A sustainable economy is one that reuses a significant amount of material it throws away. In the 1980’s there was a mass cultural shift to recycling. In the 2020’s it is possible we can…
In the U.S. some states are implementing “Right to Repair” laws. The problem is that corporations are more interested in exploiting people for profit rather than making the world a better place. As Cory Doctorow has said, companies want us to rent our daily existence rather than actually own anything. The more we are at someone’s mercy to provide us our daily needs, the more they are able to profit. It’s also cheaper and easier to just swap out parts rather than troubleshoot or fix anything. If companies were held accountable for poor quality and products breaking, maybe they’d take more pride in building products that last. Don’t confuse capitalism with laziness or greed. Greed and laziness occurs in counties that are not based upon capitalism.
The whole way of capitalism is, there’s problem xyz. If you want it solved for you, pay me Rs.1000. If someone solves it for free, he stays broke. The posers of problem win, the solvers of problem lose. That’s capitalism. Sometimes, the solvers of the problem are themselves the posers of the problem.
Another view is that capitalism has produced an externality of sorts (broken items with little hope of repair), and it’s time for government to catch up and start regulating that externality the same way it deals with something like emissions. If the price of throwing things away was more accurately priced into items, there would be more economic pressure to be repairable.
In the U.S. some states are implementing “Right to Repair” laws. The problem is that corporations are more interested in exploiting people for profit rather than making the world a better place. As Cory Doctorow has said, companies want us to rent our daily existence rather than actually own anything. The more we are at someone’s mercy to provide us our daily needs, the more they are able to profit. It’s also cheaper and easier to just swap out parts rather than troubleshoot or fix anything. If companies were held accountable for poor quality and products breaking, maybe they’d take more pride in building products that last. Don’t confuse capitalism with laziness or greed. Greed and laziness occurs in counties that are not based upon capitalism.
The whole way of capitalism is, there’s problem xyz. If you want it solved for you, pay me Rs.1000. If someone solves it for free, he stays broke. The posers of problem win, the solvers of problem lose. That’s capitalism. Sometimes, the solvers of the problem are themselves the posers of the problem.
That is greed. Greed an exploit people under any form of government. Perhaps under capitalism, it’s more obvious and done shamelessly.
Another view is that capitalism has produced an externality of sorts (broken items with little hope of repair), and it’s time for government to catch up and start regulating that externality the same way it deals with something like emissions. If the price of throwing things away was more accurately priced into items, there would be more economic pressure to be repairable.