The EU's updated right to repair rules are the breath of fresh air consumers and the planet need

[Redaktion]

The EU has a solid history of making decisions that actually benefit the consumer and the EU Right to Repair Directive (R2RD) may finally curb environmentally damaging and anti consumer practices employed by tech companies to keep their revenue streams flowing.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-EU-s-updated-right-to-repair-rules-are-the-breath-of-fresh-air-consumers-and-the-planet-need.845490.0.html

[MichelMs]

People generally don't prioritize reparability when purchasing products. Apple products, for instance, remain popular whether or not they are easy to repair. Consequently, companies have little incentive to invest in making their products more repairable if only a small percentage of consumers demand it. While the concept of repairable products is interesting, using the government to enforce this could set a precedent for worse things. Today the government starts enforcing reparability, but tomorrow it's uncertain what other demands might follow for private companies, the end goal is good, but the means are incorrect. Also, things like removable battery could seem great, but the drawbacks are huge, who will decide if this will be mandatory or not? Too many questions to just a bunch of politics to decide.

[George]

People generally don't prioritize reparability when purchasing products. Apple products, for instance, remain popular whether or not they are easy to repair. Consequently, companies have little incentive to invest in making their products more repairable if only a small percentage of consumers demand it. While the concept of repairable products is interesting, using the government to enforce this could set a precedent for worse things. Today the government starts enforcing reparability, but tomorrow it's uncertain what other demands might follow for private companies, the end goal is good, but the means are incorrect. Also, things like removable battery could seem great, but the drawbacks are huge, who will decide if this will be mandatory or not? Too many questions to just a bunch of politics to decide.

Repairability is a MINOR problem as compared to Planned Obsolescence that MOST modern Electronic products have built into them.

Consumers wallets are bleeding Trillions of $$$ replacing mostly perfectly functional products that ether the OEM or the "Operating System" vendor abandoned or won't support.

While in the USA legislation & regulations of the Auto Industry can go as far as requiring availability of 'touch up paint' and standardized light bulbs (along with countless other items!) the technology sector has been largely left alone to swindle consumers as much $$$ as it wishes to.

[RobertJasiek]

If I regularly bought devices without long-term available user battery replacement, I would have to pay thrice the amount per year!

Do not argue that anybody likes being ripped off like that!

[NikoB]

In fact, manufacturers, realizing that they won't be able to sell a new product quickly, if the consumer starts saving, they will simply start raising prices. And since there has been no real competition among TNCs for a long time, secret oligopolistic conspiracies are operating - they will raise prices in concert.

In fact, such laws can only work if there is a planned economy and transparent pricing for the end consumer - i.e. he must know exactly what the real cost of producing goods at the factory is, taking into account all factors, and what the retail markup is relative to the factory cost. Now companies hide factory wholesale prices and if the consumer is not an expert in a specific market niche, he simply does not understand where the product is clearly overpriced. The stupid average consumer values ��a product at its retail price, but it can vary from company to company (from speculator to speculator) very much, which is confusing. Especially with all these fake MSRPs, and then "promotions" when the price drops to 50-60%, which is full of "news" even on NB.

Products need to be valued only at factory cost. Everything else is a fake smoke screen designed to hide the real cost and deceive the average consumer in retail.

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness - and such laws are an element of a planned economy, but not of a free market and the "invisible hand of the market", which supposedly will regulate everything as needed. As it turned out, the "invisible hand of the market", in the absence of real significant competition between TNCs in the same niche, simply takes everything for itself and doesn't care about integrity.

So dear Europeans, welcome to the socialist planned economy. And this will be followed by other much less pleasant elements...

[George]

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness - and such laws are an element of a planned economy, but not of a free market and the "invisible hand of the market", which supposedly will regulate everything as needed. As it turned out, the "invisible hand of the market", in the absence of real significant competition between TNCs in the same niche, simply takes everything for itself and doesn't care about integrity.

So dear Europeans, welcome to the socialist planned economy. And this will be followed by other much less pleasant elements...

Without regulations or 'guard rails' Capitalism always FAILS because of GREED. (and may still fail as is failing right now even WITH them)

Greed has no care for protecting: its workers, the environment or society or world at large, only in the accumulation of wealth & power to keep that wealth.

Capitalism is driven by 'consumerism' as if the masses are not constantly spending[/i] their cold hard earned cash (CHEC!) or even better yet spending BORROWED cash the entire economy collapses.

The entire process generates almost immeasurable waste as just about EVERYTHING is a expendable/consumable/throw-a-way item with planned obsolescence.

The almost countless GDP wasted on never ending product replacement is staggering.

[NikoB]

The social stratification on the planet is already such that it is guaranteed to lead the world to a neo-feudal (essentially) system.
The same democracy presupposes the voting and power of competent citizens of approximately the same level of development. In reality, a shitocracy reigns almost everywhere on the planet with populists (corrupt officials/two-faced liars, and more often just façade clowns, behind whom are teams of proven criminals) elected by crowds of poorly educated sheep, and their poor education, lack of a broad outlook and critical thinking - again a product of such a looped system, in a spiral of degradation.

