I’m generally curious what you all think about the “R2R” movement, because as a whole, it's great imo and Louis Rossmann, who’s the most recognizable face of it, is someone who I wish was more well known to the general public, but as a whole, what it aims to do is make it so that you're able to fix the things you purchase, rather than be “encouraged” by the company to purchase a new one, and in general, has become a question of “do you own your device/car/tractor/etc., or does the company” in terms of how much you're allowed to do with what you own.
People who farm have had to deal with John Deere locking down their tools so only licensed dealers can work on them effectively and have had to resort to jailbreaking their tractors on occasion, Apple and other Big Tech names have made their electronics harder to repair over the years, serializing and pairing parts to motherboards so they don't work even if you swap between two of the same part between two of the same brand new phone, it's a whole mess in and of itself, but the general conclusion that’s been agreed on is that only two things can really change this:
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Government regulations preventing all the nonsense like serialization/pairing, making manufacturers/OEMs have to provide parts and schematics.
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Society actually puts pressure on said companies by not buying those harder to repair products, which is pretty fucking hard, considering what society we live in, illustrated in this video.
Most R2R activists think that number 1 is way more likely to happen, and have been doing that, getting R2R laws passed in almost 20 states so far, but I'm just wondering if anyone has any issues with having to use the government to make companies less shitty when it comes to actually owning the device you purchase, or not.
X as service is part of owning nothing and being happy. It will take government power to stop it, and there is nothing wrong with that. One side, our side, has had their hands tied by the idea that government power is bad simply because their only experience with government is when their enemies wield it(and psyops coming out of the University of Chicago/National Review/etc). The reason that is their only experience is precisely because they refuse to use the power of government.
I've been seeing a lot of anarchist takes lately, and they strike me as just as idealistic and ignorant of human nature as the lefties and their real communism. Just swung to the degree of extreme individualism rather than extreme collectivism.
Remember when CHAZ/CHOP happened and a black dude immediately set himself up as warlord and some kids got shot? LOL.
Anarchy is impossible unless it's hard coded like in a video game or something. Humans will immediately organize into power structures.
Not just humans. Ever have a dozen horses? They arrange themselves into power structures as well. There's what's called a "pecking order".
Government IS bad, but in the case of a market failure, it is the lesser evil.
What's old is new again. The reason you can use OEM-equivalent parts and independent auto shops to repair your car without voiding your warranty is because that battle was fought decades ago and the government made laws to prevent the automakers from screwing you.
Government is a tool. Like most tools, it can be used for good or evil.
If the government wasn't such a tool, there wouldn't be any corporations large enough and dominant enough to attempt to lock people out of their own possessions.
We're in this position in large part because governments have spent the last century picking winners and losers.
How does government do this? For example, what regulations did the government implement to allow Standard Oil to become a monopoly in the first place (asking because a lot of people blame the government for monopolies).
Granting of leases to drill on federal lands on favorable terms (in comparison to the terms offered to their competition), intervention against the railroads on behalf of Standard Oil, and probably other less critical things.
But that's because the Rockefellers understood how to use their money to operate the levers of the tool.
This is the way
It's absolute garbage. Don't get between me and my right to be exploited by megacorporations.
I lean libertarian and I have faith in capitalism to provide market solutions most of the time, but sometimes megacorporations get too close to monopoly power and start trying to exploit customers with predatory practices. In that case it's fine for the government to step in, in a limited way and just say NO. Simple as.
That's because we have crony capitalism. Not real capitalism. IP laws are far too restrictive to have real competition
I still remember the time when the default position of partisan Republicans was mindless shilling for corporations. I'm glad there has been a sea-change.
Back in the 90s, the "chamber of commerce" was a major Republican donor and a significant part of the Republican base. This was basically the "large corporation" interest group. Both parties always talk about "small businesses" because that polls well, but the truth is they are both pigs at the trough for big corporate money.
One of the biggest and most visible disconnects between the Republican elites and the base was due to the power of this lobby: immigration. The Republican base was strongly against illegal immigration and wanted restricted legal immigration. The chamber of commerce pushed hard for open borders because they wanted cheap labor. When they couldn't get it, they outsourced all the jobs, first to Mexico, then to China.
This pissed off a lot of Republicans, and created a rift. Also, the Republican base got the upper hand in the immigration wars and thwarted chamber of commerce pushes to get amnesty in the 00s.
As a result, the chamber of commerce shifted to the Left and stopped being a Republican thing, and became increasingly Democrat and liberal. Formerly dominated by right wing corporations, it is now dominated by liberal "tech bro" companies like Facebook & Google & Uber, as well as shit like Pfizer.
Right now, the "chamber of commerce", if you personified it, would be Mitt Romney on the Right side, and with a strong leftward tilt from him, since it loves to push amnesty & climate change.
The other major schism was over China. Obviously the Chamber lobbyists push hard in favor of China. When Trump went hard against China, it made the Chamber even more clearly the enemy of the Right, since they give 0 fucks about US national security and just want to make money even if it means supporting evil.
It's part of many larger problems like IP/copyright law which has been used in a similar way to try to own all cultural output for the past 100+ years.
