This is one of the handful of things me (a leftist) and my rural Trump supporting family both heavily agree upon. It’s nice to find some common ground in such a divided America.
I think we got lucky on it that John Deere and Car companies have been trying to ruin repairability long before it was cool.
And “right to repair” is a nice simple slogan, even the most rural person in America can hear that and will probably go “Fuck yeah I should have the right to repair my car!”
Trump/Musk (especially Musk) could totally come out against this if it gains traction.
I guarantee, your family’s tune would change
To me it’s weird to even think of repairing stuff you buy as a “right” - that’s a given. The issue is the nonexistent “right” of a seller to restrict what a customer does with a product after buying it. That’s as ridiculous as a shoe company trying to dictate where you can or can’t walk. It’s a no-brainer, and should never have to be argued in court or anywhere else.
When written out like this, it seems simple as - but the most simple version really isn’t what’s at stake. Companies make and trademark specialized tools for their goods, to prevent third parties from providing repairs. Warrantys are written to keep a company from being liable for repair/replacement if a customer attempts to repair a product themselves.
Pretty much every case in the right to repair movement is a challenge to a legally acceptable means of market capture, that just happens to create a stupendously shitty consumer environment.
+1 Insightful
I was just thinking about this the other day after removing the fifteenth torx screw from the bottom of my Shark vacuum’s roller head. They hid screws under the pipe hatch and the two tiny friction mounted front wheels. Vacuums are triple the price and rollers are no longer removable from the outside.
45 minutes to fix what is essentially a five minute problem. They’d rather you throw it away and buy the whole head unit from the site. They even have bars blocking you from cutting hair from the roller without opening it.
Shit like this is why I still use an iPod 5th gen. No internet. No tracking apps. Just you and your hard copied music on a device that can be opened, repaired, and modded.
I dunno how many vacuum cleaners I’ve scrapped for free from damn near everywhere and 90% of them only have a mega clogged hose. 5 minute fix usually and I made my own skookum twisted wire reamer in 5 minutes with wire and a drill. People throw away good stuff without bothering with it and just buy a new one instead of saving themselves time and money by eliminating the obvious. If a vacuum design gets too complex, I simplify with sheetrock screws. Warranties are made to be broken by making it work yourself. The things you learn that way also helps other areas in life all around.
Just got a framework laptop and I’m really happy
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize
the fact that this is and has ever even been an issue is wild.
Just had my brother in law show me a concept phone where you just put in block modules for the things you want and need in a phone. Want more battery? Take off your camera block module and plug in more battery block modules.
Obviously the concept as presented is near impossible to achieve. I told him that and said we can get close. I showed him framework laptops that are trying to achieve the very thing he wanted (to a certain extent). He said that if they could make that a phone he would switch from his apple ecosystem in a heart beat. The ability to swap for a bigger speaker on the fly for get togethers and parties was tantalizing (big music guy).
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Nobody actually wants a walled garden, they just get entrapped in them (“it’s just where my friends/music/content creators are”)
They then become convinced that they want it, and its reinforced by the walled gardeners (looking at you, iMessage videos and bubbles)
I know a person who built their own PC (Windows, but still) from scratch for the first time as an adult. Had the money and the opportunity to buy a prebuilt rig in two clicks, but instead researched the market, ordered parts and tools, exchanged a part that didn’t fit the case, learned how to assemble it all by hand, and exclaimed that it was a great experience and would do it all over again.
And yet at every opportunity still buys an iphone despite the cost because it’s “simple” and they “don’t want to learn” something new. That’s not the actual reason - that’s just stockholm syndrome.
No, they really just don’t want to learn. I promise people would rather be okay with their current situation (even if its shitty) as long as they don’t have to learn. Because a lot of people decided that once they were done with high school/college, that there was no need to learn anymore. And now its hard for them to learn
If they do choose to learn, its because they want to. But if they don’t want to learn, they simply wont. It really is simple.
I’ve just described to you a person that really wanted to learn something, and did it. Put in hours of mental and physical effort. And your response is that nobody wants to learn, and that people only learn what they want to learn? Which is self-evident and vacuous. (Edit: leaving this comment unchanged for the sake of clarity, but apologies for the aggression)
Inertia and degradation of curiousity is a real issue but my point is that the creators of the walled gardens intentionally discourage that curiousity.
Most people naturally want to learn. Even into adulthood. But people - like water and electricity - naturally tend toward the path of least resistance. And everywhere they go, walled gardens offer them more and more paths with less and less resistance at every step.
There still lives a generation or two that ripped apart computers, crashed them with amateur code, bricked them with viruses, reformatted the drives and put it all back together again as kids and adults. They did that because it was something they wanted to learn. It wasn’t easy, or simple. It was hard, and confusing, and risky. Kids of the generations that followed don’t do that nearly as much, even though they could.
Are those kids inherently less curious than their parents were at the same age? No. At least, not by birth. They’ve just been offered a path of less resistance, and they took it. Does that mean they want that path? No. There’s just so many paths in front of them that the path of technological literacy is lost in the weeds.
Yes, people only really learn what they want to learn. But the reason people in general are getting less curious over time is because they are being convinced that they want to learn something else, or worse, more often than not they’re being deceived into thinking they’re learning at all.
I’ve just described to you a person that really wanted to learn something, and did it. Put in hours of mental and physical effort. And your response is that nobody wants to learn, and that people only learn what they want to learn? Which is self-evident and vacuous.
No need to be rude man. You also described the same person as unwilling to learn something. And I didn’t say that person wanted to learn or not, I generalized and said people don’t want to learn.
I believe we are both trying to say the same thing with different emphasis.
You are emphasizing that people do like to learn, but there are external forces that encourage/convince them not to.
I am emphasizing that people don’t like to learn, unless they want to overcome the external forces. I just don’t buy the excuse of external factors stopping people from learning, that’s part of the learning process.
Your example talks about a person building a pc. Yes it takes time, energy, money, and learning. But it also has A TON of resources to help with that on the internet, definitely makes it easier. It is now a famously recommended project for anybody, even kids. It was also something that is ‘new’ to them, I assume.
Typing this out made me realize a distinction I failed to bring up. People do like to learn, but people HATE to UN-learn ideas. The person in your example wanted to learn something new, but did not want to unlearn the iphone walled garden.
Typing this out made me realize a distinction I failed to bring up. People do like to learn, but people HATE to UN-learn ideas. The person in your example wanted to learn something new, but did not want to unlearn the iphone walled garden.
This is an excellent point. You’re right, we do agree, sorry my comment came off aggressive.
I’m feverishly imagining smart phones with old school slider keyboards
Am I the only one that finds it weird that Louis Rossman is not even mentioned in those articles about right to repair?
I mean, he said that he didn’t care at all if his name was mentioned or not and that he would be happy if the movement got traction “by itself”, without him being involved.
But I still think it’s weird that he is not even mentioned when they are giving examples of pro-repair groups/shops etc. Idk…
I tend to assume malice with regards to the news. They likely dont want to drive people to his give him traffic because then they might agree with him.
The news are owned by the same billionaire class as the companies that make many products.
Right to repair used to be intrinsically understood by almost everyone. Electronics used standard components and came with the schematics. Car had government managed standardized interchangeable parts. Now led headlight are 2000$ and unrepairable…
