
Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff - prawn
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3063935/sweden-wants-to-fight-our-disposable-culture-with-tax-breaks-for-repairing-old-stuff
======
jernfrost
This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that
products are:

1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not
easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts
making them extremely expensive.

I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make
repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier for the
competition to make compatible replacement parts so they are cheaper.

How many products don't we have where one stupid little plastic thing breaks
and it becomes useless. Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to
install.

~~~
sliverstorm
There's another angle too. For a long time the only tailor in town was
basically a bridal tailor. They charged steep prices for simple work on
everyday clothing, and wait times were long.

Fast forward to today. I had ripped holes in a few pairs of pants, and was
wondering if it made sense to have them repaired- I was pretty sure I was
going to be charged as much as the pants were worth for a fairly simple
repair. Luckily there's a new shop in town, run by a group of older ladies who
seem to have grown up tailoring, that charges sane prices.

Anyway, the point is repairing can be uneconomical simply because of lack of
availability of repair resources.

As an example on the other side, Autozone has enabled countless mechanics with
their tool library programs and other basic shadetree services like easy oil
recycling.

(P.S. Maybe I should learn to sew & get an inexpensive sewing machine, but
that isn't the point)

~~~
jernfrost
Repair services in any western country will be hideously expensive because it
can't be automated and has to be paid western wages, while the products
themselves are made in an automated fashion with third world wages.

For this repair stuff to work, we have to make it easier to do so that people
can do it themselves.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
It does depend on the product.

I have a KitchenAid blender and a KitchenAid stand mixer that I've had to
repair. In both cases, the part was purchased for under $10 online and repair
only took a few minutes. The alternative was buying a new $300 or $100+
product.

Sure, I did the repair myself, but a local KitchenAid service center (yes,
they exist!) would probably have done the job even faster.

It boils down to cost/benefit. Would I have done the same thing with a $30
mixer? Not worth it; simpler to buy a replacement, but in this case, the
products are built to last (both broken parts were "sacrificial" and designed
to fail before something more expensive failed).

~~~
rplst8
Sacrificial parts are great design IMO, specifically when they protect a much
more expensive part. However, it does bother me that the parts are often very
custom and only available from the manufacturer.

I enjoy listening to a conversation where some blowhard talks about was was
obviously a shear pin breaking in some mechanical peice of equipment and then
replaces it with a grade 8 bolt.

------
J-dawg
This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the
comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented
quantities of non-recyclable "stuff".

It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a
short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much
of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and
contaminating the human food chain.

The only potential counter-argument I can see with this sort of policy is that
the goals of minimising CO2 and minimising waste sometimes seem to be in
competition with each other. Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.)
washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.

~~~
mseebach
The _idea_ is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will
change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and
unintended consequences.

What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of
Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than
like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired
by replacing all the parts, except the power cord? How broken must something
be before it can be repaired? Totally failed, failure imminent, or just worn?
(Unintended consequence: people have their things fixed long before it's
strictly necessary, leading to greater waste than if they'd just let the thing
fail and bought a new one. Another one: appliances are only upgraded to newer,
much more energy efficient ones much later than otherwise).

And for labour, where is the line drawn? Is the labour cost of diagnosing a
problem covered? What if the problem is bigger than expected, and it isn't
economical to carry out the repair? What if I have you upgrade the Foo (not a
repair), which is trivial, while you've taken the widget apart anyway to fix
the Bar (a repair)? What about repairing something, pocketing the tax break,
then selling it (perhaps outside of the country)?

Once you have considered all of these questions, you either have a lot of
loopholes which will make the tax break much more expensive, or have a very
long body of legal texts, and some very exited lawyers and auditors which will
impose an indirect cost on society broadly.

Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt
to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark. Sounds great,
right? Hilarity ensued over mixed nuts (the accountants had a field day with
that one, and IIRC all kinds of meat being taxed at the same level, and the
tax was repealed after only 15 months.

~~~
AJ007
A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once
sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already
done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases
you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle
things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway.

Right now it is profitable for many parties to extract non-renewable
resources, assemble them in to something that has a short life cycle, and be
sold to consumers who would rather keep buying the same thing over and over
again than a single time. There have been big incentives on the government
side for hitting GDP numbers, which has led to both low interest rates and an
urgency to extract and process non-renewable resources as quickly as possible.
Capital utilization numbers certainly doesn't account for any of this and very
well exacerbate the problem.

I don't want to confuse cause and effect here, but the consumption of low
quality products directly relates to the volume which they are produced. The
actual costs have just been transferred to the future. In the future there
will be both fewer resources to produce those goods and more
pollution/ecosystem effects to account for it.

At Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder meeting this year Charlie Munger
specifically said he thought all petrochemical reserves would be eventually
exhausted to make things, not for fuel (there was a specific word he used
which I never use and forgot.) Billionaires are thinking about resource
exhaustion. Poor, uneducated people are not, unless they are still in hunter-
gatherer societies and see problems first hand.

We often think of food and bio-products as renewables, but in many cases they
are not. National Geographic (August 2016) ran a great article on the
exhaustion of the Ogallala aquifer. California gets a lot of attention, but
ground water is being drained globally. Longer term, there may be limits with
phosphorus as well. Food production is going to become a lot more expensive,
global warming or not.

I don't know about the returns, but Al Gore's Generation Investment Management
philosophically probably has the right approach.

The flipside to all of this is that technology can make using the same
resources much more efficient. My leading theme for the past 5+ years or so
has been exponentially more efficient technology running head on in to global
government policies -- of all political leanings -- of creating GDP growth at
all costs. The two don't mix, and the results could be very ugly.

~~~
athenot
Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's
perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places.

It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of
their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior
behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for
disposal or haul their trash to a landfill (usually in more rural areas). So
it's a very visible cost, making savage dumping more compelling.

~~~
acaciapalm
Exactly this. We socialize the cost of garbage disposal in the first world to
disincentivize dumping. Worth it, IMO.

------
gambiting
The only problem with repairing devices is labour cost, nothing else.

I've had a broken subwoofer that I took to a small electronics shop(in UK),
and was quoted 60 pounds to even have it looked at. Not repaired - looked at.
The subwoofer cost me 80 pounds on ebay. So predictably, it went straight to
the bin.

Same with washing machines, dryers, etc - I bought a Hotpoint washing machine
for 220 pounds, but a standard call out charge for an engineer to come and
have a look is at least 100 pounds. Plus any parts + cost of labour billed per
hour = it's cheaper to just buy a new washing machine and at least have a
warranty on it.

Now, I feel like this is exclusive to western countries, because people value
their time a lot(as they should!) - but where I'm from(Poland) it would be
stupidly cheap to get anything repaired. I had an old LCD TV repaired locally,
the guy spent half a day fixing it, and only charged 100 zlotys(20 pounds/30
USD) - that included parts.

Not sure how we can change that, unless we get the labour cost down.

~~~
gmac
On your subwoofer, you can try listing that kind of thing on
Freecycle/Freegle. Commonly someone technically competetent will pick it up to
see if they can fix it.

~~~
kaybe
Some cities also have repair cafes, where skilled idealistic people hang out
with tools and help you try to fix it yourself.

------
Animats
There are downsides to repairability. It means more fasteners to come loose,
and more connectors to give trouble. It means more bulky devices; you can't
cram everything in as tightly if it has to come out later.

I restore old Teletype machines, which were designed to be 100% repairable.
You can take them apart down to the individual parts and put them back
together. Everything is attached with screws and lockwashers. Restoring an
80-year old machine is routine.

They are not low-maintenance. Each machine has over 600 lubrication points.
There are hundreds of things to be adjusted. You need a sizable tool kit and
two suitcases of parts for normal maintenance. And you have to study up on how
to do all this. Few people want to bother with that level of detail any more.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Are those museum pieces, or are there some insane industries still using
actual Teletypes?

~~~
Animats
Museum pieces. It's a hobby.

------
jokoon
I fail to understand why Scandinavian politics always manage to make sense.

Is that cultural, historical, economical, or does the tough climate force
people to think a little bit more about how they manage their society?

~~~
sheraz
I see why you and many others living outside of the region would think that.
Sweden is very good at only extolling her perceived "virtues" and sweeping the
rest under the rug. Waaaay under the rug.

There is a real moral and intellectual superiority among many Swedes that I
find deeply distasteful. From environment to politics to how to bag your
groceries, and yes--even close a door properly, the "Swedish way" is always
promoted as the only "right way."

~~~
dijit
Out of curiosity where do you live? Perhaps this is a regional thing but down
here in Skane people are very humble about being Swedish, almost as if they
are ashamed of some sort of history.

They certainly wouldn't describe something as "the Swedish way" unless it was
something about how the police are ineffective due to bureaucracy or something
similar.

~~~
kalleboo
It seems a lot more complicated than either your view or the grandparents. If
you watch Fredrik Lindströms "Världens Modernaste Land" it explores the
question of the conflicting Swedish self-image pretty well (and the history of
how it became what it is today), but I wouldn't know how to summarize it in a
Hacker News comment.

------
ersii
There seems to be plenty here that like the idea of lowering the Value Add Tax
on repairs. Let me ask: Why stop at 12.5% VAT for repairs? If you'd go all the
way down to 0% - the repairs could potentially be up to 25% cheaper than they
are now.

