectly clean.

>Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing.

This is because people always use way too much detergent. Stop it. You don't need that much detergent. Get the "he" detergent and follow the directions. You don't need a giant amount of detergent to get your clothes clean.

This is exactly like all the stupid people who always adjust the side mirrors on their car so they have a great view of the sides of their car, instead of trying to minimize their blind spots.

>There are numerous stories of hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse properly.

They most likely need to just use less detergent. You actually need a very small fraction of the detergent most people use and over soaping is a big problem. It's a combo of more concentrated detergent mixed with machines that require less detergent.

Previous models were more tolerant of over soaping.

It still feels weird to me to use so little detergent.

Globalisation vs the environment

Globalisation means consuming cheap stuff made in a low cost country that does usually not last that long and transported over long distances.

Built to consume in cellphones are integrated batteries and cheap components that by design fail after three years so we buy a new phone. Integrated storage of a limited size that you cannot expand. Making things that does not last is more profitable than making things that last long why is that?

How 16 container ships pollute more than all the cars in the world. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...

On one hand economists wants us to blindly consume as much stuff as possible since that is good for the economy. The other hand says we pollute the earth and use to much energy which means we need to consume more durable goods which lasts longer.

How do we integrate the environment in the economy?

Taxes. Externalities can be factored into the price. Build the price of recycling into the product, and make the vendor liable.

Correct me if I am wrong, but under ISDS rules (a la TPP/TTIP), companies could now sue Sweden for potential lost profits as a result of this legislation, right? (Assuming Sweden is signed onto an ISDS treaty, which it probably is not).

They will be once the EU signs CETA next month.

ISDS aren't exactly new.

I believe current trade deals already include them so CETA would not materially change that.

ISDS is a red herring

What makes you think that?

Tax breaks on repairs would not adversely and unfairly impact companies possibility to sell in Sweden.

It would advsersely affect profits and the argument would be that it's unfair

But not to the detriment of any one specific company.

But any one company could claim to have been affected, and produce the paperwork/numbers to back it up.

Especially certain electronics companies.

it would fail on the public good criteria, that is the law is aimed at improving recycling rates not harming companies bottom line. If there was some protectionism going on it would be different. It should have the effect of making companies improve repairability (is that a word?) to make themselves more attractive to buyers.

I'm sorry, but how do you develop a worldview where "public good" is determined via corporate lawsuits? Is it simply in the intention of the law? Because from what I can see of the history of ISDS, harming a companies bottom line is the exact criteria by which these cases are judged. Outside of the tobacco labelling suit, I am hard pressed to find a case where ISDS did not result in a ruling against a government.

It's in the law.

Which law are you referring to? This law contains, in plain language, assertions that laws enacted to encourage repair are considered "public good"? I'll believe it when you post a link.

What if there was a large company, RomeRepairCo, already operating in Sweden? Wouldn't they then have a claim to some form of protectionist angle to this law?

Do you see where I am going with this? You say "it is in the law", yet you are neglecting the fact that court cases hinge on the interpretation of law.

Why are laws designed to nationalize (ahem) national resources not qualifying as "for the public good"? When do governments enact any law that is not (ostensibly, at least) "for the public good"?

The history of ISDS law shows that the validity of "for the public good" is determined by these corporate courts^Wroom of corporate lawyers and according to their own corporate interpretation. This is why the outcomes they have so far produced run so contrary to any non-libertarian interpretation of a moral society.

Your question is somewhat tautological: ISDS provisions typically define how investor suits work, so of course investors can sue.

That does not mean an investor has any chance of winning in this instance under a hypothetical TTIP suit. TTIP includes a provision protecting regulations enacted for public good.

Sounds like a luxury not granted to, for instance, Central America under CAFTA.

Edit: Fixed typo.

In the US, I can sue you just for making this hacker news comment. Doesn't mean I'll make it past the first hearing.

What if this comment hurt you and you had millions of dollars in a legal department?

That lawsuit would be in a civil court, with civil lawyers and actual judges. Not a room full of round-robin corporate laywers.

My comment was not about whether it would be successful. My question was whether it provided the means to initiate a lawsuit.

So you'd rather the case be decided by a single lawyer^H^H^H^H^H^H judge than a panel of lawyers. Even in common law jurisdictions, most of these sorts of cases tend to focus on disputes over issues of law (hence tried by a judge), not issues of fact (which are the only issues which proceed to a jury trial). Judges are usually lawyers before becoming judges--that's not terribly surprising, considering that judges are expected to know a lot of legal theory, which is essentially the same training you undergo to become a lawyer.

