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Comment by sparrowInHand | Hacker News Reader

State controlled subscriptions, with cost-free repairs.

This should be a threatened backstop if the market fails to meet this need. The latter is preferable, of course, and should be incented.

State-scale purchasing could be a huge leverage to keep manufacturers on message.

.gov to Apple: "We expect a full public service manual repo and parts ordering service, and until one appears, not one government employee gets an iPhone provisioned."

A particularly recalctriant Apple could say "Here's the iPhone 18G with repair specs but other intentional degradations". It would be fun watching the government respond to someone responding to their orders with the equivalent of a "kick me" sign, and then watching as real consumers go up and ask for the 18G because they're more interested in being able to fix the damned thing cheaply and easily than four more frames per second in Genshin Impact.

Sounds exactly like insurance, which is yet another scam.

This is just about the laziest unimaginative solution. What drove you to this solution? Do you have such low interest or investment in the problem so you would prefer some larger entity like the government just hand wave away this problem?

With how many examples exist of the government getting involved at levels of industry they clearly don’t have the expertise for and how everything gets batshit expensive when they get involved or how many examples you can draw from communist countries, a normal person would get the hint that this kind of blanket regulation is toxic and evil and would stop being proposed as solutions.

And they are very efficient

What are you talking about? This whole thread is discussing how private enterprise is failing consumers. Meanwhile, countless examples exist of government-run entities and non-profits that are well-liked and less expensive for consumers.

I don't think a large-scale repair entity created by the government is the answer to this problem, but it's clear you have a bias towards business, and in the repair industry, business is the problem and we need a government solution. I don't understand why anyone ever has your attitude. Any organization can be run poorly and its leaders susceptible to corruption, whether that be a government one or a private entity. You have to understand the problem to offer solutions and in many cases, a profit motive simply does not provide the best outcome for consumers.

That's why they don't get involved in the industry, they get involved in something they do understand, administration. If you offer a product that you claim is too complex for anyone but you to service that's fine, we believe you. We won't tell you how to build your product, but in exchange that means your product is legally designated a subscription service with an initial deposit for the cost of the appliance.

And so to make it so your products don't all go to the landfill when they break each product requires a state-administered/regulated subscription service which is charged based on some fixed percent overhead and the rest going directly to the cost of repairs. And every repair except intentional destruction is included in the price.

This isn't making things more expensive, it's effectively a transparency law so that consumers understand the real cost of the goods they're buying and manufacturers can't hide it behind expensive repair bills.

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