
Repair is as important as innovation - sinak
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/10/20/repair-is-as-important-as-innovation
======
TaylorAlexander
Intellectual property protection is a major inhibitor of repair. When only one
organization can legally produce replacement parts, repair becomes relegated
to outlaws. Companies default to closed source, guaranteeing that at some
point what they produce will all end up in a landfill unless it can be
recycled. It’s an obscure position but I believe that intellectual property
protection increases material waste and accelerates the destruction of the
natural world. It’s an issue that sadly few people think much about, and one
that I believe is invisibly harming the earth.

Recently I met Neil Gershenfeld from MIT, who advocates for research and
development in to universal machinery that can assemble itself, perform its
duties, and then disassemble itself back in to parts when complete. [1] As he
says, “there is no trash with LEGO, and there is no trash in a forest.” It’s a
far off idea it seems, but intriguing nonetheless.

In the near term, we as consumers can help avoid this waste by refusing to buy
proprietary materials that will eventually become landfill waste. Don’t buy
cheap Halloween decorations at the dollar store that will fill up the dump.
Don’t buy cheap Christmas presents for the short term amusement they provide.
We can point fingers at manufacturers for producing goods they know will
become trash, but we are just as complicit for buying those things from them.
Support producers who believe in repair and you will be doing the earth and
all its future inhabitants a favor.

[1] [https://youtu.be/3pkqm-mzXDU](https://youtu.be/3pkqm-mzXDU)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
IP is but one inhibitor of repair. I'm far from convinced it's the main, or
even a major one.

It's more a concerted effort to make repair expensive, unexpected,
unfashionable and gratuitously difficult across as many industries as
possible.

30 or 40 years ago nearly all simple products were repairable, easily and
cheaply. You went to any major retailer and they'd have a spares section along
with aisles of new product. All of them. You could buy a new element for your
toaster, kettle, heater or coffee machine. They'd keep seals and limescale
filters and so on. Some of these were standard enough that they'd fit a wide
range of manufacturer's products. They'd still be there years after the
particular model was discontinued. There'd be a few third party offerings that
were rarely as long lasting but perhaps £1 or £2 instead of £3 or £4.

Now? Nowhere sells spares, nor are they an expected part of most products. A
kettle manufacturer _might_ condescend to carry a few consumables like a
limescale filter for a year or two. Then charge you around £10 with £2 p&p for
a simple piece of plastic. Want a replacement element? That's basically never
a spare part any more, though they don't last any longer. A fridge
manufacturer might charge £18 with £4.95 p&p for a thermistor and a little
heat shrink tube, but no longer have the one of the three that fails most
often available at all. For a few year old refrigerator. (recent actual
examples)

For larger products manufacturers are combining parts and modules into
indivisible units that might ease manufacture a microscopic amount, but
absolutely make many simple repairs no longer possible. So what was recently a
£20 simple repair to your fridge or cooker is now a £200 major component and
more labour than it's probably worth.

 _> Support producers who believe in repair_

I've spent years, decades, trying to. There are effectively none left. Even
the most expensive brands are aiming to have you throw it away and buy another
as soon as they can get away with. Which leaves who?

~~~
NovaS1X
> So what was recently a £20 simple repair to your fridge or cooker is now a
> £200 major component and more labour than it's probably worth.

I think this is a large part of the problem. Our goods have become so cheap to
produce that they're cheaper to buy new than to repair. For example, I'm
rebuilding a small motorcycle engine for a Honda. I can rebuild the engine,
paying the machine-work labor cost and a small amount of parts, and it's
actually just a bit more expensive than to buy a brand-new Chinese clone
that's been in production for over a decade.

Labour costs for repairs have gone up, while consumer goods have gotten
cheaper. In a lot of cases it's simply more cost-effective to replace than to
rebuild. No mechanic rebuilds water pumps in the shop anymore than a home
appliance tech would fix a coffee maker.

DIY is largely the one holdout for repairs, and it's unreasonable to think
that every person can have the aptitude to fix any device that may break in
their lives.