~~~
sliverstorm
Perhaps if they make repair _too_ sweet, abuse will skyrocket asymptotically.

Or, perhaps it transforms from "incentive" to "subsidy".

------
semi-extrinsic
What we really need is financial penalties on companies that make stuff
deliberately hard to repair. Set up a department of the Consumer Rights Bureau
(or whatever it's called) where people can report devices the've been unable
to fix due to deliberate obfuscation/etc., and that forces manufacturers to
refund the consumer the entire purchase sum of that device no matter how old
it is.

Anecdote: my washing machine recently broke the main bearing, and I was going
to fix it. Even found a nice teardown/reassembly vid on Youtube of the exact
same model (a bit older than mine). After 2 hours of work, I discover Bosch
has gone from using screws on the outer drum to plastic welding it shut. So
fixing it means replacing the entire assembly, costing 2/3 of a new machine
and with a four week delivery time for the part. I learned this is only done
to screw consumers over, and that all manufacturers do it now. The drum still
has all the mounting tabs for being screwed together, so they're literally
just saving $0.30 on screws.

~~~
J-dawg
That is utterly infuriating. Stuff like this really shakes my faith in
capitalism.

To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw over
the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the ecosystem. I
honestly wonder how they sleep at night.

The market clearly can't fix this issue, so regulation must be the only
option.

~~~
icebraining
_To think that someone in charge at Bosch has actively decided to 1. Screw
over the customer 2. Impose a massive external cost on society and the
ecosystem._

Alternatively, they know that very few people did repair the old versions
(barely anyone know how to do it themselves, and labour costs in the developed
world make it uneconomical to call someone) and they decided to reduce waste
(and costs, win-win) by cutting down on the number of screws.

I don't know what actually happened, but it's unproductive to assume malice.
The reality is that for the most part, markets optimize for what's valued for
the consumers, and "easily repairable" is not a feature people value that
much.

------
Shivetya
Anyone can reuse old fully workable products in their every day life, it
really is super easy and in many cases can be cheaper. While I do go
occasionally go into thrift or antique stores, I also hit up garage sales, but
my main source is ebay.

Besides the good feeling from putting something back into service that would
other wise be junked there can be some serious nostalgia involved. Examples, I
have a Toastmaster 1b16 fully automatic toaster like my grandparents had in
the 50s, works perfect regardless how many slices pass through it. Old glass
plates (morgantown, crinkle, etc) that we use every day for eating. Milk glass
spice dispensers, salt & pepper, and old glass water containers in the fridge
for ice tea. You can even buy old tupperware or ceramic and glass storage for
the refrigerator. My favorite has to be a the vintage fans, a six bladed brass
Emerson (blades look like ship propeller) is flawless in use and over a
hundred years old.

About the only things I won't use are higher tech electronics, efficiency
aside the older items may not even be usable because of software or
serviceability

~~~
s3krit
I really like this idea. I collect old videogame consoles, so I'm pretty used
to paying Ebay for nostalgia. However, I wonder if old electronics are much
less efficient and end up using more electricity - thus actually causing more
harm to the environment than a newer but more disposable plastic model.

------
hlandau
This is a very nice move to see.

Other people have discussed washing machines below, but there's even more to
say on them. Washing machines used to have long warranty periods. Nowadays
they tend to be sold with a 2 year warranty, which I believe in the EU is the
required minimum. And these manufacturers (Bosch, for example) even have the
gall to claim that their products are high quality and that this warranty
period somehow proves this, or is in any way a long period.

AFAIK washing machines used to have 10 year warranties, but they cost more
along the lines of £800. Now we have £250 washing machines with 2 year
warranties. One way of reducing costs is to reduce the number of parts. Sealed
tanks, as mentioned below, are one such example. This directly impairs the
repairability of the product.

I suspect also that models are released at greater frequency, possibly due to
a need to take advantage of price fluctuations in wholesale parts markets (if
you can make a washing machine using Part A or Part B, and one month A is more
expensive than B, and then this inverts, this creates pressure to constantly
design new models to minimise pricing). Though this is just a suspicion, it
would make sense: I do know that the (monolithic) spare parts are stocked for
a particular model for less time, which means that the prices of the spares
which are available are very high.

Water efficiency regulations also appear to have forced modern washing
machines to use inadequate water for rinsing. There are numerous stories of
hypoallergenic people who find that their new washing machine leaves
significant detergent in clothing. Some people have even tracked down old (and
for that matter better made) washing machines just to get one which will rinse
properly. At other times the actual temperature of the water on the '60
degree' setting has been tested and found to be rather on the low side.
(Supposedly all of this efficiency regulation, rather pathetically, only tests
the 60 degree programme in the first place, putting a certain degree of
competitive pressure on energy efficiency for this setting.) This is
particularly insane given that the environmental cost of these quasi-
disposable 2-year-warranty washing machines must be much higher than the
environmental cost of their resource consumption.

I think consumer goods legislation should recognise that different minimum
warranty periods are appropriate for different kinds of product. A legally
required minimum warranty period of 6 or 8 years for washing machines, for
example, would instantly create pressure on manufacturers to increase the
longevity and repairability of their machines.

