International Repair Day | Hacker News Reader

International Repair Day

openrepair.org

133 pointsetiam46 comments

If we would decide to tax raw materials instead of labour and income, repair would make economic sense again. Raw material usage is not sustainable as the resources are finite. Labour on the other hand is very sustainable, given enough time the supply of labour is infinite and usage of labour is sustainable. What we tax and what not is not a given, but something that can and should be revised to gnudge the world into better shape. Even though I greatly sympasize with the right to repair, as long as it is uneconomical to do repairs due to incentives (taxation) making it so, we are not really addressing the root cause and one could argue that this repair day is distracting attention from the real issues

I would add that labour is not only sustainable but that there's even a shortage of it in our economy.

Which economy is that? I didn't think there was an economy on earth near 100% labor force participation rate.

I don't believe raw material usage is a problem so much as environmental pollution.

That's true, but material extraction is a good enough proxy, and it's easier to measure than environmental pollution.

Taxing material use and refunding at material recovery is not totally unreasonable, but it ignores the energy that goes into both processing steps and the people required to do labor. Repair is totally compatible with this, since it reduces waste of all of material, energy, and labor. It’s also something consumers can readily participate in and influence, unlike tax policy.

Taxing energy also works as a proxy for taxing material - you need energy (lots of it) to mine and process raw materials, so I'd expect taxing energy use to shift the market activity towards services and reuse of already processed materials and manufactured goods.

There is plenty of energy available from the sun in one way or the other, and there is no inherent harm in utilising that. So in my ideal tax system only finite resources should be taxed, primarily land usage (including use for agriculture, and somehow based on demand) and raw materials (including oil, coal etc). Things like labour, "value added", energy use and co2 emissions would be exempt. Imagine hiring an expert to do repairs would cost about the same per hour as you can make after taxes. In North West Europe a plumber or painter typically costs you about twice what a programmer makes after taxes in the same time. Because of 50% tax on income + 20%VAT. So even if you are not so great at DIY it is (or seems) very often much cheaper to kludge it yourself that to hire an expert expert to do it for you. What a waste

> reduces waste of all of material, energy, and labor

Not necessarily. How much labor goes into one smartphone or other mass-produced thing? I suspect in many cases the incremental labor required to make another one is minimal compared to the significant effort required for one-off repairs.

Taxing raw materials instead of labor would incentivize more sustainable practices, but the unintended consequence is that it would disproportionately affect people lower in societies social hierarchy. If you are a truck driver or construction contractor (blue collar) your productivity depends on resource consumption. Whereas if you are in finance or software (white collar), your productivity will not be affected by your consumption, aside from the purchase of a new computer every few years. We would be giving up our progressive tax system. If you tried to keep elements of a progressive tax system, the rich would shift their consumption to the poor who would be taxed less for raw material consumption and we’d have very similar incentives to today, though with more wealth shifting to the poor. You could do a rebate program, where people with lower incomes get paid back the money they would have made without the tax system, but now we’re talking about setting up a bureaucracy to do means testing on significant proportions of the population, who would be least likely to take advantage of tax loopholes. I’m trying to think of ways to keep this idea from being a regressive tax, but I’m failing. Anyone have wisdom?

Because of the cost of labour a lot of effort has been put into minimizing labour at the cost of capital (resources, automation etc). This again puts a negative pressure on wages as one would otherwise be automated away. By making labour cheaper there is less incentive to minimize labour at the cost of resource use (e.g. disposable products vs reusable ones that need maintenance). More demand for labour should increase wages for lower skilled labour. Less people would "drop out of the ratrace" so to say, as there is more demand for them. There is already implicit recognition for this in Europe. In the Netherlands it is very acceptable (albeit illegal) to not pay taxes for a cleaning lady. In Belgium there is asystem where everyone can get a few hours of subsidised household a week that negates the tax pressure, etc. But instead of all these small adjustments to make the tax system workable I would love there to be a wider debate on what the grounds for taxation should be. In my proposal you get taxed for what you consume in resources and land use, regardless what you use it for. I think that would be a pretty fair premise to start with, and perhaps a few exemptions are needed to make it work.