~~~
xg15
> _In a lot of cases it 's simply more cost-effective to replace than to
> rebuild._

I think a lot of this is because we can choose to not factor in a lot of
additional costs that will show up in other forms. E.g., unsustainable
disposal leadss to environmental problems and hazardous living conditions,
while the cheap chinese labour only works with far weaker labor protections
than we have here.

~~~
growlist
If we can apply the same ingenuity to the end of life stage as to the creation
stage, it actually makes sense to not bother attempting to fix - why expend
costly human effort on individual patches when innumerable hours have been
spent refining industrial processes to bring the cost of a replacement down?
Just buy the replacement. Though of course even with the cleanest lifecycle
there's still the power requirement and associated carbon, but perhaps even
that can be taken care of via mitigation.

I should say instinctively this still seems kind of wrong and wasteful to me,
but then on the other hand when so much time has been invested in processes it
kind of makes sense to take advantage of that efficiency. I should also say
that this still leaves manufacturers with no excuse for taking the decision to
deliberately stop making consumables, which is the kind of thing I would like
to see legislation against.

~~~
xg15
I don't see what one has to do with the other. Even with the most efficient
production process, you will end up with landfills of toxic waste if your
strategy to make your devices throwaway-only.

Also note that a lot of "ingenuity" is production is just shipping parts
across the world from wherever human labor is cheapest.

~~~
growlist
> If we can apply the same ingenuity to the end of life stage

Did you miss above? I'm saying that IF devices can be recycled effectively at
end of life, it may be more effective in economic terms to do away with the
idea of making the thing repairable (beyond consumables) in life.

> Also note that a lot of "ingenuity" is production is just shipping parts
> across the world from wherever human labor is cheapest.

I think that's a little too cynical - take the car industry as an example -
are you really going to argue that outsourcing to reduce labour costs has
played a more significant role than technology and quality shifts? If so
perhaps you should warn Germany, who still seem to be cranking out millions of
cars every year, paying German wages, and turning a profit..

------
burlesona
This is one of the core messages of Strong Towns (strongtowns.org).

In general humans get really excited about building new and transformative
things, and we have a big blind spot to ongoing maintenance. In particular
we've come to utterly depend on the things that were "shiny and new" back in
first generation of suburbanization (50s - 70s), while many of those things
have been poorly maintained, and in many cases the economic returns on that
infrastructure don't actually justify the ongoing maintenance cost.

It's a dangerous drag on the economy, but we're stuck with it now, and the
lesson learned is we should prioritize maintenance in our thought process and
make sure we're getting a positive return out of the infrastructure
liabilities we already have before creating new ones.

~~~
oldandtired
I worked for an ex-Australian Navy commander who managed various Asset and
Maintenance groups for various organisations. The subject of maintenance is a
very interesting subject.

If your maintenance regime is done properly, over the long haul, you save a
fortune. Do your normal maintenance, refurbish at the correct times and
replace with new when the % maintenance cost has reached the trigger point.

This means that every asset lasts longer (on the whole) costing you less and
you get some return on that asset in the end. The one thing that generally
gets in the way of proper maintenance are the accountants. They have a
penchant for not understanding maintenance and future costs.

I have seen them willing to spend up to 80% of the cost of replacement for an
item on repairing an item year on year, when it would be better to simply
replace the item in question. They also seem to have the general attitude of
"It's working therefore we do not need to spend any money on maintenance for
it." This attitude seems to ensure that all sorts of organisations have a
continually degrading asset base instead of a maintained asset base.

If you were to look at each state government in any country, you will find
that most of the state assets are ill-maintained and that to get them to the
correct maintenance level would be more than the current state budgets.

The other side of this is that accountants have a skewed point of view as to
what is an asset and what is not. As such they will spend plenty of money on
smaller item with replacement rather than refurbish or repair those items.
Hence, office furniture, phones, computers, etc, are treated as consumable
items and not worth repairing. So why would suppliers and manufacturers be
bothered to make these items repairable?