Therefore, such laws in such societies can change little in practice, because a stupid consumer sees (dreams) everything through the prism that retail prices will remain (as a percentage of their monthly net income) approximately the same as before, and they will receive only advantages. In reality, even if TNCs comply with such laws (and they have many clever ways to circumvent them in practice), they will simply raise the price in a concerted manner to take into account the new level of costs and the fall in the planned profits expected by the beneficiaries of the companies, taking into account the longer product renewal cycle in the hands of consumers. In addition, stagflation reigns on the planet - i.e. The real purchasing power of ordinary people in developed economies, on average, has been falling for decades. For example, in the US, since the early 1970s, when US citizens had a peak in terms of individual income in terms of purchasing power (especially in terms of purchasing a home). And it must be recalled that the population on the planet has more than doubled since then, which creates additional, increased pressure on the ecology of the planet and on the general atmosphere of aggression in societies, for a better place in life, with an increasing shortage of quality food and goods .

For this to work in practice, you need transparent pricing and a clear understanding of the real factory cost of any product, before speculative markups appear in the chains from manufacturer to retail, otherwise there are many ways to inflate prices at the level of both the manufacturer and intermediary chains. Or the most powerful competition in every market niche, which has not existed on the planet for a long time. And this automatically leads us to the exclusion of the capitalist system.

In the current state, such laws are clearly populist in essence. And none of the populist politicians is simply ready to change the system - if anyone tries, he will simply be physically eliminated by the real ruling power stratum. This stratum, a symbiosis of the bureaucratic system and the oligarchy, will not let go of power and money without a bloody battle against them.

This stratum has the same amount of money as the remaining 95%+ of the population and an extremely effective global organization and cooperation in matters of survival, unlike ordinary people. This has been proven firsthand over the past few years.

The ordinary population, on average, no longer has a chance to improve their lives in the current conditions without a radical reworking of the world order, which they, in principle, are not capable of, given the degradation of their education in relation to scientific and technical progress.

[TIL]

Many thanks to EU for raising the selling price of goods once again.

[Hotz]

Without regulations or 'guard rails' Capitalism always FAILS because of GREED. (and may still fail as is failing right now even WITH them)

Greed has no care for protecting: its workers, the environment or society or world at large, only in the accumulation of wealth & power to keep that wealth.

Correct. A society based on trading (or money) will always fail or become as sick as it is now and worse. It is the nature of capitalism to produce iniquities. Emphasis on "nature". That's why it's difficult or even impossible to regulate it.

..none of the ... politicians is simply ready to change the system - if anyone tries, he will simply be physically eliminated by the real ruling power stratum. This stratum, a symbiosis of the bureaucratic system and the oligarchy, will not let go of power and money without a bloody battle against them.

The ordinary population, on average, no longer has a chance to improve their lives in the current conditions without a radical reworking of the world order, which they, in principle, are not capable of, given the degradation of their education in relation to scientific and technical progress.

Indeed. It's over. Literally. There's nothing that can be done anymore with humanly means. And society is too distorted and separated from each other to pull together anymore. Only the real God can change that anymore. Nothing else.

I'm honestly fed up with this world. And I know I'm not the only one. This clownworld (not with funny clowns but ugly, evil, wicked clowns) must come to an end. Better sooner than later.



It becomes more and more clear why there are ancient texts explaining that our world (earth) is actually the 5th or 6th version already. Because the same things have happened in the past already. Society evolved and reached a point of no-return, and the only way to stop it was a complete destruction and start from scratch. Otherwise existence would have been unbearable. It would have been a Mordor-like world.

[Hotz]

Btw. I'm not implying that this is how every society would behave (degenerate and reaching the point of no-return). There is a high probability that most of our current state of affairs, including the introduction of money and banks and capitalism and a lot of degeneracy was pushed by satanic forces. Yes, from that Satan of the bible.
Remember that even Jesus got angry about the money changers in a temple and beat them up. That's how far back in time the capitalism goes back. Capitalism was already there back and polluted people's minds.

But after all, the bible also says this world belongs to Satan. And he tries everything possible to defile people's minds, and it often works. And money and capitalism is one of his greatest tools. Because it makes people fight against each other (to gain riches and not fall into poverty). This system keeps people in constant fight for survival and against each other, instead of fighting him (the Satan and his minions, banks, politicians). There is no unity amongst the people anymore. Everybody strives for his own survival and best wealth.
In contrast to that the minions of satan have some kind of "unity" and will stand together, because they are held together by money, good payments (like the police). It's an ugly version of "unity", and there is lots of angryness amongst each other, but the binds are still stronger than those of the common people who have lost any sense of unity.


What makes it even more difficult to rebel against that, is that there is no one with a physical whip torturing you. It's all invisible chains and pressure.

[heffeque]

Can't wait for LFP batteries on phones, and eventually solid electrolite batteries.