> I believe the cost for repairing electronic devices in the next 5 - 10 years should partially be paid upfront. Making new devices slightly more expensive for everyone and making the repairs considerably cheaper for those who need them.

absolutely. and apple does this - you just described applecare. and that money prepays (heavily discounts) a couple repairs and maintains the parts supply/availability, and helps maintain a massive network of first-party retail locations to perform those repairs and keep those phones out of landfills. The parts go back and can get recycled or serviced and maybe used again (like the refurb phone cycle).

but y'all ain't ready to talk about that yet.

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apple's repair program is much more extensive than virtually any other phone vendor, can't go buy a OEM google repair tool or a first-party samsung phone screen off the website. And applecare is the "pay upfront to get cheap repairs later" model that does exactly what you are describing, pay the (averaged/amortized) cost to maintain those parts stockpiles and the repair staff networks etc and then basically just pay labor if you have an accident, and if you have any other accident in those 3 years you come out way way ahead.

OEM 16" XDR Liquid Retina screens have an estimated BOM cost of $250, versus applecare at $350. If you have a broken screen that costs you $100 with applecare or $450-750 without. So basically you are prepaying one screen and then if it happens you just pay cost of labor.

https://medium.com/macoclock/is-apple-fleecing-you-a682c851a...

But like, as much as people whine, $200 above BOM cost for the screen replacement isn't awful for labor + facilities + parts supply maintenance for an extended lifecycle. And that's why people like rossman complain when apple launched the self-service, apple's parts prices are so good he can't actually compete with the labor costs involved unless he's using non-genuine parts to get the cost down. Apple isn't screwing consumers, they're actually dumping in some situations (battery replacement) and providing things at/below cost. But that's a good thing for repair, it keeps phones out of landfills! and like, are we optimizing for e-waste reduction, or optimizing to keep rossman in business here? what's the goal you're looking to solve for?

Again, y'all ain't ready to talk about that either, but "right to repair" is not the same thing as "right of rossman's business to exist". Apple is not going to sign off on people drilling/repadding/reballing their parts at scale. They have actually accomplished an extremely green overall lifecycle with higher levels of software/parts support, refurbishment+reuse, and repair service accessibility than anyone else on the market, they just do it in ways that people like rossman don't like because rossman doesn't get paid in that model.

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but yeah if you want to equalize the "logistics advantage" of new devices, that's easy, just tax new devices at time of sale. we already do this for TVs to account for the cost of disposal etc. make it a bigger tax to make repairs more financially attractive.

you could theoretically put that money into some subsidy or other but you don't need to, the point is just to remove the financial disadvantage of n=1 repair/logistics and a pure tax accomplishes that.