Change the mindset of those whose responsibility is the finance and your will
see a change in what supplier and manufacturers do in terms of repairability
of their products. The small scale consumer such as us would then then benefit
from this.

It effect, the mentality of not repairing items has a number of interconnected
causes that feed the problem, from the basic tax law and attitudes of
accountants "protecting" the bottom line, to companies using this attitude to
make it cheaper to not design products that are repairable, to patent law and
copyright law, to that simple staple called greed and the other stable called
politics.

~~~
linuxftw
I've witnessed same effect in the US Military. The problem is, and always was,
they're spending other people's money. They don't need to make the best long-
term decision, they need to make the 'what fits in my budget this quarter'
decision.

------
danans
> The discipline’s most prominent statistic, gdp, is gross (as opposed to net)
> because it leaves out the cost of wear and tear.

Net domestic product is an interesting concept that I haven't considered
before.

The Fed appears to track it somehow, despite the difficulty in measuring it,
as the article mentions. Here is a graph I configured on the St Louis Fed site
that compares GDP to NDP:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lErT](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lErT)

In general, it seems to track GDP pretty well, although recently it appears to
have gotten closer to GDP, though I don't have any idea why.

The article's comparison of "wear and tear" as a % of countries' GDP is
interesting. Since lower income countries (China, India) often have a lower
standards for acceptable maintenance level in both the public and private
realm than wealthier ones, it kind of makes sense that they spend less of
their GDP on wear and tear.

Also, a lot of the expensive modern infrastructure (airports, freeways, etc)
in those countries is relatively new, so a big repair bill might just be
further down the road (no pun intended).

Britain in this view is an anomaly, being a high income country with low
maintenance spend as a % of GDP.

~~~
fyfy18
I'd say there are three main reasons for Britain's lower maintenance spending:

1) Compared to France and Germany the climate and environment is a lot
simpler. We don't have lots of mountains with tunnels, the temperature barely
dips below freezing. Even though we have roughly the same population size, we
have roughly half the length of motorways [0].

2) In the 80s a lot of public infrastructure was privatised. Taking the
railways as an example, First Group is a company listed on the London Stock
Exchange which owns a large majority of train and local bus services across
the country [1]. Infrastructure projects are still funded by the government,
but they are often funded in the way of loans, that at some point they expect
to be repaid, so don't impact the GDP.

3) After the financial crisis, fixed capital spending was greatly cut (as well
as public spending in general), but as a % of GDP it still hasn't returned to
its 2008 levels [2]. I suspect a lot of what was cut was really improvements
and new projects that have been shelved. If we were to compare it to other
countries over a greater timeframe, I'd expect to see the spending closer to
that of France and Germany.

It'll be interesting to see what happens after Brexit as a large percentage of
both the construction labour force and building supplies are imported from
Europe.

[0] [http://www.nationmaster.com/country-
info/stats/Transport/Roa...](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-
info/stats/Transport/Road/Motorway-length)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstGroup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FirstGroup)

[2] [https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gross-fixed-
capi...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gross-fixed-capital-
formation-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html)

~~~
rrcaptain
Much of the maintenance of Britian's infrastructure is still done by the
government. Rails, for example, are government maintained but we just don't
get the profits anymore.

------
jelliclesfarm
[..] In March California became the 18th state in America to introduce a bill
supporting the “right to repair”, by obliging manufacturers to make manuals
more widely available to customers and independent repair shops. [..]

Patently untrue. More here: [https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-
right-to-repa...](https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-
repair/.). At least for CA farmers [..] a big California farmers’ lobbying
group just blithely signed away farmers’ right to access or modify the source
code of any farm equipment software. As an organization representing 2.5
million California agriculture jobs, the California Farm Bureau gave up the
right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Farmers can’t
change engine settings, can’t retrofit old equipment with new features, and
can’t modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own.
Worse, the lobbyists are calling it a victory.[..]