The people running the show recognize that if you make the law complex enough, you can basically own everything and everyone, and make it impossible for someone to exist without your thing. IOW, slavery
You can solve this problem by removing federal government power rather than granting more. Repeal the DMCA provisions that make it illegal to circumvent drm and to post circumvention tools and the problem sorts itself out.
Deny the federal government power to preempt state regulations about specific anti-consumer practices and dark patterns.
So Texas could pass a law saying all phones sold in the state have "reasonably" user repairable parts. Then let the nerds at the regulators and corporate lawyers argue about the definition of reasonable in all 50 states.
I'd rather see "Required to Repair".
Any part that wears out like the battery they should be required to replace at part cost. If the battery cost $5 then they have to replace it for $5.
They might still make a super-sealed phone because it's more waterproof and can sell for more, or they might seal everything else up and make the battery easy to swap out. Either way is fine.
companies used to have no problem giving out a schematic with every purchase.
them using underhanded means to prevent people from buying replacement parts should be punished.
and they should be made to walk their faggot talk about muh environment. no, you can't release unrepairable and destined to break things and say you're concerned about the planet.
On the one hand, companies take advantage of laws specifically designed to prevent third-party individuals and companies from being able to produce knock-offs of these electronic systems in a way that they can for other types of part. If a manufacturer adds some sort of copy protection mechanism then the DMCA makes it illegal for someone to reverse engineer it in a way that it isn't illegal for someone to make a third-party oil filter for example.
On the other hand, if you pass a law a big company is going to have its lawyers figure out the absolute bare minimum way to comply with the law. And the engineers the lawyers ask to help them with this task will do so enthusiastically because they're already overworked and have better things to do then update schematics, BOMs, and test software such that these things can be made public.
Make it so they have to provide parts for eg. a laptop and you're going to have to buy a replacement "electronics assembly, logic" which is the entire finished logic board. "No we can't just sell you this one power supply IC for you to solder on yourself, because we conformal coat the board; and if you remove the coating to replace the component it no longer conforms to specification and will be ineligible for warranty/no longer meets EMI|EMC|safety|emissions standards".
Doesn't matter if the BS excuse is true; that is the sort of thing they will do. And there are enough regulatory standards the products have to conform to that they can probably make it true on paper if they want to.
More likely is the Eastern Euros and Chinese will start getting more in the game of reverse engineering things like tractor ECUs and selling them on the gray/black market. They won't care about things like the DMCA, and their customers won't either.
It’s honestly one of the most important things in the world right now. Normies are too dumb to understand that they’re slowly being made into corporate indentured servants, but “I can’t fix my tractor” makes intuitive sense.
I fully support it. Once you buy a product, it is yours and you do with it as you please. Fuck subscription services for my device.
All of this sounds good, but I don’t trust the most prominent endorsers any further than I can sling a piano.
Also: “Giving money and power to government is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys.” —P.J. O’Rourke
Which is why you should not make judgements based on personalities, but rather issues. If a leftist says something that's good, good for him (also I've seen this fellow with Yarvin, so I don't think he's a leftist)!
The old 'government is bad' paradigm is valid, but we live in an age where corporations are more powerful than ever, and can be even more censorious than government. We should not just focus on government power, ignoring the power of megacorporations.
I was actually thinking more of Cory Doctrow than Rossman, who I have barely heard of.
That guy is awful. But even a broken clock...
My prediction is that if the R2R movement ever gets enough traction to threaten manufacturers they'll suddenly pay for a slew of articles portraying every home repairman as a three-beer in redneck who's shoddy repairs will get him and others killed.Followed by a host of new laws that will sweep through and tighten the noose.
Honestly my lab has been struggling to keep up with our normal workload because our HPLCs have been shitting themselves and they can only be repaired by their techs ordering their parts because they keep the software proprietary. This kind of shit affects literally every industry
Why shouldn't I be allowed to fix the things I own? People fixed their own cars for decades and still do. Fixing your own equipment was just considered the norm for basically forever unless you were a nobleman.
Ideally, a company has the right to do what it wants, including taking steps to prevent repair. But, also ideally, people's rights to reverse engineer, crack, and subvert such steps would not be infringed.
The problem is that you have a government that enforces patents and copyright to prevent people's flexing of their rights, which leaves this right to repair stuff decidedly one-sided.
But patents and copyright will never be abandoned, so real solutions are illegal. So we're stuck with customer hostile processes and will eventually wind up with one-sided carved out "rights" to repair, so long as they happen within some rent-seeking structure that enriches the corrupt.
This IMO is the only issue. Companies like to pretend this is Ancapistan and they have the right to do whatever they want, but Ancapistan wouldn't grant them government protection from people reverse engineering their stuff.
But it's also an opportunity for rogue engineers to start building up parallel institutions by reverse engineering this stuff and anonymously producing/selling third-party modules for cash/crypto. Big companies and engineering firms would never touch it because of the liability, but individual engineers might be willing/able to. Sell a board with an FPGA/microcontroller on it and let the user flash it with the firmware. Or whatever BS hoops are required to make it "not technically illegal" to sell.