Fearing the provisions of ISDS would undermine the principles of justice means that you would rather trust the judgements of a single, likely overworked, lawyer who is expected to know the entire relevant body of law and case history for his or her jurisdiction over the judgements of a panel of lawyers who are likely to have somewhat specialized in the area of dispute being covered.

You have thrown up a false equivalency and are pursuing it in an odd manner.

What I would prefer is that there is absolutely zero mechanisms for a corporation to sue a government over "potential lost profits".

This is just not at all the same as discussing a potential lawsuit over defamation / libel / whatever "you" would be suing me over a comment for. And, yes, in that case I would still prefer to go through the normal court system with laws written by my legislature rather than a room full of mega corps and trade representatives.

In the US, anyone can sue anyone for anything. And if its Federal Court, it can cost a ton of money before a judge ever even looks at it to throw it out.

Wouldn't that only be if they apply the rules unfairly to international companies in favor of domestic companies? If both domestic and international companies received the same tax break, they would be fine.

looks like a VAT cut, so I expect the EU commission will be after them too

It's perfectly legal to lower tax rates on certain products or services. Most EU countries already have multiple VAT rates; eg. in Austria food is taxed at 10% whereas most other stuff is taxed at 20%

it isn't, the minimum rate is 15% EU wide.

there's a lot of rates which were grandfathered in when countries joined the EU, but lowering the VAT on any new products requires unanimous approval in the council.

all details are here: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/eu-vat-rul...

additionally, the commission wants to phase out reduced rates (see my other comment)

Different VAT rates for different types of products are not a problem in EU, in fact almost all European countries also have a reduced VAT rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax...

Quite often the reduced rate applies e.g. to food, but it really can be any product category.

this is an anachronism, the commission regards reduced rates as "an obstacle to the proper functioning of the internal market"[1]

for quite a while the commission has attempted to reform VAT, ostensibly for a "simpler, more efficient and robust VAT system" with the intent of "broadening the tax base and limiting the use of reduced rates" to "generate new revenue streams", which is reported in the media as "EU wants to add VAT to food, childrens clothes and books".

[1]: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX...

Some apparently fruitless legislative efforts are still useful, if only for signaling, dragging the Overton Window back to the left, kicking and screaming.

For example, states (in the USA) legalizing marijuana, even though our Feds still don't agree.

Ditto gay marriage rights.

Etc.

The rationale behind is sound but the trick is to design the rules so that all gains aren't lost in the cost for administering the rules. Differentiated VAT and/or deductions are notoriously expensive and prone for cheating.

It is very difficult/expensive to check if a service provided was the repair of an existing item or a new item installed (or something else entirely).

So the opposite of Cash for Clunkers.[1] Would a Keynesian then expect these tax breaks to crash the economy?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

This has probably more to do with Sweden having so high taxes on labour that repairs becomes impossible without a tax break.

An average Swede gets ~ a third of the money the company pays for his wages. (30% tax, 30% in social charges etc.)

If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the other costs here.)

So, in sum, because of the taxes etc, a Swede have to work [at least] a full day to buy an hour of work time.

(Reservation for the exact numbers. It was a while since I lived in Sweden. People might keep 40% or so now, but I also ignored a lot of extra costs.)

According to the OECD Taxing Wages report [1] for 2016, the total tax wedge for Sweden, including employer contributions, is 42.7%.

(Note: for those who are confused about it: This is not the percentage tax paid out of contracted wages - the average tax paid on the contracted wages are much lower)

> If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the other costs here.)

That may be true, but not due mainly to taxes, but because you are also paying for "dead time", marketings costs and others.

[1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...

Please see this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-wage_labour_costs

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbetsgivaravgifter_i_Sverige

I wrote "a third of the money the company pays for his wages", so I assume that is ignored in the "taxes" report you reference.

Just these "social charges" (as I called them) is 31.42% already (just ten percent lower than the OECD report).

Those are included in the OECD total tax wedge numbers.

EDIT: The reason your numbers don't add up is that you can't just add those numbers together with income tax numbers - you also then need to add the amount paid by the employer to the salary to get the gross amount paid for a worker, and recalculate the percentage from the total base.