~~~
kwiens
(Author of the linked piece here.) The Economist is technically correct. The
bill was _introduced_ , but did not pass. We're going to try again next year.

~~~
etatoby
If you use words to suggest something untrue, you are a liar.

"Technically correct" is something best left to lawyers, whose job entails
just that, by its very nature. Everybody else, especially those whose job is
to inform people, don't get to use a "technically correct" free pass. They're
either telling the truth or lying.

In this case, the unnamed coward journalist is lying.

~~~
orloffm
But isn't that what "introduce" is for?

~~~
crtasm
"Attempted to pass" might be clearer?

------
hectorr1
The US military sells itself on being incredibly capable thanks to developing
and fielding cutting edge weapons technology.

It is actually capable because it is extremely effective at logistics and
maintenance.

~~~
madeuptempacct
I think that's very subjective. The USSR actually led the way on some
innovation:

* IRST on MIG-29 and helmet-targeting for infrared missiles

* Titanium welding for high-speed submarines

* Super-cavitating torpedoes

* Stealth theory

* Air dropped vehicles

* Urban tank support vehicles (BMPT)

* Radar targeting for individual machine guns

* CIWS

* Reactive armor

* Lots of other stuff I can't think of right now.

It's also questionable whether the US military efficiency over opponents
scales with budget over opponents.

So its both questionable that it leads in innovation and that this leads to
superiority.

~~~
shoo
> It's also questionable whether the US military efficiency over opponents
> scales with budget over opponents

That's a good point. Apparently the US military funding accounts for 36
percent of global military funding, with 3x as much funding as the country
with the second highest spend, China.

I have no idea if the US military is particularly efficient. Even if it was
half as efficient as competitors, the US military could still have an
advantage due to the sheer volume of resources dedicated.

~~~
dralley
A certain percentage of that is simply cost of living - China can pay their
soldiers and military industrial researchers a Chinese wage while the US has
to pay US wages all the way down the supply chain.

Still incredibly inefficient, to be sure.

------
arthurofbabylon
I have the concern that - as the pace of tech development increases - the
timeframe of designers, planners, and stake-holders shrinks. The advantage of
this trend is obvious (why invest in tools that will be greatly improved upon
in coming years?), but the pitfalls are less apparent and less exciting. The
perspective needs to be broad.

Honestly, some rudimentary technology (physical infrastructure, financial
instruments, computing solutions) is rather effective and oftentimes elegant.
Why not lean into these artifacts and design around
repair/maintenance/continued-use?

~~~
llukas
You mean tech companies want everyone to buy almost identical phone every two
years?

If anything pace of tech development plateaus after technology gets
commoditized.

~~~
snuxoll
Up until recently mobile devices had been getting ludicrously massive
performance gains year over year, much like traditional PC's had before ~2012.
Going from my iPhone 6 Plus to iPhone 7 Plus two years ago was an absolutely
massive leap in terms of even day-to-day performance, meanwhile outside PC
gaming I'd have a hard time justifying a replacement or upgrade of a mid-range
or better laptop or desktop made in the past 6 years.

Times have changed however, had my iPhone 7 Plus not died on me I wouldn't
have bothered to upgrade to an iPhone XS (I had an extended warranty through
T-Mobile and got the device swapped just to trade it in for a $300 credit) -
it was still stupidly fast and I certainly wasn't missing any of the gimmicks
in the newer devices. This is probably why T-Mobile is now testing 3 year
financing options with the iPhone XS and Galaxy Note 9.

~~~
marssaxman
I really don't understand why phones _needed_ those performance gains. What on
earth are people doing with their phones to make use of multiple cores,
anyway? The form factor makes their utility so fundamentally limited that
increased compute capacity doesn't seem to change anything.

