Yea, I agree. I think these bills should require the maximum cost to be cost of manufacture at the date of engineering; i.e. a part designed in 2008 can not cost more than the materials to make it and it must keep that price for as long as it is used.
But progress is progress, we’ll get there eventually as long as we keep up the political pressure.
Edit: please read the spirit in that example rather than to the letter. There’s a lot of nuance that I just skimmed over, and that’s because I don’t want to write the bill.
The issue with that is it leaves no room for paying the engineers who actually designed the device. The cost of designing the parts is really expensive. I have no issue with a small markup. I definitely agree though that the costs shouldn’t be so absurdly prohibitive to repair though.
I think that it would still leave room for engineers to be paid a living wage. After all they aren’t getting paid for designing parts, they’re getting paid to design a product made of interoperable parts
It sounds good, but that’s enough wiggle room to drive a truck full of money through. Even “at cost” has been abused pretty badly.
Yea, I agree. I think these bills should require the maximum cost to be cost of manufacture at the date of engineering; i.e. a part designed in 2008 can not cost more than the materials to make it and it must keep that price for as long as it is used.
But progress is progress, we’ll get there eventually as long as we keep up the political pressure.
Edit: please read the spirit in that example rather than to the letter. There’s a lot of nuance that I just skimmed over, and that’s because I don’t want to write the bill.
The issue with that is it leaves no room for paying the engineers who actually designed the device. The cost of designing the parts is really expensive. I have no issue with a small markup. I definitely agree though that the costs shouldn’t be so absurdly prohibitive to repair though.
I think that it would still leave room for engineers to be paid a living wage. After all they aren’t getting paid for designing parts, they’re getting paid to design a product made of interoperable parts