[heffer]

I'd argue this cost has always been there and was never zero to begin with. Mass producing non-repairable, cheap throwaway items is an excellent way for industries to externalize a lot of the lifecycle cost of an item onto society.

So you get to choose at which point you'd like to pay for it. Directly and very visibly in an item's price (maybe even making you reconsider if a purchase is actually necessary). Or later, in taxes or a decrease in quality of life due to the increasing overexploitation of our resources.

[gruez]

> Mass producing non-repairable, cheap throwaway items is an excellent way for industries to externalize a lot of the lifecycle cost of an item onto society.

If you're against the externalization of costs, shouldn't you be advocating for measures that fully internalize such costs (eg. by charging a disposal fee at the point of sale), rather than merely trying to reduce it by making phones more repairable? That way consumers and manufacturers can decide for themselves whether the repairability is worth the extra cost or not.

[abdullahkhalids]

To live in a world with repairable devices or in one without is a social consensus problem. We either are stuck in one game-theoretic equilibrium or the other. Game-theoretic equilibria cannot be defeated by "letting individual actors decide".

They are solved by social consensus, and in this particular case, by the passage of the right-to-repair law that forces the entire system from one equilibrium state to the other.

[gruez]

What's the "game-theoretic equilibrium" that's preventing repairable phones if consumers demand it? We have repairable versions of laptops and phones but they haven't really caught on outside of niche circles. Maybe people don't actually care about repairability?

[abdullahkhalids]

There are two kinds of players in the market: a large consumer class, and a small collection of oligopolistic producers. The game-theoretic equilibrium is in the actions of the producers.

Customers have many different criteria by which they judge phones: price, performance, available apps, social desirability, repairability etc. I would say that repairability is of lower importance than other criteria.

Producers know that selling unrepairable phones produce more profits long term. Obviously repairable phones are also a few perfect more expensive. So from the 00s when phones were largely repairable, to today, producers have sequentially produced phones that are less repairable but a bit cheaper. Ad campaigns have been used to make thinner monolithic phones as more socially desirable [1]. This also changes how customers rate the importance of different criteria.

Any new producer who creates a repairable phone not only has to produce a more expensive phone, but also has to create a niche of customers, against the competitor ad campaigns, that value that repairability. Hence, that new producer is not profitable. This is the equilibrium which explains that lack of mainstream repairable phones in the market.

But of course, consumers want repairable phones, but only if everyone else gets them as well - so they aren't uncool. Which is why different consumer groups have advocated to lawmakers, and now we are getting a law that forces everyone to change in tandem.

[1] Not much different from the cigarette ads of the yesteryears.

[gruez]

>Any new producer who creates a repairable phone not only has to produce a more expensive phone, but also has to create a niche of customers, against the competitor ad campaigns, that value that repairability. Hence, that new producer is not profitable. This is the equilibrium which explains that lack of mainstream repairable phones in the market.

But if a repairable phone is cheaper for the consumer overall (the don't have to replace as often), why would this be a problem? Japanese cars outcompeted American cars because they were more reliable, and consumers recognized that. Shouldn't consumers jump at the chance of reducing their overall phone TCO by 50% or whatever?

[abdullahkhalids]

Good question. (1) People's preferences are a function of time [1]. (2) And people find it difficult to estimate unexpected future costs.

So at buy time, people don't prefer repairability very high, which is some uncertain future cost. Which is why they make the short term decision to buy the cheaper sexier phone. Later on, when the phone starts to break down, they start caring about it a lot more. We know the latter is true because consumer group advocacy is determined by asking people what they want.

Another tactic phone manufacturers employ is that they don't talk about repairability anywhere, so most consumers don't even know phones are repairable. They think you just have to buy a new phone. It's like if your bowl broke, you would just go and buy a new one because you believe bowls cannot be repaired. But if you belonged in the right area/tradition of japan, you would just take the pieces of the bowl and join them together [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference#Temporal_disco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi