Proposal:
- Legally require all consumer products to specify an expected lifespan in all their marketing materials.
- Extend the "legal guarantee" in EU to cover whatever the claimed expected lifespan is, under the same terms as are used now (but no shorter than the existing minimums).
I bet that this would cause a significant industry shift towards durability. Because making something much more durable is often only slightly more expensive, but unless corner-cutting manufacturers are required to be transparent about their corner-cutting, price is often the only thing that products are judged by.
@joepie91 making something harder to fix is often more difficult, too.
@joepie91 mandated 50 Year warranty on consumer products, which a company can withdraw from by publishing all engineering documentation / source code of the product
we have enough stuff
Crucially, such a change wouldn't be a burden at all on the manufacturers that *are* building durable stuff (they are already meeting these obligations voluntarily); it purely targets those manufacturers who are trying to kill the market by flooding it with effectively disposable junk to slightly undercut the rest.
It levels the playing field for everyone involved. Even from a 'market-driven society' perspective this would make total sense.