I know the definition. I also know that just the "hidden" cost not presented to people as "tax" is 31.42% of the salary.

The tax rate in itself is generally around 30%.

So something is rotten in Den.. Swedish data. :-)

Anyway, it doesn't change my original argument really. I ignored lots of other costs per employee to sell repair time.

Edit: It is probably that the lowest amount to pay taxes on have been raised a lot since I lived in Sweden. Your data might be correct, at least for people with a low income. (The numbers are too big with 31.42% added to the sum and 30% tax for that to result in 41%.)

Edit 2: Regarding total tax and calculation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Example_of_...

> (The numbers are too big with 31.42% added to the sum and 30% tax for that to result in 41%.)

Salary is the original "100%" here, but the cost to the business is higher than that, and so if we are to talk about the cost to the business we need to adjust the percentages accordingly.

100% + 31.42% is the total expense to the business.

So 30% of salary and 31.42% of salary = 61.42% of salary, but only 46.74% of the total expense.

But most people will have well below 30% income tax.

E.g. here's the Swedish tax authority's own examples of income tax rates paid:

http://www.skatteverket.se/privat/skatter/arbeteochinkomst/s...

Average salary in Sweden is around the ~375,000 SEK, putting typical income tax for someone on an average salary towards the lower end of the 23% range 28% somewhere from that table.

Using 23% in the calculation above, we'd end up with a tax wedge of 41.4%. With 28% we end up at 45.2%.

This is before any additional deductions.

It's close enough to the OECD numbers that if you were to look at the basis data and assumptions underlying the OECD report (it's all public), and/or go through the actual tax calculations that the above table is based on, and make sure the years match up, I'm pretty sure you'd get it to match.

So let's say it's in a range somewhere around 41% and 45%.

> Edit 2: Regarding total tax and calculation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden#Example_of_....

That page uses headline rates without actually considering that the tax rates are not applied to the gross salary, but to taxable income, adjusted for various deductions. It totally confuses matters and is clearly written by someone who doesn't understand how tax works. It bears little relation to reality.

Seems totally correct to me -- and is also what I had in the first "Edit:", except the details. :-)

The taxes were lowered substantially for ~ the first 18K SEK of monthly income by the previous government. (This boon for low income employees is denounced as a rightwing extreme design by the present lefty government, so it might be solved.)

I ignored the details since I didn't really need it for my argument to explain why the total costs make service industry almost impossible.

Don't forget to add their 25% VAT rate if you actually want to spend your money.. so you end up with 42.7% + 25%. That's nuts.

Wouldn't that be 42.7% + (57.3% * .25) = 57%?

The difference is that the previous government lowered the taxes for the first 20K SEK earned per month. (This was mostly after my time in Sweden.)

My point regarding the impossibility of service work at these levels stands. Quite a few tax exemptions had to be created to get the population to start paying taxes for those kinds of jobs.

Edit: For the part of the salary above ca 19K/month, you're correct. In fact, the taxes are progressive, so it is even worse.

No, titzer gets closer, by pointing out that you for starters can't possibly pay VAT on buying stuff with money you don't have. You don't have the money you have paid in taxes.

However, as I've pointed out elsewhere, that is total tax wedge including employer contributions. If you are looking at total cost to a business, your cost is 131.42% of your contracted salary. That is what the 42.7% comes from.

Actual income tax on an average salary is somewhere below 28% (see discussion elsewhere where I cite a table from the Swedish tax authorities - 28% is their estimate for a 500k salary; average salary is roughly 375k). This would leave you with at most 72% of your salary to buy VAT rated stuff with.

If you were to spend all of that on 25% VAT rated stuff, it'd mean an additional 18% tax on your salary, but only 13.7% of the total. That 13.7% is the number comparable to the 42.7% number, so if that was the case your total tax wedge would be 56.4%.

However, that isn't the case, because you're not paying VAT on mortgage payments, for example, nor on any money you haven't actually spent (so savings etc.). Many goods and services are also taxed at lower rates. I don't know specifically about Sweden, but most countries don't apply VAT to basic food stuffs, for example (I do know Sweden has reduced VAT rates of 12% and 6% as well as zero rating - I just don't have a handy table of what the reduce rates applies to).

If we more realistically assume that only half of your net income gets spend on VAT'able products and services, including it in the total tax wedge would only increase it by 6.85%.