~~~
logfromblammo
I am only aware of one brand of washing machine that explicitly claims to be
designed to be repairable by the end-user--Staber. I have never actually owned
or used one before, so I'm not sure how fit for purpose it may be otherwise.

I have successfully repaired other brands of washing machine, dryer, and
refrigerator, though. It isn't that difficult, but obtaining the replacement
parts is absolutely ridiculous. The first-party site for ordering replacement
parts often charges 50-80% of the MSRP of a complete new appliance for just
one replacement part.

If any country wanted to encourage repair over replacement, tax incentives are
probably not the best way to do it. Publish national standards for appliance
form factors, such as case dimensions, screw hole placement, subassembly
dimensions, connectors, drive belts, elastic ring sizes, etc. Then phase in
requirements that all new appliances must conform to the standard by 20xx.

If all washing machines conform to standard WM-S, WM-M, WM-L, WM-I, or WM-X,
and those standards only have three different sizes of drive motor and one
kind of power connector and one control connector, then manufacturing third-
party replacement motors becomes more economically possible than the current
situation, where a Brand X replacement motor might not even fit correctly in
two different Brand X models.

The chassis, outer panels, and drum of a washing machine just don't really
need to be replaced, unless the paint chips and they rust out. Bearings,
seals, motors, belts, control electronics, and knobs, on the other hand, those
wear out.

Perhaps I have just been spoiled by ATX standards for computer parts, and
connector standards for ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIe, ATA, SATA, SCSI, M.2, and USB.
All those standards mean that third-party manufacturers don't have to maintain
separate silos for Apple, Dell, HP, Compaq, Tandy, Amstrad, etc. The third-
party motherboard manufacturers can just conform to Intel + ATX to sell a
product, and maybe also micro-ATX and mini-ITX to cater to small-system
builders. It is not difficult at all to assemble a working computer where the
CPU + chipset, motherboard, case, power supply, system memory, SSD, hard
drive, removable disk drive, graphics card, monitor(s), keyboard, mouse,
speakers, wi-fi, and Bluetooth are all made by different companies.

But if you try to replace a single-phase AC 120V 60Hz 5A 0.5hp motor in an
appliance with another of a different brand with exactly the same power
rating, it probably won't work. The taxes are not the problem--it's getting
the parts. As long as the only reliable source of usable replacement parts is
the original manufacturer, of course repairing won't be viable. They would
much rather sell you an entirely new product!

~~~
hlandau
I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be
coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a
standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard.

I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to
increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory,
companies will need to be able to stock replacement parts for much longer if
they don't want to have to replace the machine outright with a newer model
when it breaks. They may then find that standardising parts is in their
interests, etc.

~~~
logfromblammo
Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in
the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies
suddenly change direction.

When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the
number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the
point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much
as they needed another PCI slot. ISA is still a standard. Nobody uses it
because PCI was better. Likewise, AGP appeared, and then went away, because
PCIe is better. Wi-fi standards have likewise evolved, from A, to B, to G, to
N, to AC. Many devices are backward-compatible.

But an ATX motherboard manufactured last week will still fit in the ATX tower
case I bought in 1999, with a power supply I bought in 2009. The original
manufacturer of that case does not need to stock parts for it, or even still
be in business, because if I want another 120mm case fan, 10 different
companies can sell me a new one that will fit (and 20 more would be willing to
buy a fan from one of the former 10, stencil a logo on it, and resell it to me
at a markup).

Perhaps it would be better to enforce a mandatory standard for 10 years, to
establish it in the market, then make it voluntary again, so that innovation
could occur. Once a standard exists, there has to be a really good reason for
deviating from it, otherwise the market quickly allows the non-standard thing
to fail. If it succeeds, it becomes a new _de facto_ standard, and the
official standard is likely to either adopt it outright or make the next
version compatible.

