[GTALUG] Ontario Bill 72: "Right to Repair"

[Don Tai]

Beyond phones and tech is the physical world of appliances, toys, clothing,
shoes and others. While quality has certainly gone down in almost all
categories, they remain largely repairable. Most things still use screws
and not glue. Old appliances are much better made than new ones. Most plans
are on the internet. I once opened up a brand new but non-functional
electric lawn mower, made in China, only to find that the core magnet had
cracked in half at the factory, so they simply glued it back together and
shipped it out.

Clothing continues to be old school, made as it was decades ago, and still
repairable. Repair is the standard route of finding the last open seam as
your entry point into the garment. Parts and supplies continue to be
readily available. You can use fancy machines if you wish, but not always
necessary.  I am very thankful that, with the exception of shoes, no one
has caught onto using glue. Shoe quality has markedly decreased with the
move to China. Heels are now honeycomb and hollow. When they wear through
there is nothing backing them up, the heel fails but is integrated into the
shoe, so you need to buy a new pair of shoes. Maybe shoes are the
smartphones of the clothing industry? An old school shoe would have a solid
heel that you could repair and reinforce.

Repairability in the physical world is still viable, though product quality
has markedly decreased. You buy cheaply and get cheap.

On Thu, 7 Mar 2019 at 23:14, Howard Gibson via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Mar 2019 08:50:35 -0500
> "Stewart C. Russell via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> > Right to Repair is important. I'm slightly disappointed by the general
> > reaction on this list. We'll spent lifetimes fiddling with software
> > configs to keep it running against all odds, but hardware gets short
> > shrift. I know that processing power and storage improvements have made
> > it poor business practice to get sentimental about keeping older
> > computers running, but some curiosity over how repair and replace is a
> > good thing. We can't live on a growing mountain of e-waste, after all.
> >
> >  Stewart
>
> Stewart,
>
>    I agree, but consider John Deere's business model.  They make their
> money repairing tractors.  If you want something easily repaired, it is
> going to cost more, for a bunch of reasons.  Don't buy the cheapest thing
> on the shelves.
>
>    If you need a computer and you don't need it to be portable, you should
> get a desktop.  People have no idea of how easy it is to repair modern
> desktops.  If you can do your own installs and repairs, there is no need
> for your hard drives ever to leave your house.  This makes for good
> security.
>
> --
> Howard Gibson
> hgibson at eol.ca
> jhowardgibson at gmail.com
> http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
> ---
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>
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