In article ,
wrote:
On Wednesday, 23 March 2016 13:27:45 UTC, charles wrote:
In article ,
tabbypurr wrote:
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.

There's also the cost of someone's time to be taken into account. DIY
repairs can be worth doing, but paying someone do to the job is most
likely uneconomic.

like I said it's often worthwhile. But we live in a throowaway culture
and repair places aren't set up for it, they haven't moved with the times.


But, things have become far more specialised. Instead of "a kettle
element", a repair place would probably need half a dozen different types.
It's bad enough trying to find the correct size of shoelaces. An when it
comes to radios or TV's it's not just a matter of replacing a valve!

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England