~~~
drchickensalad
Have you seen the code people write for mobile apps lately?

~~~
marssaxman
No, I have no contact with any of that ecosystem, and I use very few mobile
apps since most of them seem like pointless skins over poorly designed
websites. What do you have in mind?

------
nimbius
speaking as an engine mechanic by trade, I agree 100%. But manufacturers have
another tactic that needs to be reigned in. Namely, fabricated service
bulletins and procedures.

Example: reporting a bad transfer case bearing as a service bulletin. This is
normal, as customers have detected the fault and the manufacturer has
identified it as a problem. What isnt normal is the manufacturer insisting the
part cant be repaired, and instead of a $50 part you need to chuck the entire
thing and pay $2500 for a new assembly. Sure, bearings are a hard example, but
ive also encountered manufacturers who demand their brake calipers cannot be
re manufactured (Porsche and BMW, im looking at you.) and instead of a $119
rebuild, you'll need to buy a one thousand dollar caliper straight from
germany or the entire car will explode.

~~~
etatoby
See Apple for the equivalent fraudolent behavior in the computing world.

[https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns](https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns)

------
collinf
Freakonomics did a Podcast on this if anyone wants a pretty good listen. I
listened and couldn't stop thinking about all of the applications to software
in it.

freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/

------
stretchwithme
I suspect a legislative process not dominated by industry lobbyists would
ensure that people have the right to repair everything.

I think countries that use proportional representation rather than winner-
take-all elections aren't as hijacked by such lobbyists. I know there was an
effort in the EU to ensure the right to repair.

~~~
eldavido
I think you're looking at this totally wrong.

Making things repairable has real costs. They have to be designed in a modular
way so they can be taken apart. Given the choice, most people want sleekness
and better industrial design over the ability to repair. This is why products
like the iPhone, which feature seam-less industrial design and no externally-
visible screws, are so popular.

In order to make something maintainable, the design must be stable, it must be
designed to be serviceable, it must be built with serviceable parts, and it
must have a long enough lifetime where maintenance is worth it economically,
and a buyer who cares. _None_ of these are typically true for huge segments of
what consumers buy.

~~~
lambertsimnel
I think the distinction between the right to repair and the ability to repair
is important. I think you're addressing the latter and stretchwithme is
addressing the former. As the article suggests, the lack of recognition for
the right to repair is one of the phenomena inhibiting repair. Where the right
isn't enforced, it's possible for manufacturers to make things repairable,
while also imposing a monopoly on repair, thereby inflating repair costs and
inhibiting (legal) repair.

Please see this Vice article about tractor repair
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-
americ...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american-
farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware)

------
ctoth
"Because the thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning is, it's not an
adventure."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHECxS6IEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHECxS6IEU)

------
umeshunni
The article does a good job of differentiating between repairing high fixed
cost items (like a bridge or house) and low fixed cost items (like
electronics). It's also worth thinking about the labor cost of repairing vs
manufacturing, especially in a world where manufacturing is automated and
repairing is a very labor intensive process (diagnosis, sourcing replacement
parts, performing the repair, verifying functionality post-repair etc).

This is probably the reason why repairing is generally more common in low
labor costs markets than in the developed world.

------
meej
I would like to point out the Portland Aerial Tram as an example of an
infrastructure project that has an extremely strong focus on maintenance and
repair (understandably so).

Here's a nice video from Oregon Health & Science University featuring the
Tram's maintenance supervisor talking about the maintenance program and the
impact it has on the Tram's performance.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDGIQMbx4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDGIQMbx4I)

I don't think all infrastructure projects require this level of maintenance,
but it's nice to see what's possible when it's baked into a project from the
beginning.

------
jokoon
The problem is short term versus long-term profits.

It seems it's more expensive to make products that are more easily repairable
or can last longer, because obviously brands benefit from making products that
break, although I'm curious if consumers really know how to switch brand when
one break early, and if consumers can really understand why and how a product
will last longer.

There should be regulations about how products are made and how their parts
can break. I saw some broom vacuum cleaner's break because of a flexible
plastic air canal. It requires buying a big piece. It's either intentional, or
bad design. Those designs should be regulated, inspected and fined.

------
anfractuosity
I thought this was quite interesting:

Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w)

------
contingencies
While I am coming to this discussion after most have moved on, as a software
guy who has moved toward hardware I think a substantial point not made here is
that manufacturing processes are not like software.