I think you absolutely do have to coerce a standard if one does not already
exist. But after it exists, it is largely self-enforcing.

To buck off the standard entirely, you literally have to be the size of Apple.
And even then, I know for certain that there is at least one person alive that
refuses to buy Apple hardware in part because of their proprietary connector
shenanigans in a world where USB is a standard.

~~~
Grishnakh
The ATX standard is the reason why no one bothers buying desktop computers any
more except extremists and gamers. These computers are _way_ too large and
inefficient and ridiculously noisy too, because they aren't properly
engineered for sound and ventilation (because they're held back by the 90s-era
ATX standard).

Everyone's just given up on it altogether and now they use laptops, or worse,
tablets.

Even corporate desktops abandoned ATX ages ago and went to proprietary SFF
cases.

~~~
logfromblammo
I am moving from a laptop as my at-home computer to a quiet-build mini-ITX
system literally this week, after the last parts arrive from Newegg.

I think the ongoing market fragmentation resulting from the incompatible
proprietary laptop form factors is pushing the whole industry towards
consolidation and mergers, and will result in less consumer choice in the long
run. I have been privately railing against this crap ever since Dell started
shipping not-ATX-but-looks-like-it-at-first-glance power supplies in late
1990s. And Apple has always almost gratuitously used proprietary connectors
and form factors, even when a perfectly usable standard already existed. They
can all go to a Hell where nothing can interoperate without at least two
adapters, and you never have both.

I was driven to the custom build when the headphone jack on my laptop broke. I
opened up the case and desoldered the broken one, and the microphone jack, and
resoldered the unbroken jack into the headphone jack's place. That worked for
a while. Then the laptop keyboard stopped responding to about 5 keys--all of
them rather indispensable for typing words. So I replaced the keyboard, and
the replacement is just a millimeter too small, so it constantly pops out of
its recess whenever it shifts and the plastic clips disengage. Then the
headphone-jack-formerly-microphone-jack broke like its predecessor. I already
knew the component itself was impossible to find to replace it, so I looked to
replace the motherboard. That would cost more than a newer, more capable
laptop, if the part had even been in stock.

So I'm building a system such that if anything breaks, I can just replace that
one part. I can't get decent repairability without building it myself, and I
can't build it myself if there aren't any rassafrassin' _standards_! I would
have built my own clamshell computer (not even necessarily a "laptop"), but no
one mass-produces an empty clamshell case for consumer sales, because there is
no laptop-standard form factor. Replacement parts for laptops are always
expensive, and frequently out of stock.

~~~
Grishnakh
I did something of the opposite: I used to have a big desktop. I got a laptop
later so I could do stuff at coffee shops and elsewhere. But I eventually got
tired of the size and noise of the desktop (even though it was loaded with
big, slow 120mm fans), and of the syncing issues with the laptop. I had wanted
to build a quiet miniITX system, but finally gave up on that idea because of
everything I've seen with "standard" ATX and ITX cases: they just are not
engineered for quietness. The best you can do is go to water cooling, and I
find it ridiculous that I'd have to go to those lengths for some quiet.

So instead I've just gone the laptop route. I can buy a Dell enterprise-level
Latitude laptop on Ebay for $150 easily, that's only a few years old, and it's
portable and quiet and reliable. It even comes with a magnesium chassis. And
if it breaks, I can buy a new one for $150 and resell the old broken one on
Ebay to someone who wants the parts. These laptops are extremely ubiquitous
(because they're used by so many businesses), so the parts are readily
available if I want to just repair it, plus they're built to be fairly easily
serviced (the older E6400 and E6410 had only one screw on the back panel). If
you were buying consumer laptops, that was your problem: those things are crap
and not made for easy servicing. You complain about "if the part had even been
in stock": on my Dells, I can easily buy any part I want on Ebay: a new
screen, a new motherboard, a new keyboard, a bare back panel, a speaker grill,
anything. Everything is in stock.

You don't need to build a laptop yourself to get decent repairability; you
just need to get a decent laptop and not a consumer-grade POS.

Then, so I can have a nice workstation, I got a docking station that supports
dual DVI/DisplapyPort monitors, USB3, etc. These docking stations are
standardized for Dell business laptops, so I can plug a huge range of them
into it.

------
acd
Globalisation vs the environment

Globalisation means consuming cheap stuff made in a low cost country that does
usually not last that long and transported over long distances.

Built to consume in cellphones are integrated batteries and cheap components
that by design fail after three years so we buy a new phone. Integrated
storage of a limited size that you cannot expand. Making things that does not
last is more profitable than making things that last long why is that?

How 16 container ships pollute more than all the cars in the world.
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-
create-pollution-cars-world.html)

On one hand economists wants us to blindly consume as much stuff as possible
since that is good for the economy. The other hand says we pollute the earth
and use to much energy which means we need to consume more durable goods which
lasts longer.

How do we integrate the environment in the economy?