What you argue for actually is the case now. Repair labor is not taxed. In the USA, no services are taxed at all, which is itself a problem for discussion.

However, there are sales taxes that tax purchases of material goods.

I think we need higher sales taxes with rebates for taxes paid up to $20-30k per year to eliminate the burden on the overtaxed, plus add services taxes to doctors, lawyers, accountants, even programmers.

This seems to be all about community-based repair events. How about doing some lobby towards legislators and companies to do something about their devices that can't even be opened anymore by end users?

Heh. How do I lobby to oppose this? I don't want bulkier, thicker and uglier devices just so I can open them, because I have no interest in doing so. And I definitely don't want this written into law...

On the contrary, devices can be made thin and sleek while being repairable. Seems the marketing has worked wonders in making some people believe that thin and sleek can only be achieved by sacrificing repair-ability.

This is not just an issue of corporations greed but an issue of efficient use of finite resources on this planet.

>On the contrary, devices can be made thin and sleek while being repairable.

I'll believe it when I see it. Thus far all easily repairable mobile phones I've seen were ugly and bulky compared to normal phones.

Of course, you won't see it until the makers get their shit together. Why else would they glue things such that one can't replace even some cheap component and instead having to buy a new phone?

For now the ruse brings the loot, as with everything, it goes in waves, this shall pass and we shall eventually get to a stage where we will find balance in this matter.

Currently, the battery is what pretty much limits the device profile. All the miniaturization achieved on the components should actually aid in nice, modular design that allows replacement of particular faulty part (if you can deglue the whole thing first).

Take a look at this list then:

https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability?sort=score

You'll see plenty of nice devices scoring high marks. You'll also find comparable competitors scoring low mark.

Lack of repairability is mostly a choice - an active choice. Browsing the low scores on the list I linked to, you'll see that companies do extra work to reduce repairability, sometimes with express purpose of just making things harder to repair.

There are no technical reasons why so many devices are not repairable. There is only moral bankrupcy at institutional level, and lack of regulation that would force the market players to stop behaving antisocially.

I've looked at the list and all the devices there are thick (like, 2009-level thick) and have huge bezels.

Look closer. Not just at maximum score, but at the spectrum. You can see e.g. iPhones scoring 7 and (for the last two years) 6 out of 10, whereas Samsung Galaxy phones went from 8/10 (S4) to 3/10 (S10) or even 2/10 (Fold).

This list is nice demonstrator that looks have very little to do with repairability.

iPhone 4. And probably 5. I've only ever opened a couple of iPhone 4 and 4s, but they were definitely way more repair friendly than an S8 or a HTC One.

And does 1mm under 9mm even matter? Maybe if you're one of those who claim a 15 inch laptop will break your back lol

Lg v20 is slim enough and can be serviced and opened easily.

Is there really no way to manufacture thin and light devices with screws instead of glueing parts together? Do standardized connectors also stand in the way of innovation?

A screw and the attendant material to secure that screw into takes up more space than a bit of glue, and—crucially—is more expensive, both in regards to manufacturing and assembly.

It is only more expensive if one doesn't factor in the "toll" a non-working, unrepairable, yet sleek device takes on the environment.

Reason #74656 why we desperately need emission taxing.

More expensive? Thats very marginal additional cost. Screws cost close to nothing.

Standards, (almost?) by definition, do stand in the way of innovation.

Think about the standard represented by the micro-USB for low voltage charging and data connection.

If we standardized on power connections in 1990, we'd have barrel jacks on many things instead of micro-USB.

For that matter, if we standardized on USB connectors in 1996, our phones might all have giant USB type-B connectors on them. Can't go against the standard, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#/media/File:USB_Type-B_rec...

This assumes standards themselves stop evolving entirely once implemented, to address needs that were not present at the time; just like USB (didn't).

They evolve but often are still constrained. USB has evolved but it still forced a type-c connector that still has limited adoption in the market. ATX has evolved, but it is still largely the same form factor it was 20 years ago. The more interesting form factors for computers (like intel's NUC) are eschewing the standard form factors.

