On Wednesday, 23 March 2016 12:07:20 UTC, michael adams wrote:
"John Rumm" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 23/03/2016 03:39, Bill Wright wrote:

In the interests of the conservation of materials and energy, should not
DIY, especially the repair of goods,

As far as repairing goods is concerned, the whole point of mass production
certainly since the Industrial Revolutiin is to manufacture and assemble
all goods as far as possible by machine with as little labour input as
possible. As its this that makes goods so cheap in the first place.

Given economies of scale and labour costs its usually far more economic
to manufacture a new item from scratch than it is to train up technicians
to disassemble, diagnose and repair faults, maintain an inventory of spares
etc.Especially when new models might be introduced on an annual
basis.

In larger items such as cars these are often broken down into
sub-assemblies, headlights etc which need to be replaced
entirely and are imposible to repair.

Although this may be wastful of material, overall the cost saving in
labour is probably far greater than any labour costs incurred in sourcing
new material. For the present at least

This really is old stuff; going all the way back to Vance Packard and
the "Waste Makers" in the 50's/60's.

That's all half true. The reality is a considerable percentage of what's faulty & what's thrown away is worth repairing. And much isn't.


NT