~~~
devdas
Taxes. Externalities can be factored into the price. Build the price of
recycling into the product, and make the vendor liable.

------
ab5tract
Correct me if I am wrong, but under ISDS rules (a la TPP/TTIP), companies
could now sue Sweden for potential lost profits as a result of this
legislation, right? (Assuming Sweden is signed onto an ISDS treaty, which it
probably is not).

~~~
madgar
In the US, I can sue you just for making this hacker news comment. Doesn't
mean I'll make it past the first hearing.

~~~
ab5tract
That lawsuit would be in a civil court, with civil lawyers and actual judges.
Not a room full of round-robin corporate laywers.

My comment was not about whether it would be successful. My question was
whether it provided the means to initiate a lawsuit.

~~~
jcranmer
So you'd rather the case be decided by a single lawyer^H^H^H^H^H^H judge than
a panel of lawyers. Even in common law jurisdictions, most of these sorts of
cases tend to focus on disputes over issues of law (hence tried by a judge),
not issues of fact (which are the only issues which proceed to a jury trial).
Judges are usually lawyers before becoming judges--that's not terribly
surprising, considering that judges are expected to know a lot of legal
theory, which is essentially the same training you undergo to become a lawyer.

Fearing the provisions of ISDS would undermine the principles of justice means
that you would rather trust the judgements of a single, likely overworked,
lawyer who is expected to know the entire relevant body of law and case
history for his or her jurisdiction over the judgements of a panel of lawyers
who are likely to have somewhat specialized in the area of dispute being
covered.

~~~
ab5tract
You have thrown up a false equivalency and are pursuing it in an odd manner.

What I would prefer is that there is absolutely zero mechanisms for a
corporation to sue a government over "potential lost profits".

This is just not at all the same as discussing a potential lawsuit over
defamation / libel / whatever "you" would be suing me over a comment for. And,
yes, in that case I would still prefer to go through the normal court system
with laws written by my legislature rather than a room full of mega corps and
trade representatives.

------
flexie
The rationale behind is sound but the trick is to design the rules so that all
gains aren't lost in the cost for administering the rules. Differentiated VAT
and/or deductions are notoriously expensive and prone for cheating.

It is very difficult/expensive to check if a service provided was the repair
of an existing item or a new item installed (or something else entirely).

------
hammock
So the opposite of Cash for Clunkers.[1] Would a Keynesian then expect these
tax breaks to crash the economy?

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

------
berntb
This has probably more to do with Sweden having so high taxes on labour that
repairs becomes impossible without a tax break.

An average Swede gets ~ a third of the money the company pays for his wages.
(30% tax, 30% in social charges etc.)

If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as
himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore the
other costs here.)

So, in sum, because of the taxes etc, a Swede have to work [at least] a full
day to buy an hour of work time.

(Reservation for the exact numbers. It was a while since I lived in Sweden.
People might keep 40% or so now, but I also ignored a lot of extra costs.)

~~~
vidarh
According to the OECD Taxing Wages report [1] for 2016, the total tax wedge
for Sweden, including employer contributions, is 42.7%.

(Note: for those who are confused about it: This is _not_ the percentage tax
paid out of contracted wages - the average tax paid on the contracted wages
are much lower)

> If he is going to rent an hour from someone with the same salary as
> himself/herself, that will be three times the hourly salary. (I'll ignore
> the other costs here.)

That may be true, but not due mainly to taxes, but because you are also paying
for "dead time", marketings costs and others.

[1] [http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/taxatio...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-
Management/oecd/taxation/taxing-wages-2016_tax_wages-2016-en#page20)

~~~
charlesdm
Don't forget to add their 25% VAT rate if you actually want to spend your
money.. so you end up with 42.7% + 25%. That's nuts.

~~~
titzer
Wouldn't that be 42.7% + (57.3% * .25) = 57%?

~~~
berntb
The difference is that the previous government lowered the taxes for the first
20K SEK earned per month. (This was mostly after my time in Sweden.)

My point regarding the impossibility of service work at these levels stands.
Quite a few tax exemptions had to be created to get the population to start
paying taxes for those kinds of jobs.

