How The Right To Repair Movement Embodies Humility About Consumption

The concept of planned obsolescence was explicitly articulated by American industrial designer Brooks Stevens in 1954, who defined it as "instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary." Stevens was describing what became a foundational design philosophy of the postwar consumer economy: products should generate repeat purchases, which means they should either wear out or become aesthetically unfashionable within a defined replacement cycle.

Two distinct forms emerged. Physical obsolescence — products engineered to fail after a predictable period — was practiced by manufacturers including lightbulb companies (the Phoebus cartel of the 1920s explicitly agreed to limit bulb life to 1,000 hours to protect bulb sales) and nylon stocking manufacturers (early nylons were deliberately made less durable than the technology allowed). Functional obsolescence — products made incompatible with new versions to force upgrades — became pervasive in computing hardware and software, where the interoperability decisions that technically could allow older hardware to function with newer software are deliberately not made.

The smartphone ecosystem exemplifies both. Physical obsolescence: batteries that are non-replaceable or difficult to replace, ensuring that as battery life degrades the perceived functionality degrades, driving upgrade pressure. Software obsolescence: manufacturer decisions to end software support for older devices, which gradually degrades their functionality as apps and services stop being compatible. Repair prevention: proprietary fasteners, adhesive sealing, component pairing (where replacement components from third parties are flagged by software), and withholding of repair manuals and diagnostic tools.

The economic logic is clear. A company that sells phones generates more revenue from a 2-year replacement cycle than a 5-year one. The environmental cost, the consumer cost, and the economic cost to local repair businesses are externalized.

Before examining right to repair policy, it's worth understanding the scale of what's being fought over.

Electronic Waste: The world generates approximately 57 million tonnes of electronic waste annually — the fastest growing waste stream globally. Less than 20% is formally recycled. The remainder is landfilled, incinerated, or exported to informal recycling operations in developing countries where workers — including children — process waste with limited protection from toxic materials including lead, mercury, cadmium, and flame retardants.

If the average lifespan of a smartphone extended from 2.5 years to 5 years through repairability, the volume of electronic waste from phones alone would approximately halve. The rare earth minerals, cobalt, lithium, and other materials in phones are finite and their extraction carries significant environmental and human rights costs (cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo involves documented use of child labor in artisanal mining).

Economic Value: iFixit, the repair manual and parts company, estimates the global repair economy at several hundred billion dollars annually, with significant suppression from manufacturer repair restrictions. Independent repair shops have faced documented business closures as manufacturers have restricted access to parts and software. In the U.S., the Rural Repair Economy study documented that agricultural equipment repair restrictions (John Deere's software locks prevent farmers from diagnosing and repairing their own tractors) cost farmers billions in unnecessary downtime and dealership fees annually.

Consumer Cost: The gap between what manufacturers charge for repairs through official channels and what independent repair would cost is substantial. Apple charges several hundred dollars for screen repairs that independent technicians can perform for $50-100 in parts and labor. The differential is largely manufacturer pricing power over a captive consumer base.

EU Right to Repair Directive (2024)

The EU's Right to Repair Directive is the most comprehensive right to repair legislation yet implemented. It covers:

- Smartphones and tablets: manufacturers must provide repair services at reasonable prices and make spare parts and repair information available to independent repairers for at least 7 years after a product's last sale - Household appliances (washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners): similar requirements for 10 years - Prohibition on software barriers to independent repair - Requirement that repairs be offered at a price that makes them economically rational compared to replacement

The directive also requires manufacturers to provide consumers with a "repairability score" — an index indicating how repairable a product is before purchase. This is a disclosure requirement that allows market pressure to function alongside regulatory requirements.

U.S. State and Federal Legislation

In the United States, right to repair legislation has been advancing at the state level. Colorado passed agricultural equipment right to repair legislation in 2022. Minnesota passed a comprehensive electronics right to repair law in 2023. California, New York, and multiple other states have enacted or are advancing similar legislation.

At the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report in 2021 documenting manufacturer repair restrictions as a consumer harm and recommending regulatory action. The FTC has brought enforcement actions against manufacturers claiming repairs void warranties (the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act prohibits requiring consumers to use only manufacturer service to maintain warranty).

