Why even have multiple brands? Why not just have the government enforce a single manufacturer for each type of item and standardize everything? They could plan if all centrally and… oh wait.

The point is, if you don't want to support spares for your device, you have the option of using standard parts.

If you want your own part, you have to either make it available, or you have to make it reliable enough that you don't need to.

That would remind the incentive to have parts that fail be profitable. Making unreliable and unserviceable devices should cost you more.

Just mandate reasonably long warranty to force things to be reliable.

Why have any rules about what the manufacturers must do at all?

Let them sell us autonomous cars for $1,000 which need a $5,000 subscribtion to drive. Oh, you want to put child i a car, the car won't start unless you add a child add-on.

Oh, you need to go to the hospital, because your wife is giving birth, that will be extra $5,000 one-time fee.

I can hear Amazon's self driving car division furiously taking notes.

Ask any Detroit auto design shop and they’ll tell you an auto maker’s parts bin (parts they can throw into every new vehicle to avoid needing to set up more logistics pipelines) often hurts more than it helps in terms of improving on pain points in building and using cars; Tesla’s octovalve is the testament to what can be improved when you don’t have to use existing parts to fulfill a function with headroom for improvement in terms of weight and efficiency.

This makes total sense. Rewriting code is often easier than reuse. The purpose written code doesn't have to fulfill use cases that don't apply to it, it can make optimizations because of that. The old code doesn't have to start supporting use cases it was never designed for too, so it can stay simpler. Don't repeat yourself, but its ok to speak in original sentences rather than use somewhat applicable quotes for everything you want to convey. For physical parts the number of ways an old part might fail to meet new use cases seems vastly larger than in software, so I'd guess its even more applicable.

Tesla doesn’t buy the octovalve from other suppliers but it uses the same module in every model they make.

If you search appliance parts you’ll discover that’s already being done - the part for your dishwasher will fit fifty other dishwashers from a very surprising cross section of brands.

This is one of the reasons I still buy dumb appliances. I recently just more or less rebuilt my cloths dryer for less than $75, New element, new belts, new sensors, etc...

Of course the sheet metal frame, motor, and controls are the same but on a dumb appliance those rarely fail. on a "Smart" appliance those the replacement "smart" controls can be more costly than the entire replacement unit

At this point, "brands" are just the multiple marketing face of conglomerates.

3 years ago I was tasked with buying a cheap TV for an older relative. After spending an afternoon checking what's available, I realized virtually all low end models look the same and have the exact same menus.

Not terribly surprising but I didn't expect everything to be exactly the same across that many know and unknown brands

TVs are down to three panel manufacturers if I recall correctly - so it’s literally the chrome and maybe the bundled apps that differ.

This can be an advantage as sometimes you can flash default firmware to turn a cheap yumcha monitor into a better one.

Not entirely true. Some manufacturers / more expensive product lines have access to higher quality panels. Furthermore anti-reflective coatings, backlights, and wide angle view coatings can all vary widely.