These same firms have also designed their products in order to stymie repair by their purchasers, to ensure that they’ll either need to be replaced or repaired only by the seller, to the seller’s additional profit.

There are countless other ways that our purchases are compelled and shaped by people more powerful than us, from the ways in which creditors issue loans to the nearly $1 trillion firms spend each year on advertising to manipulate our decisionmaking to the careful tweaking of algorithms on social media to subtly influence our choices.

The point is—many, probably most, of our decisions to spend money to purchase, use, and discard products are not really ours to make, but are made by people who profit. We cannot, and never will, personal responsibility our way out of the present crisis.

7/end

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/right-to-repair-elizabeth-warren-antitrust.html

#RightToRepair