Your mileage will vary depending on how you spend, but it certainly won't under any circumstance increase your total tax wedge by anything remotely close to 25%.

What is it about Nordic countries that allows them to avoid corruption and political decay? As an outsider, it seems that they're always experimenting with new approaches and evolving the government and laws to keep up with the changing needs of the citizenry.

In the US, I felt like we were starting to get somewhere back in the 90s, but it's been a downward fall since then. Now, corruption permeates even at the local levels. Many of the people that I talk to blame the lack of time. I don't know - but there's major apathy and cynicism, and it seems to be getting worse.

Odd that appliances are on the list because we're likely to see another wave of changes for refrigerants.

Back in the bad old days people used refrigerants such as HCFCs that were bad for the ozone layer. Now they use straight HFCs (no chlorine) but those are potent global warming gases. At some point there is going to a push to replace those with fluoroketones.

So repairing old air conditioners, refrigerators and such may not be such a great idea.

At this time, I am fighting with a Samsung Syncmaster 2333SW Plus. It started fading to white every time blue was displayed, then it would overflow back to a normal image and fade to white.

I'm told this is a fault in the t-con (timing controller) board - some people have noted it's just a bad solder connection, so I'm going to have a look before I replace the board.

I have a donor screen that I got apart (the 2333HD) in about four hours, but the 2333SW Plus... I've been trying for at least 12 hours to get that thing apart. (I've sanitized this post.) The sides of the casing are free, but the top and bottom edges just won't let go, and I can't afford to break the internal clips.

I honestly can't decide between RageGuy and Samir's rage at the printer not printing properly.

Heaps of old stuff is broken because of planned obsolescence. Is it not a waste trying to repair that rubbish that was originally designed to break soon and hard and expensive to repair? Lowering tax for companies that produce sustainable products seems more efficient to me.

One side effect of building for repairability is that objects will be bigger and clunkier, which will use more materials and cost more (and burn more fuel) to transport.

I'm all for repairability, and even better, building things that will last 25 years, not 25 months. But that will come at a different price than perhaps many expect, and in some cases, it actually won't make sense.

Money is how we measure and gate access to scarce resources. If it costs more to build repairable items, and then repair them, then it is likely the case that those repairs actually waste more resources! However, insofaras the resource being wasted is human work time, there is of course a trade-off to be made.

If a company made a extremely enduring and time-resistant valuable product, wouldn't it make more sense for the company to lease the product out to the customers - and for the state to support this model by making it tax-free after a time?

IMO the only reason we do not have a culture of repairing is because we subsidize the waste processing stream and thus we only see lower upfront costs.

If I had to pay an extra $25 disposal fee upfront on a microwave, maybe I'd be incentivized to buy a quality item or maybe repair it in the first place.

As well, repairing/reusing is a function of average cost of a worker. If a repair man has a fully loaded cost of $50 an hour, then you're not going to see many repairs happen. If its $5 an hour then you might see more. Expensive labor leads to all kinds of seemingly insane behavior.

Impermanence could be considered a value in certain cultures. "Disposable Culture" vs. "Repairing Old Stuff" isn't a useful dichotomy. Everything has an expiration date, and often that date is carefully considered as part of a product's design. The goal shouldn't be fixing old stuff, but finding out how to increase efficiency either by making product's expiration dates further in the future, or compromising having an imminent expiration date by making the product easy to recycle.

What cultures value impermanence? The only one that comes to my mind is the US -- and we're unsustainable, burning through resources on an unprecedented scale. Take the time to do things properly, and they endure: Caxtons are the gold standard of book collecting in England today, and Albrecht Duerer's house still stands in Nuremberg.

(You also spend less money by building, or generally making, to last. Western and Central Europe have a lower GDP than the US but a comparable standard of living...)

To truly fix the situation would probably require: 1) Tracking every single saleable physical asset 2) Paying manufacturer's a small fixed income type subsidy for every extra year their product lasts. 3) Charging manufacturer's a small penalty tax when their product becomes waste.

#2 is essential because otherwise manufacturing obsolescence into the product will be more profitable for the company. The economic reward of long lasting product & enduring customer relationship needs to be better than sell one every few years.

Never mind repairing old stuff; just make it easier to pass on stuff. I suspect that Sweden is similar to Norway (where I live) and immense amounts of current electronic gear is thrown away. A lot of it is in usable condition (for some value of usable anyway) but I am not allowed to take it away from a recycling station.

