On 23/03/2016 12:07, 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.

Its more economic certainly - but also more environmentally wasteful in
many cases. You might also argue its necessary if you have an economy
based on consumption - having stuff that lasts and can be repaired might
them be considered counter productive.

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

Its a good argument, but frequently not realised out in practice. For
example a boiler maker might profit nicely from selling you a new PCB as
a self contained unit since it probably has several 100's of percent
markup on it. However the face that Geoff et al can make a living
refurbishing existing PCB suggests the only real justification for the
business model adopted by the OEMs if financial and not environmental.


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

It must present an interesting conflict for many a green... on the one hand it is a
very good fit with the political ideology, and yet on the other the knowledge
requirements and attention to detail required are likely to be counter to the (lack of)
thought process that makes much green policy seem even plausible in the first place.

So which particular knowledge requirements and attention
to detail are you suggesting might reasonable be subsituted for
say an injection moulding machine or a numerically controlled lathe ?

I wasn't...

however I was suggesting that, say, blindly championing renewable power
generation over all alternatives, without giving any thought whatsoever
to dealing with the non dispatchability problem, or suggesting sack
cloth and ashes solutions to other problems while ignoring human nature
are examples of a "green causes" that are plagued by many inconvenient
truths.


--
Cheers,

John.

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