President Joe Biden has signed an executive order meant to promote competition — with technology directly in the crosshairs.
The order, which the White House outlined earlier this morning, calls on US agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to implement 72 specific provisions. The topics include restoring net neutrality provisions repealed during the prior administration, codifying “right to repair” rules, and increasing scrutiny of tech monopolies.
Good intentions, but these are just executive orders – not actual bills that can withstand the test of time. I understand executive orders are the best the US can get with its broken and gridlocked political system, but it’s simply not enough – the next president can just wipe them off the desk.
Thom Holwerda,
You are right about that. Congress is broken, The right to repair is important but I doubt we’re going to see legislation.
The thing is it effects constituents of both parties. Obviously consumers have been asking for the right to repair in tech/moble/etc for decades, but a lot of farmers living in conservative states have been abused by similar manufacturer tactics as well. We need to put an end to manufactures holding hardware hostage by holding onto they keys and not relinquishing them at the owners request. The laws need to entitle owners to have the keys to their own property.
As a citizen and consumer, I am of course frustrated by business practices like planned obsolescence or making things harder to repair than they need to be. I am Canadian, but one thing people often don’t appreciate about the US is that solutions can often be found within the people.
The example I like to use is drug prices. I’m in Canada and we have a practice of using our national healthcare to negotiate large drug purchases and prices. Now, it might be tempting for Americans to think they should just do the same and use government power to force lower drug prices or things like that.
Here’s how America is actually dealing with the problem.
https://civicarx.org/
It’s a non-profit drug manufacturer formed by entities like hospitals, insurance… that are of course impacted by the price of drugs.
That’s pretty interesting to me as a Canadian.
People often underestimate their ability to solve their own problems.
Farm equipment? There’s a lot of money in farming. While advanced robotic farming equipment is destined to be proprietary, your run of the mill farm equipment is not exactly rocket science at this point, If Elon Musk can start a new car company, I’m sure farmer’s could create a cooperative or non-profit farm equipment manufacturer.
Even mobile phones. There is the fairphone in Europe or various Linux phones.
We just don’t know the long term consequences of many government actions. We can say this plain and simple as a Canadian. Say what you will, Canada, where we pride ourselves on Universal Healthcare, just did not have the vaccine production capacity to fight Covid. Plain and simple. Note, I’m not saying that only for-profit healthcare can have the profit motive to invest in things. I’m just contrasting the reality of Canada where the fact is we let our pharma industry deteriorate to such a state. No doubt we have learned and we’ll probably end up paying these companies to setup plants in Canada to ensure domestic supply.
I think the approach like https://civicarx.org/ is actually a better approach long term. It keeps things real, accounted, and responsible. I have no idea what it costs to sustain any industry, but it’s a lot and I think you err on the side of letting business ensure they are sustainable.
Yamin,
Hello fellow countryman 🙂
It’s one thing for the hospitals and insurance companies to collectively bargain with the drug companies, but the reality is they’re more interested in fighting for their own profits rather than in the interests of patients. If you haven’t experienced it, I’m not sure you realize just how terrible the US healthcare system is for patients.
A few years ago a family member went to the ER via ambulance. Even though we have employer insurance, the hospital that our local ambulance company is affiliated with is “out of network” and we received a bill for $8k. Our insurance company paid for the ambulance itself but we were on the hook for the ER visit. Bear in mind this is with insurance. I was appalled and it left us with a real conundrum: if an emergency were to happen again in the future, should we dial 911 opening ourselves up to surprise billing, or should we risk driving ourselves an extra half hour to a hospital that’s in network? I mean that’s a serious risk. I just hate that our health care system forces us into such a position that we’re forced to choose between health insurance coverage and rapid medical assistance. This system we have in the US is immoral!
Another thing that seriously bugs me is that there are different pricing structures depending on who is paying. If two patients go in for the exact same services, one is paying for themselves, and the other is covered by their employer’s insurance. The individual patient may be billed $800, yet the insurance company may only be billed $60. This price discrimination is infuriating and unfair, but it happens because of who’s interests are being represented in our health care system: Doctors, check. Hospitals, check. Insurance companies, check. Drug companies, check. Patients…oops we’re not represented ironically enough.
At least the federal government may finally be taking steps to eliminate the surprise medical bills I mentioned above:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/01/politics/surprise-medical-bills-rule/index.html
The thing is, if you take the reigns off and let an industry oversee itself, we know that they can (and will) exploit the lack of regulation. Not only does this lead to abuses, but it also pushes patients to economic breaking points. What’s sustainable for the insurance business may not be sustainable for patients who face medically induced poverty.