Should the state really presume to sway cultural trends? It seems strikingly arrogant and likely to be counterproductive.

My MagSafe adapter has probably 5 packets of Sugru, both preventative (anti-drop and strain-relief) and repairs, on it and some two-part epoxy to fix some minor nicks in the small cable. The one of the cable winding "wings" just broke, but it still works. I might buy a second in 2018.

Repairs are uneconomical because they have to compete with the assembly line. Assembly lines are an incredibly productive way to make identical things. Repairs are typically different. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

You can adjust assembly lines to make your products easier to repair though. For ex: it's far easier to fix my old thinkpad laptop than my newer X1. Part of this is the demand for smaller/thinner products but I also feel it's a lack of effort by the manufacturers these days.

They are almost incentivized to make repair difficult and deprioritize longevity in favour of the customer buying new devices each year. Which is about as long as any of my cell phones typically last before I break or lose them (1-1.5yrs), although I'm a bit clumsy and forgetful (a symptom of ADD :P).

Basic income + no minimum wage would make it much more attractive to do local repairs instead of manufacturing stuff far away where wages are lower or labor and environmental regulation much more lax.

In my country, youth unemployment is around 20%.

Reducing a 25% tax on repairs is seen as an insightful and brilliant way to incentivize repairs? Well knock me over with a feather. Where is the previous article about how that level of tax is crazy to begin with?

I think ideal way is to charge people for dumping the waste, and use that money to properly recycle all the material therein. May not be ideal in terms of energy efficiency, but its highly workable solution.

Alternative approach: Require people keep everything they buy for 10 years. They'll be quickly fed up with their houses full of old broken gadgets, cardboard boxes and used wrapping foil.

"Own few but good things" - love everything about this as it relates to living "modestly minimal" as I call it. Buy a small amount of high quality possessions, and take care of them.

Wouldn't a high sales tax promote exactly that?

Sales tax also applies to the services.

More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country with smaller labor costs.

> More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country with smaller labor costs.

Sounds like a very clear flaw in their economic and taxation model.

This flaw is called free trade. This problem used to be fixed by higher customs. But we generally prefer free trade, so they have to try other initiatives.

Sweden already has a Value Added Tax (somewhat equivalent to Sales Tax) of 25%

I guess they'd need to explicitly de-classify commonly repaired items from this?

Funny... I tried to fix an IKEA lamp and finding parts was impossible.

Could a company hypothetically create an extremely solid phone with interchangeable parts when upgrades become available, and it's not done just because they profit more with the current model? Or is this just not feasible?

I'd guess probably so but the issue is that this company would not be able to compete and would die since the other model lets the other companies be more aggressive in R&D, marketing, releasing new products frequently, etc, etc.

Yes, but it would be huge and expensive and nobody would want to buy it. Plus modularity and BW compatibility requirements would severely limit the design space available for further evolution (both look and feel and internal hardware aspects). Highly integrated hardware and systems-on-a-chip do have several advantages but are pretty much the antithesis of modularity.

I was happy to see that the author did pause to note the irony of this policy being implemented by the same country that brought the world IKEA.

It was not the government of Sweden that brought the world IKEA.

Not everything is crappy at IKEA: you can get cheap mass pine wood furniture that looks pretty decent (if you paint it to fit your tastes). The cost of such furniture is often cheaper at IKEA than buying the planks of wood at a consumer store.

There is also a tone of crappy pressed wood furnitures that will slowly decay and look ugly 5 years later or will just break and cannot be repaired.

IKEA furniture is my parent's house is about ten years old and doing well. Not sure what people do with theirs, but ours lasts.

Besides the category error of conflating corporate and state implementations - complaining about the existence of IKEA is a bit like complaining about the existence of fast food. Clearly there is massive demand for both, so lobbing darts at the most successful producers of same avoids all of the interesting questions.

I don't detect any complaining in my post. Just noting the (considerable) irony in Sweden leading the charge against "disposable culture", as did the article's writer.

Perhaps I read more into it than you meant - fair enough. You are still conflating Sweden and IKEA, which is just silly.

Also IKEA's m.o. is more cheap and cheerful than disposable, so what irony there is, is a bit weak.

Have you tried moving Ikea stuff? A lot of it is unlikely to stay in one piece. And I don't mean it can be disassembled and reassembled. Even their chipboard is of lower strength than ordinary, quite an achievement.

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