The R2R folks should add the climate argument to their repertoire.
Think about how damaging it is for the environment that an entire new device is constructed to replace one that most likely only has as a single faulty part. And that's without even think about the E-Waste.
Then we can get some quotes from apple lawyers about how their pollution is no big deal. lol.
Haven't heard a single negative thing about it, just some silly stuff that's meant to sound negative. Honestly doesn't even seem worth mentioning because it seems obvious that it's a net positive.
However, the lack of effective demonization against it is a little confusing to me, because there's a lot of money at stake here for the usual groups.
It's a problem but most of the solutions have equally glaring and immediate consequences.
Generally speaking it's best to not give power to government because Standard Oil is no longer a monopoly. Huge companies can go out of business seemingly overnight.
The government has no such problem.
Giving companies monopoly power through purchases is relatively temporary.
Government powers are permanent.
I believe this is an almost constitutional thing. Whatever the government can do, I want the ability to do back. Not because I want to over throw it, but keep it at bay. They want to know my phone records? Then they better be ready for me to check theirs. They want to hack my car? Then I should be able to as well.
A large company isn't very different from a government entity. If they make a phone, I want the ability to build a phone without their permission. I want to upgrade my phone, and fix it to my best ability.
I want the ability to x-ray myself, do a sonic scan, and other medical testing with my phone. All the tech exists and is cheap, but no one has done it. This should be used to destroy the way the medical industry has held power over others.
I'm half awake, let's hope this make sense in the morning.
Once you purchase a product it should be yours. What you do with it is your business. Right to repair is right up my alley. Homebrew, cfw, etc are a right. You can run what you want on what you own. Similarly you should be able to replace parts with what you want.
I like the idea but I’d have to look more into it
I 100% support owning what you buy, but R2R laws are trying to solve a problem with laws that ought to be solved with culture instead. Businesses should have a right to offer products for sale or lease on whatever terms they choose, and people should not buy goods on terms they don't agree with. Right to repair iPhones becomes a complete nonissue if people just refuse to buy iPhones with no right to repair.
R2R isn't a problem because of greedy businesses. It's a problem because of weak-willed consumers.
Consumers are not weak-willed; Consumers are ignorant and stupid.
Mostly consumers are not able to even able to understand points of difference between products, let alone map and apply a case-by-case comparative value.
Many years ago, in the dim and distant past, I used to sell things for a big box store. This included TVs and Laptops. In this role I set a few sales records. Never once did I sell a product insurance policy.
The way an above average consumer shops for a complex product is that they do a (very) little research and decide on a list of five or six features that are important. Then they see how little money they can pay for those features.
The way a below average consumer shops is that they pick a brand that speaks to their values, then pick a price point within that brand.
As a result, a (say laptop) company does some market research and figures out the buzz-word features that consumers are looking for this month. They then produce a product with those buzz-word features, and cut the costs of everything else to get the price as low as they can. Winning!
Never mind that most laptops die because of dust issues and cooling failure; that replacement lithium batteries can cost as much as the replacement cost of a (refurbished or whatever) computer. Consumers don't understand, they don't care and they won't start.
Want a case study? Look at the way Apple does business. They spend a lot to have a high value brand. They build a walled-garden and aim for maximum data lock-in. Phones, tablets and laptops last the life of their batteries.
With other brands, the models are mostly commodities. The exceptions are Gamers, who are deeply involved in the hobby of gaming, and often hand-build their own computers so they can pick every component. Joe Sixpack will never give a shit about how much an all-in-one water-cooler will extend the life of his box.
I do not know of any method by which the population in general and women in specific can be caused to care about the tech on which they depend for their quality of life. Take away a person's electronics and offer them a notebook and pen and some snail mail stamps; Watch their head explode.
I am libertarian on this matter:
It should be allowed for companies to make such predatory practices, but it should also be allowed for the people to fuck those companies over, jailbreak the devices, breach "copyright" and "IP" by buying bootleg versions of it from China, whatever they want, if they want to.
I like the movement to try and legalize decryption of proprietary firmware for the purposes of maintenance and repair.
I get REALLY sick of predditors screeching about John Deere any time anything agricultural comes up. They're like Pavlov's dogs but 100x worse, the slack jawed faggot hivemind is just so pathetic.
"Right to repair" is a response to the predatory business practice recently being abused by effective monopoly actors (Adobe, John Deere) who don't fear any free market competition - to basically force you to "rent" from them at high prices disguised as a sale instead of selling you goods outright.
Limited government intervention is fine to curb systemic abuses when the free market fails to provide the necessary competitive pressure to stop assholes from exploitative practices. It should be minimal and temporary. Government is a last resort, not a tool of choice.
You should look up the definition of a "Natural Monopoly".
By definition, the market can not find an efficient solution for a "Natural Monopoly". The choice is to either regulate the market or to have the people (the government) own the Natural Monopoly and run it as a service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Examples of Natural Monopolies include:
What is old is new again.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
absolutely criminal that they've sidelined this man in favor of trannies and other weirdos.