The fix is in on fixing things

Big corporations want to make it illegal for you to repair the devices you bought from them.

By Jim Hightower 

PHOTO: THE VOORHES

America’s economic and political inequality has led workaday Americans to exclaim: “The system is broken. Let’s fix it!”

But there’s another version of this protest that I’m hearing more frequently these days: “The system is fixed. Let’s break it!” 

That certainly applies to such rigged systems as money in politics and voter suppression, but it’s also relevant to seemingly mundane matters that restrain our personal freedoms.

One of the insidious “fixes” we need to break is the claim by brand-name corporations that we consumers must be banned by law from repairing the products they sell to us.

The weak battery in your cell phone, the fuel sensor in a farmer’s tractor, some gizmo in the toaster you bought, a fuse in your business’ delivery truck — you could fix all of these yourself or, with little hassle, take the problem to a local repair shop.

But, no, such manufacturing powerhouses as Apple, John Deere, and Panasonic assert that only their corporate technicians are authorized to open the product — which you own! — to make it work again.

So you are expected to deliver it to their distant facility, wait however many days or weeks they tell you, and pay an inflated price.

They’ve literally fixed the “fix” for consumer products.

They impose their control by making the products as needlessly complicated as possible, then claiming that the complexity is their patented proprietary product. Thus, they say they don’t have to provide repair manuals or sell repair tools to consumers or independent shops. Gotcha.

To give their closed profiteering system the force of law, the giants have deployed armies of lobbyists and lawyers to legislatures and courts, arguing that self-repair people really are scoundrels trying to circumvent safety and environmental rules.

For information and action, go to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group: USpirg.org.

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. Distributed by OtherWords.org.