I know EU has the Right to Repair initiative and that’s a step to the right direction. Still I’m left to wonder, how did we end up in a situation where it’s often cheaper to just buy a new item than fix the old?
What can individuals, communities, countries and organizations do to encourage people to repair rather than replace with a new?
Most is economics of scale and mass production; repair is device & damage specific, which does not scale at all. Add exploitation of workers, just in time deliveries eliminating storage costs, the fact that transporting parts for 100 devices takes much more transport volume than 100 devices themselves…
a standout product is the steam deck: every repair can be made by a layman with good documentation available, spare parts are quickly available and cheap. I don’t know how valve did it, but that should be the standard the industry should be aiming at.