I don't think it is about being cautious of unintended consequences in general. It is about being cautious of some unintended consequences and not caring about other unintended consequences.

The choice of which of these matters decides the politics.

It's about known unintended consequences vs. unknown unintended consequences.

If you realize that the null policy is also a policy, then there is no reason to be a priori more critical of active policies compared to the null policy.

The null policy always has more empirical validation because society clearly hasn't collapsed under it. This fact might be the essence of conservatism.

Even if the right to repair were a bad policy, it certainly wouldn't cause society to collapse. Nor would it destroy democracy or cause any other irreparable damage.

Implementing it merely risks a minor decrease in economic efficiency for a few years. The potential reward can last for an unlimited time. And there's a guaranteed reward too: Gaining knowledge on what policies work. We should do it even if we expected it to fail (see also VCs).

I know what you're getting at, and there is something there. However this argument is unfalsifiable.

No society ever collapsed due to policy on repairing washing machines. One could survive indefinitely in a sub-optimal policy regime on a topic of limited importance without collapsing.

There's plenty of cases where null policies have failed. I could list them but that list obviously has to trigger Godwin's law...

If Hitler had not done anything, i.e. implemented the so-called null policy, nothing bad would have happened. Feel free to substitute with any other dictator if you want to avoid Godwin's law.

Chamberlain implemented a null policy and Hitler was the result.

True, but what about intended consequences my friend. Companies obviously have a vested interest in getting us to buy new products, rather than have us repair the older ones. So, I guess a little regulation will be ok.

Every company wants to manufacture a washing machine once and then keep selling spare parts with 100% margin. No RnD expenses, no assembly line, no demo stands - pure profit!

That's like free printers with expensive ink cartridges.

But apparently I'm wrong?

I think that's generous. Yesterday several people were fervently arguing that discriminating in job advertisements against protected classes should be fine because it may be "more efficient". Talk about unintended consequences...