Edit: For the part of the salary above ca 19K/month, you're correct. In fact,
the taxes are progressive, so it is even worse.

------
ap22213
What is it about Nordic countries that allows them to avoid corruption and
political decay? As an outsider, it seems that they're always experimenting
with new approaches and evolving the government and laws to keep up with the
changing needs of the citizenry.

In the US, I felt like we were starting to get somewhere back in the 90s, but
it's been a downward fall since then. Now, corruption permeates even at the
local levels. Many of the people that I talk to blame the lack of time. I
don't know - but there's major apathy and cynicism, and it seems to be getting
worse.

------
PaulHoule
Odd that appliances are on the list because we're likely to see another wave
of changes for refrigerants.

Back in the bad old days people used refrigerants such as HCFCs that were bad
for the ozone layer. Now they use straight HFCs (no chlorine) but those are
potent global warming gases. At some point there is going to a push to replace
those with fluoroketones.

So repairing old air conditioners, refrigerators and such may not be such a
great idea.

------
dvtv75
At this time, I am fighting with a Samsung Syncmaster 2333SW Plus. It started
fading to white every time blue was displayed, then it would overflow back to
a normal image and fade to white.

I'm told this is a fault in the t-con (timing controller) board - some people
have noted it's just a bad solder connection, so I'm going to have a look
before I replace the board.

I have a donor screen that I got apart (the 2333HD) in about four hours, but
the 2333SW Plus... I've been trying for at least 12 hours to get that thing
apart. (I've sanitized this post.) The sides of the casing are free, but the
top and bottom edges just won't let go, and I can't afford to break the
internal clips.

I honestly can't decide between RageGuy and Samir's rage at the printer not
printing properly.

------
thght
Heaps of old stuff is broken because of planned obsolescence. Is it not a
waste trying to repair that rubbish that was originally designed to break soon
and hard and expensive to repair? Lowering tax for companies that produce
sustainable products seems more efficient to me.

------
jwatte
One side effect of building for repairability is that objects will be bigger
and clunkier, which will use more materials and cost more (and burn more fuel)
to transport.

I'm all for repairability, and even better, building things that will last 25
years, not 25 months. But that will come at a different price than perhaps
many expect, and in some cases, it actually won't make sense.

Money is how we measure and gate access to scarce resources. If it costs more
to build repairable items, and then repair them, then it is likely the case
that those repairs actually waste more resources! However, insofaras the
resource being wasted is human work time, there is of course a trade-off to be
made.

------
Pica_soO
If a company made a extremely enduring and time-resistant valuable product,
wouldn't it make more sense for the company to lease the product out to the
customers - and for the state to support this model by making it tax-free
after a time?

------
maerF0x0
IMO the only reason we do not have a culture of repairing is because we
subsidize the waste processing stream and thus we only see lower upfront
costs.

If I had to pay an extra $25 disposal fee upfront on a microwave, maybe I'd be
incentivized to buy a quality item or maybe repair it in the first place.

As well, repairing/reusing is a function of average cost of a worker. If a
repair man has a fully loaded cost of $50 an hour, then you're not going to
see many repairs happen. If its $5 an hour then you might see more. Expensive
labor leads to all kinds of seemingly insane behavior.

------
bgammon
Impermanence could be considered a value in certain cultures. "Disposable
Culture" vs. "Repairing Old Stuff" isn't a useful dichotomy. Everything has an
expiration date, and often that date is carefully considered as part of a
product's design. The goal shouldn't be fixing old stuff, but finding out how
to increase efficiency either by making product's expiration dates further in
the future, or compromising having an imminent expiration date by making the
product easy to recycle.

~~~
clock_tower
What cultures value impermanence? The only one that comes to my mind is the US
-- and we're unsustainable, burning through resources on an unprecedented
scale. Take the time to do things properly, and they endure: Caxtons are the
gold standard of book collecting in England today, and Albrecht Duerer's house
still stands in Nuremberg.

(You also spend less money by building, or generally making, to last. Western
and Central Europe have a lower GDP than the US but a comparable standard of
living...)

------
grizzles
To truly fix the situation would probably require: 1) Tracking every single
saleable physical asset 2) Paying manufacturer's a small fixed income type
subsidy for every extra year their product lasts. 3) Charging manufacturer's a
small penalty tax when their product becomes waste.

#2 is essential because otherwise manufacturing obsolescence into the product
will be more profitable for the company. The economic reward of long lasting
product & enduring customer relationship needs to be better than sell one
every few years.

------
kwhitefoot
Never mind repairing old stuff; just make it easier to pass on stuff. I
suspect that Sweden is similar to Norway (where I live) and immense amounts of
current electronic gear is thrown away. A lot of it is in usable condition
(for some value of usable anyway) but I am not allowed to take it away from a
recycling station.

------
barisser
Should the state really presume to sway cultural trends? It seems strikingly
arrogant and likely to be counterproductive.

------
a-no-n
My MagSafe adapter has probably 5 packets of Sugru, both preventative (anti-
drop and strain-relief) and repairs, on it and some two-part epoxy to fix some
minor nicks in the small cable. The one of the cable winding "wings" just
broke, but it still works. I might buy a second in 2018.

------
yig
Repairs are uneconomical because they have to compete with the assembly line.
Assembly lines are an incredibly productive way to make identical things.
Repairs are typically different. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all
alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