I think standards are valuable but they definitely can stifle innovation.

This laws are not targeted only at smatphones or laptops. You do not need a washing machine to be slicker or use some cheap parts so the manufacturer gains 2$ .I would pay those extra 2$ so I get better screws then plastic ones or glue.

Also I have a pump that has a part that breaks 2 times a year and I have to replace that part. I would pay 2 times more on the part if it break 2 times less often, If my pump was made by Apple I would have to send it far away and wait 1 month to have it fixed.

> If my pump was made by Apple I would have to send it far away and wait 1 month to have it fixed.

Or be told you're holding it wrong.

Community repair is a way to go. Majority of people are incapable repairing a bicycle. For some of them repairing washing machine with connected power plug could be lethal.

The right to repair movement is not about doing everything yourself but making it possible and fast for skilled people to repair.

The cost difference between paying someone to completely deconstruct a MacBook and spent ages with a plastic card and glue melting chemicals and having to source a hard to find unofficial battery vs using a screwdriver and an official battery is enormous.

Many of those celebrating are part of Right to Repair campaigns. In Europe, we just launched this campaign: https://repair.eu

Europe just passed the first regulation requiring design for repair for some household appliances, and we are pushing for more products to be included. We're just getting started.

I dunno, is it funny or is it sad that a website that supposedly argues for repairing stuff is obviously not meant to be used on older devices, with gigantic text and huge amounts of whitespace minimizing the content on the screen?

I have repaired my laptop many times, but I'll have to throw it away because websites insist that what you could do with it ten years ago now requires throwing it away, not because it's somehow not in working order.

Perfect thread to vent. The difference between an Elitebook 8770w and a ZBook 17 G2 is astounding. It's like HP is telling everyone to get fucked. The Elitebooks (8770 and older) used metal, was easy to open up multiple times, had a great keyboard. The ZBook, a new model, you'd be lucky to open it 3 times before the absolutely shit plastic clips break, along with the absolutely shit plastic molds for the nuts. The keyboard is some Apple butterfly level of shit, mushy keys that fail to register after a few years. The touchpad buttons went from sturdy rubber to creaky plastic. What an upgrade.

Those plastic clips suck so bad. Had so many break when trying to replace broken screens and such.

I recently saved $800 dollars by repairing my SO's power steering system. Fortunately I found a PDF of the repair manual with every subsystem and procedure listed. I was able to find the exact assembly I needed to replace and got it shipped from Amazon. Her car is from 2001 so I was surprised to find they still sell the high pressure hose I needed.

Anyways, after about 150$ in parts and tools and 4 hours later, I had completely flushed her power steering, installed the new hose, brackets, etc. I even got to take a wheel off the car. It's incredibly satisfying to maintain a physical system like a car, everything has a purpose.

Manufacturers are motivated to make products that can't be repaired so that a) customers will buy more frequently and b) the manufacturer does not have to stock and supply repair parts. The latter is particularly onerous as the lifetime of the product increases. Only long-lived expensive capital goods have parts supplied for 20 or 40 years, and for some of these special custom order from third parties is the solution.

Celebrating by repairing a 10 year old fridge. Fuse blew out, its soldered to control panel, so just called customer support, got part number, shipped via Amazon Prime using reward points, tossed out the old, popped in the new and voila!

Still think the vendor should have comped a replacement due to obvious design flaw of non-removable fuses. Sort of defeats the entire purpose ;)

The non-removable fuse is probably there so that in case of a fault you have a non-functional fridge instead of a burnt down house.

I don't think he's arguing that the fuse shouldn't be there. Just that it should be replaceable without soldering.

Celebrated early yesterday by replacing 5 capacitors on my stereo receiver's HDMI I/O board for $1.00 total and 15 minutes of work, saving me from having to replace it with a $X00 new one.

Why are there so many fixit events in Europe and so few in the US?

Northern California should have no shortage of tech workers with the skills necessary to fix devices. We only have a single event?

And China isn't even on the map, in terms of events. But I find that not so surprising.

The true repairman will repair man.

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