To be clear I’m not particularly a fan of government involvement, but realistically without them, the tables are too tilted. Heck even employers have more say over our health coverage than we do. Sure in theory you can buy your own insurance on the side that has the coverage you get to decide on, but as an individual it’s even more expensive, so you’d better have an exceptional paycheck. Ironically those most in need of better insurance plans are lower & middle class workers who cannot afford independent insurance. IMHO employer based health insurance is an inherent conflict of interest in the US and I really wish we’d eliminate it. While there are many who agree that we should get away from employers controlling our healthcare plans, so far congress has failed to make make it happen.
Civicarx uses small overseas manufacturers to produce a very limited range of generic drugs such as antibiotics. The overall impact is extremely limited.
Kudos to Biden and i am rather optimistic due to the fact newer generations of politicians understand the issues of the world we are living in better. Compared to older generations. And some of them will for sure be interested in resolving some of the oppressing issues by implementing appropriate laws. For example if there is a law one can sideload an application on an mobile device. That resolves a lot of oppressing issues already regarding abuse of monopoly power. And as an average country educates a lot of people capable of repairing electronic devices. It is rather dumb if companies could claim such people are unfit to repair their products. In the end a company has no real say in this.
Geck,
To be honest, it’s hard to look at our government and be optimistic about anything. Even Biden himself. I mean, thankfully he won, but his main appeal was that he could beat Trump and not that he has a particularly strong platform in his supporter’s minds. Most people would have preferred someone else. Oh well.
Except the the senate in particular is very broken. We’re facing a lot of problems rights now. There’s covid of course, but aside from that the infrastructure deal is going to be a major test for congess. Election rights are another. Climate change/droughts/wildfires are others. Sadly I don’t believe our politicians are up to the task because politics has to be fought on different levels: 1) coming up with viable solutions that use our resources effectively, 2) overcoming the political foes who want nothing more than for us to fail. The best thing we can do for #1 is to bring in the experts and come up with plans, which is doable but most of these experts and plans are ill prepared to cope with #2. Every time we make progress, such as with the paris accords or net neutrality, we backtrack due to politics and loose our progress.
Ideally sure, but do you actually think congress will pass such laws though? I mean, the senate situation is so bad right now that many democrats want their own supreme court justice to retire immediately while the senate still has a 50:50 split to vote on a replacement. Mitch Mcconnell is very likely to retake the senate for the GOP in the next midterms. If Justice Breyer (age 82) becomes incapacitated on Mcconnell’s watch, it will be a repeat of what happened when Ginsburg passed away in Obama’s term and Mcconnel refused to allow the senate to vote on a democratic nominee. If we’re not careful, we could fall right back into the trap that yielded a 6:3 conservative majority, only next time it could be a 7:2 conservative majority on the supreme court.
He’s a link if interested…
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/28/adam_cohen_justice_stephen_breyer
You may feel newer generations have a better grasp of the issues, and that could be true, but we’re still loosing a lot of battles to the conservatives in part because they’re willing to play dirty politics. Those of us who aren’t willing/able to play dirty (because we’d like to be above it) are going find it very difficult to get anything done. You almost have to get dirty to win, but then you become part of the problem 🙁
We could do so much better by cooperating, but what are you supposed to do when one side makes it their goal to block everything, spread lies and misinformation & fight against democratic elections? I think we’re in bigger trouble than people realize.
It will happen as it is more or less inevitable. If USA won’t get there first other will. Like EU, China … Once one of this big economic areas pass such law the game is over for big companies, claiming whatever they claim. They will adapt just fine after. That is living in USA you will be able to sideload an application on Apple mobile device and if a device will start to cause issues your local repair person will be able to take care of it. Just like it always was until this big companies started to make bogus claims otherwise. It’s just that nobody ever tested such bogus claims. And lately things and the whole climate started to change. As some people persisted and called them out and are prepared to do something about it. They for sure won’t back down now until it is settled and normal state of affairs gets restored.
Geck,
Of course companies would adapt.Before these massive oligopolies & duopolies, we had lots more competition. We should get back to that, but now that the tables are so tilted in the favor of the giant corporations, I don’t believe that we have enough politician who are willing or able to reset the economy back to a genuinely competitive state.
I don’t deny that our corporations are abusive, but the problem is that so many politicians continue to be complicit in allowing their behaviors to continue unfettered. So I don’t have much faith in the process.
