'Right-to-Repair' covers a broad spectrum of issues and it makes sense to consider them separately as how we deal with them will vary in each case. Clearly it's not possible to cover every aspect as that's worthy of a large book so I'll just highlight few issues.

First, it's worth looking at how we reached this this point and why Right-to-Repair has become such a big deal in recent years.

For younger generations it may come as a surprise to learn that 50 or so years ago the very concept or notion of one's right to repair one's equipment would have been very foreign to the average person. Consumers would have expected their appliances to be both durable and long-lasting and capable of being repaired. Back then, just about every appliance from a toaster to a television set was repairable and manufacturers had service departments where their products could be returned for repairs. Alternatively, owners and independent repairers could buy spare parts and service manuals from these service outlets.

In fact, so ingrained were notions about repairs and service that no one would have given even a second thought that in future they might be discontinued. In hindsight, I think blindness to the fact that things might change is why so few of us saw change coming until it was upon us.

Anyway, that was the normal situation until somewhere around the mid 1970s - early '80s when things changed drastically for the worse.

Why the change? In the decades since then there has been a huge shift in manufacturing and the economics of manufacturing. More than ever the overwhelming issue nowadays in manufacturing is profit, it has become the principal driving force and raison d'être for manufacturers' existence. No doubt, profit has always been a driving force but in the past it was tempered by other considerations, companies often built their reputations on the quality and reliability of their products and that those who ran them often had high manufacturing standards that they wanted to uphold.

In past decades people who ran manufacturing companies were more likely to be their founders—often inventors and or engineers—and they had a vested—intellectual—interest in their products and by virtue of the fact they required their companies to produce good products that consumers would appreciate.

From about 1980s the economic environment in which businesses found themselves changed dramatically, manufacturing thus changed to adapt. Free trade, reduced tariffs, offshore manufacturing, family companies being absorbed into multinationals, change in investment practices and so on meant that the utility and quality of products was often deprecated in favor of profits. With the changes founders and engineers ended up having much less say and influence over production than previously. Now shareholders and accountants ran these companies and their CEOs were no longer engineers but those with MBA degrees.

Of course, that's only part of the story, computers and IP became a big deal during this time and was very influential in rolling product info back into the proprietary realms of companies. Nowadays, information about products that companies once willingly placed in the public domain for the benefit of their customers such as circuit diagrams and maintenance and repair documentation, etc. has almost dried up completely.

Many well-known and highly respected companies succumbed to these economic changes. Had I time I could give many examples but HP and Sony are two egregious cases that immediately come to mind. Probably the quintessential example of where engineering management has given way to profit and the greed of investors is that of Boeing. The 747 was first designed and built 50+ years ago when Boeing was an engineering company run by engineers, nowadays investors and accountants run the company and is product is the 737-MAX.

Also, these changes have brought old nefarious manufacturing practices to the fore. Whilst the notion of planned obsolescence has been around for well over a century modern business practice has brought it to new heights. Products are now designed with less durability and have much shorter lives than in the past.

An example I like to give is that several years ago I bought three plastic buckets at the supermarket and the plastic handle fell off one before I got it home and not much later the handles fell off the other two when in use. Compare them with an old beaten-up and dented hot-dipped galvanized bucket we've inherited from my grandmother that was made sometime around the mid 1920s. It's somewhat the worse for wear but it's still functional. Furthermore, it still has its handle and it's not even rusty.

Here, durability has given way to profit, planned obsolescence ensures that manufacturers sell more. Then there's the serious problem of plastic pollution. And that's just for starters.

It seems to me there's a simple solution to all this but instigating it would be very difficult as manufacturers would fight it every inch of the way. That is to tax products that are deliberately designed without durability and longevity in mind. A durability tax would provide manufacturers with a financial incentive to make better products. Taxes also have the advantage that they can be fine-tuned until they become effective.

A durability/longevity tax would be not only just applicable to buckets but also smartphones and such. For example, phones without the facility for users to change batteries easily would fall into this category and be subject to the tax.

A similar 'utility' tax would apply where manufacturers deliberately depreciate a product's functional utility in favor of profit. Often that could be difficult to define but let me give you an example based on the definition and modus operandi of a device. Again, the classic example is the smartphone. First, we should not lose sight of the fact that a phone is primarily a telecommunications device licensed and tightly regulated under various telecommunications laws.

In recent years, phone manufacturers have deliberately killed the FM radio facility in many smartphones to encourage streaming which is more profitable. FM does not stop streaming, so why should it be removed when it serves an important purpose in times of emergency? During floods, fires, earthquakes etc. when WiFi and cellular services could easily be out of operation FM is very capable of supplying alternative sources of emergency information.

If governments acted responsibly then they ought to deem life and safety as being more important than profits, thus to encourage (rather than mandate) manufacturers to incorporate FM reception on their phones they could levy a utility tax on phones that do not have FM reception.

BTW, an almost identical argument is already being played out in the US over AM band reception in car radios. EV manufacturers want to phase out AM on grounds it's hard to reduce interference in EVs whereas the FCC has stated it's essential in times of national emergency. Incidentally, where I live the national broadcaster assumes the responsibility of broadcasting emergency information on the assumption that smartphone owners may no longer have access to WiFi or cellular networks.

At first thought much of that may seem outside the scope of the basic Right-to-Repair laws but on consideration it's not. Tied up with durability/longevity are related issues such as fitness for purpose, product functionality, minimizing e-waste and so on. When it comes to considering these matters this example just shows that we've barely scratched the surface.

That Right-to-Repair legislation is being widely enacted is no doubt excellent news. That said, the manufacturing lobby is extremely powerful so we need to fear that laws may be watered down to the point of being ineffective.

What's needed is a cultural shift by manufacturers back to those of earlier times. However, given the nature of their cultural shift of recent decades, we should not expect an easy ride going forth. Trouble is—as we've all too often seen—that in democracies where companies have undue power and influence it is very difficult to get effective law enacted.