~~~
dmix
You can adjust assembly lines to make your products easier to repair though.
For ex: it's far easier to fix my old thinkpad laptop than my newer X1. Part
of this is the demand for smaller/thinner products but I also feel it's a lack
of effort by the manufacturers these days.

They are almost incentivized to make repair difficult and deprioritize
longevity in favour of the customer buying new devices each year. Which is
about as long as any of my cell phones typically last before I break or lose
them (1-1.5yrs), although I'm a bit clumsy and forgetful (a symptom of ADD
:P).

------
Gravityloss
Basic income + no minimum wage would make it much more attractive to do local
repairs instead of manufacturing stuff far away where wages are lower or labor
and environmental regulation much more lax.

In my country, youth unemployment is around 20%.

------
mhb
Reducing a 25% tax on repairs is seen as an insightful and brilliant way to
incentivize repairs? Well knock me over with a feather. Where is the previous
article about how that level of tax is crazy to begin with?

------
iamgopal
I think ideal way is to charge people for dumping the waste, and use that
money to properly recycle all the material therein. May not be ideal in terms
of energy efficiency, but its highly workable solution.

------
rumcajz
Alternative approach: Require people keep everything they buy for 10 years.
They'll be quickly fed up with their houses full of old broken gadgets,
cardboard boxes and used wrapping foil.

------
macandcheese
"Own few but good things" \- love everything about this as it relates to
living "modestly minimal" as I call it. Buy a small amount of high quality
possessions, and take care of them.

------
titzer
Wouldn't a high sales tax promote exactly that?

~~~
eveningcoffee
Sales tax also applies to the services.

More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing
disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country
with smaller labor costs.

~~~
charlesdm
> More over, as labor is highly taxed in Sweden, it makes local repairing
> disproportionally more expensive compared to the manufacturing in a country
> with smaller labor costs.

Sounds like a very clear flaw in their economic and taxation model.

~~~
eveningcoffee
This flaw is called free trade. This problem used to be fixed by higher
customs. But we generally prefer free trade, so they have to try other
initiatives.

------
Dowwie
I guess they'd need to explicitly de-classify commonly repaired items from
this?

------
sjg007
Funny... I tried to fix an IKEA lamp and finding parts was impossible.

------
Pigo
Could a company hypothetically create an extremely solid phone with
interchangeable parts when upgrades become available, and it's not done just
because they profit more with the current model? Or is this just not feasible?

~~~
Sharlin
Yes, but it would be huge and expensive and nobody would want to buy it. Plus
modularity and BW compatibility requirements would severely limit the design
space available for further evolution (both look and feel and internal
hardware aspects). Highly integrated hardware and systems-on-a-chip do have
several advantages but are pretty much the antithesis of modularity.

------
CPLX
I was happy to see that the author did pause to note the irony of this policy
being implemented by the same country that brought the world IKEA.

~~~
ska
Besides the category error of conflating corporate and state implementations -
complaining about the existence of IKEA is a bit like complaining about the
existence of fast food. Clearly there is massive demand for both, so lobbing
darts at the most successful producers of same avoids all of the interesting
questions.

~~~
CPLX
I don't detect any complaining in my post. Just noting the (considerable)
irony in Sweden leading the charge against "disposable culture", as did the
article's writer.

~~~
ska
Perhaps I read more into it than you meant - fair enough. You are still
conflating Sweden and IKEA, which is just silly.

Also IKEA's m.o. is more cheap and cheerful than disposable, so what irony
there is, is a bit weak.

~~~
Gravityloss
Have you tried moving Ikea stuff? A lot of it is unlikely to stay in one
piece. And I don't mean it can be disassembled and reassembled. Even their
chipboard is of lower strength than ordinary, quite an achievement.