Agricultural Equipment

John Deere's software restrictions on its agricultural equipment have been a particular focus of right to repair advocacy. The company's proprietary diagnostic software (John Deere Service Advisor) is required to diagnose and repair software-related issues in modern tractors. Without it, farmers cannot repair their own equipment — equipment they've purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

John Deere has repeatedly defeated legislative efforts through lobbying and offered voluntary agreements — memoranda of understanding with farm organizations — that have been criticized by advocates as offering less than they appear. The company argues that its software represents intellectual property and that unauthorized repair creates safety and emissions risks.

The counter-argument from farmers is straightforward: they own the equipment. They have the skills and the need to repair it in the field. A farmer whose tractor breaks down during harvest doesn't have the luxury of waiting for a dealer technician to arrive.

The deeper argument for right to repair is not primarily economic or environmental, though both economic and environmental cases are strong. The deeper argument is about what kind of civilization we want to be.

There's a relationship between repairability and the value we place on things. Things we repair are things we value enough to maintain. Things we throw away are things we treat as disposable. The throwaway model, extended across an entire civilization, produces a throwaway relationship to the material world — and arguably, a throwaway relationship to the labor and resources that made that world.

The ability to repair things is also a form of knowledge. A person who can diagnose and fix a malfunctioning appliance understands something about how that appliance works — what its components are, how they interact, what can go wrong. This is a different kind of relationship to the manufactured world than one in which objects are black boxes to be used until they stop working and then replaced. Repair culture produces technically capable people. Throwaway culture produces passive consumers.

There's a community dimension to this as well. Local repair shops — the cobbler, the tailor, the TV repair shop, the bicycle mechanic — are neighborhood institutions. They employ skilled people locally, they keep economic value circulating in local communities rather than concentrating it at manufacturers, and they create points of local knowledge and expertise. The systematic destruction of these businesses through designed obsolescence has hollowed out a layer of the local economy and a layer of community technical capacity.

A civilization organized around repair would have:

Products designed for durability and modularity: First-order design requirements include: how long will this last, can components be replaced individually, can it be disassembled with standard tools. Fairphone, the Dutch sustainable smartphone manufacturer, has built phones designed for component-by-component repair and replacement as proof of concept that consumer electronics can be designed this way.

Local repair infrastructure: Repair cafés — community spaces where volunteers help people repair household goods — have spread from the Netherlands (origin in 2009) to thousands of locations in 35+ countries. Makerspaces and community workshops provide tools and knowledge for repair. Libraries of things — lending libraries for tools and equipment — reduce the need to own items that are rarely used and will inevitably break.

Economic models that support longevity: Servitization — manufacturers selling outcomes rather than products (you pay for clothing use, not ownership; the manufacturer retains ownership and responsibility for maintenance and longevity) — aligns manufacturer incentives with product longevity rather than replacement. Interface, the carpet manufacturer, pioneered this with its carpet tile model, retaining ownership of tiles and replacing individual tiles as they wear rather than full carpet replacement.

Recalibrated consumer expectations: A generation raised with repair culture — where it's normal and expected to fix things, where buying used is not stigmatized, where the cheapest option is not always the best option because the full life cost of a durable item is lower than successive cheap replacements — makes different choices as adults.

Right to repair is ultimately about humility in two registers.

The first is humility about the earth's capacity to absorb our consumption. The resources in every smartphone — the rare earths, the cobalt, the copper, the glass — have a real cost. Extending the life of products is one of the most direct ways to reduce that cost.

The second is humility about the relationship between humans and the things they make and own. The idea that you buy something and then have no right to understand, maintain, or repair it — that the manufacturer retains indefinite control over the object you paid for — reflects a civilizational posture that is more comfortable with dependence than with competence, more oriented toward consumption than toward care.

Right to repair legislation is a small thing. A regulation about spare parts and repair manuals. But the value it encodes — that things should last, that people should be able to fix them, that the relationship between humans and their material world should be one of stewardship rather than disposal — is not small at all.

It's one of the clearer statements a civilization can make about what it values.