William Sommerwerck wrote
Jeff Liebermann wrote

Drivel: One of my customers recently cleaned up his garage and gave
me 5 different HP inkjet printers to recycle. They ranged in age from
about 10 to 2 years ago. All of them had some stupid problem relating
to cheap construction, crappy drivers, miserable firmware, and leaky
ink carts. My favorite are the ones that claim the ink has "expired"
even though the cartridge is full.

I have no hesitation in expressing my support of large, intrusive
government. And this is one of those case where it's needed.

No it is not.

There ought to be laws regulating the quality of merchandise --
specifically, how long products should last. * This would do a
great deal to reduce waste and short-term "techno-churn".

No it would not. You're never going to stop very cheap junk being
bought by consumers now that ebay and amazon make it so easy.

(Ink-jet printers aren't the only lousy consumer product.

I don't agree that they are a lousy consumer product. They
are in fact fantastically cheap, particularly when you arent
stupid enough to use the manufacturers' expensive ink.

The price of laser printers so low now that almost
anyone can afford one. I don't use them myself,
because I print so rarely that I just need something
dirt cheap and prefer the color for what I do print.

Toasters are generally junk.

True, but I fix that by getting them at garage/yard sales for $2

And let's not talk about shoe laces.)

I don't bother with laced shoes or boots.

The problem is that setting up a regulatory agency to do this bothers
me -- yes, bothers me -- because such regulation shouldn't be needed.

And it wouldn't work anyway.

Businesses should care enough about quality to make
"sturdy" products without having to be forced to do so.

And they do with some stuff like cars and cutlery etc and
with the modern stainless steel stuff that has replaced the
older tin plate stuff that never lasted anything like as long.

And there was a time -- before so much manufacturing
got outsourced to China -- that they did so.

They still do.

The only solution is for customers to start complaining loudly and long.

That is nothing like a solution. They would just be ignored.

* Technically, there is. The common law warranty of implied
merchantability requires products to be of average for their type.

That mangles the law.

Of course, when every product in a category is junk,

That's never the case.

the average sinks to a very low level.

I've just recently seen the junk problem with leather
belts, the sort you use to stop your pants falling down.
Plenty to buy for peanuts, but they were all composite
leather which never last long, the belt comes apart into
the components in less than a year or so. Just found
someone who still makes them out of sheets of well
tanned leather, the older traditional single piece of
leather. Not clear why the stuff from china is composite
leather, you'd think that that would cost more to make
even with the low labor costs in china etc.

I'm not convinced that govt regulation
could do anything about leather belts.