Lego works for reassembly because it is a one-part item: standard interface,
bulky, light, strong, simple. A typical circuit board by contrast is centrally
fabricated by high-end robots as an extremely high density sub-assembly
including tens, hundreds or thousands of components. It's not easy to repair
because it requires relatively specialist knowledge and tools to do so, and
there are so many different components available. In a similar way, many
products have been explicitly designed to be smaller, lighter, simpler or
cheaper instead of being reassembly-capable. Injection molded plastic is a
classic example, so is assembly by glue or snap-in vs. screws. These are
powerful techniques and valid trade-offs.

This does not excuse, for example, companies like Canon and Nikon requiring
customers to pay extortionate amounts for repairs and replacements of simpler
mechanisms and refusing to supply replacement parts to independent service
people.

------
choonway
The real change will come when my handphone can repair itself. Screen cracked?
no problem just throw some sand on it and the nanobots will do the rest.

------
kellysutton
In the same vein of repair and things having a long life, I'm experimenting
with the idea of giving unused things new homes. We own many things that are
not utilized often, so why not move those things better homes?

[https://cultofless.com](https://cultofless.com)

------
fouc
Realistically, repair & sustainability is far more important than innovation
largely driven by our fossil fuel dependency, which is going to run out in the
next 50 years anyways.

------
aloukissas
Not if you ask Tesla
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR4CFiuR3tQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR4CFiuR3tQ)

------
saudioger
More important. The only innovative thing I can come up with to avoid having
to fix my leaky toilet is shitting in the yard.

~~~
giardini
1) Start eating meals at regular hours,

2) join a gym,

3) get a part-time job to fill your empty hours.

Voila, no need for a toilet of your own. (No thank-you required)

But seriously, hold your nose and fix your leaky toilet - this is one of the
easiest things in your house to repair. There's such a thing as being _too_
lazy.

------
vicpara
Repairs need to be part of the business model to become a priority. Currently,
the manufacturers see repairs only as a mandatory service they need to offer
as imposed on them by the local law. The market doesn't impose any further
requirements on these products. 2 years are just about as far in the future
humans can anticipate and foresee things.

Robust design is a feature that doesn't do good to your business. Soviet
product design, as laughable it seems to one, was really incredible and
produced products that would rarely break and when they do so parts were
always available. But in that market model getting rich was never the goal.
Quite the contrary!

For example, my grandmother still has a radio that weights 7 kg built in 50s
that works despite all things. I can listen to Radio Moscow from my kitchen
2000km away. The antenna is broken and that radio hangs near the cooker, it is
already filled with a lot of dust and grease. Just like your extractor fan.
That's just one example. Kalashnikov, Russian tanks, cars, soviet home
electrical appliances like tvs, washing machines or vacuum cleaners etc. They
all work today.

In a capitalist economy only the regulators can impose repairs as a
requirement. Most humans are beyond their ability to think critically at what
happens in 2-5 years time.

------
marenkay
Just establish worldwide regulation that favours any approach with the least
amount of resource consumption.

Would not force people into replacing/fixing. It would always favour the
approach best for all of us.

Simple solution IMHO

------
mario0b1
non-paywalled link: [https://archive.fo/TIWAi](https://archive.fo/TIWAi)

~~~
berti
Thanks, unfortunately it didn't work (SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP on FF
63.0b10).

~~~
whyagaindavid
[https://outline.com/nWt5uF](https://outline.com/nWt5uF)

------
qwerty456127
Indeed.

------
noobermin
Is there not some irony here that The Economist, a rag if any is more
associated with neoliberalism is running this story?

Repair and maintenance is one of those things that is completely overlooked by
neoliberal, modern capitalism. As they state in the article, GDP and economic
analysis in general doesn't take into account wear and tear, amongst a number
of other things. If anything, the drive away from things like
interchangeable/universal parts and the ability to repair things you own in
the first place is directly tied to rise of unfettered capitalism.