I don’t share your optimism. Rotating the players doesn’t change the rules or the game itself. I think people forget that the USA was founded by self-serving & corrupt people. It was built breaking the backs of slave-labor. After you peel back the layers of what looks good on the outside or on paper you see the rot at the core. There’s been a steady concentration of wealth and power to a very tiny sliver at the top. Do you truly believe they’ll willing reverse the flow and start giving it back to `the people` in any meaningful and lasting way? History proves otherwise. The US is just a more recent iteration of an old playbook. There _is_ a lot of opportunity here compared to many other places in the world but the idea that we’re `of the people, by the people, for the people` is laughable.
That’s great all the same. Now new presidents and legislatures will have to justify the removal of such orders and passing them as bills will become more likely than not.
“Now new presidents and legislatures will have to justify the removal of such orders…”
That’s pretty optimistic given that the previous US president just proved the opposite, often inventing justifications out of thin air (aka “lies”).
walid,
I think given what we know, the notion that presidents hold past executive orders sacred isn’t realistic even in the best of times. Reversing orders happens regularly under adversarial parties and a big part of Trump’s agenda was undoing everything Obama did. He even tried to undo “Obamacare”, the only reason that failed was because it was legislation passed by congress. For better or worse US politics are a two party duopoly and when the pendulum swings back to the GOP, everything Biden does will be at risk.
If that has any chance of happening, it needs to be done right now. Because If we’re struggling to pass progressive legislation now, it’s just going to get harder to do so when the political tides flip in the direction of conservatives. There’s only a very short window in which to get things done, if we miss it we will face years of obstructionism.
It doesn’t matter that pragmatic solutions are at our fingertips because congress is too broken to do it’s job 🙁
Alfman,
It might not be so easy for the next president to overturn this.. if the public actually comes on board, and makes some noise. Fortunately, there is a lot of noise now.
For example:
US military cannot repair own equipment: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30859791/us-military-right-to-repair/
Farmers vs John Deere: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-05/farmers-fight-john-deere-over-who-gets-to-fix-an-800-000-tractor
and of course all phone owners who had a broken screen or failing batteries.
My concern is that whether this is going to be a high priority item on the congress agenda to codify into law.
sukru,
But think about who we are talking about. The GOP has become the party of Trump. The man has no qualms whatsoever about overthrowing everything his predecessor did, even the popular stuff. Take the example of net neutrality was passed under Obama’s administration before being repealed under the Trump administration.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/9/20687903/net-neutrality-was-repealed-a-year-ago-whats-happened-since
We can agree that the right to repair is apolitical in that it addresses issues for constituents of both parties. But in politics there’s a huge different between what constituents want, and what their politicians fight for, particularly when it comes to the cozy relationships between government and big business, which tends to override public interest.
I agree. I have had similar concerns over patent and copyright law, I just don’t see us making any progress though in large part because Mitch McConnell’s obstructionist playbook is congress’s Achilles heal. A critical assumption for Congress to work effectively is having members who actually want to do their jobs and pass legislation even if it means compromising. It’s all too easy to obstruct when members of congress are not interested in passing legislation,
To be honest though, despite my misgivings about congress not addressing our problems in tech, I actually think they do have something more important to focus on right now, which is making sure states don’t get away with coordinated efforts to make it harder to vote in elections. I think defending democracy is the most important thing, however even there I don’t have confidence that congress will overcome it’s partisanship.
Yes executive orders are a virtue signal at best because they will just be wiped out in 4 years when it switches back I’d say R2R is worth exactly jack and squat and here is why…as long as you don’t pass a law against black boxing and soldering major components all the R2R laws in the world aren’t gonna do shit.
Let me give an example…walked by a flea market the other day and saw a cute little netbook maybe a year and a half old cheap and I thought “Oh that might be a useful thing, slap a bit more RAM in it and maybe give it to one of the grandkids”…then I looked it up on my phone. Not only is the CPU soldered but so is the RAM, the battery and even worse the storage which was eMMC. In other words it was built to go straight into the trash as eMMC lasts maybe 2 years before it starts shitting itself so even though that little netbook had a quad compared to my 10 year old netbooks dual my old one is still useful in 2021 thanks to being able to double the RAM, slap on a new battery and add an SSD while that less than 2 year old netbook was already dumpster fodder.
So unless we pass regulation that makes the most common components required to be user replaceable you can pass R2R laws all ya want the stuff they churn out is still gonna be nothing but soldered on garbage that goes super quickly from the shelf to the eWaste pile.