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Comment by sharpercoder | Hacker News Reader

Should not the government require manufacturers to extensively document all the parts and materials that go into a product? In this age, we should demand that products are easily (re/up/down)cycle-able, and this means third parties should be able to efficiently dismantle products.

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If the regulatory burden for starting a new car company was that high, you would have never seen Tesla, which means you would never see any pressure on the big guys to go all electric. So you need to balance regulation with innovation.

That does not seem like much of a burden, at all.

All of that information is required knowledge for the business to operate and production to continue. You can't make something if you don't even know what materials you need to make it, nor if you don't know how to put it together.

In the case of extremely low production with hand-fitting the documented process may vary some from the actual process but it shouldn't be so significant that one product does not even resemble another.

What is the regulatory burden in forcing car manufacturers to publish the same manuals and offer the same tools for purchase they already have for their own service centers?

Besides many countries do require automobile mass market vendors to offer spare parts and docs on FRAND conditions to "unconnected" repair shops already.

Agreed. But for a product like a car, it would be fair to comply much later after-the-fact; it's not like the car is driven straight into the junkyard ;). For products like food (packaging) it seems different though.

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