Throwing Away Our Kids’ Future

We hear a lot talked about productivity, and the contribution of high labour costs to its decline. We hear less about the waste resulting from these costs, and the consequent destruction of jobs. There used to be many little workshops where competent technicians tested and repaired radio sets. When television arrived, these radio mechanics extended their skills to fixing them too.

Not anymore. This entire industry of small business operators has been extinguished. The consequences are expensive replacement of complete pieces of circuitry, the discarding of circuit boards on which only one or a few components have failed, and an unnecessary addition to landfill. This week I saw the process of designed superfluity in full swing. My son’s 40″ Samsung flat-screen TV had failed, and I was asked to meet the technicians and deal with them while he was at work.

The first clue to the modern approach to repairing a TV was the arrival of two Korean gentlemen carrying nothing more than a battery-powered screwdriver and two cardboard boxes. In no time they had the TV off its stand, the screen laid flat on the carpet and the whole back of the device removed.

Have you ever seen inside a big flat-panel TV set?  There’s really nothing much there, behind the screen. In the centre is a circuit board that is the power supply – about 20cm by 25cm crammed with electronic devices – transformers, transistors, capacitors. resistors and a couple of aluminium heat sinks. Over to one side there is another circuit board similarly populated, which operates the tuner circuitry.

There is also a small fan – a very small fan, just 5cm in diameter – to cool the powerboard components. Not surprisingly this was clogged with dust and fluff, sucked in from the house atmosphere, so its cooling capacity was reduced.

It was immediately obvious that two capacitors on the power-supply board had been cooked. They were the components nearest to the fan, so overheating could have been a cause of their failure. The technicians believed the most likely cause of failure was the surges in Sydney’s power, which often fluctuates between a low of 210-220 volts to spikes of up to 260 volts.

For today’s TV repairman, the solution is simple and quick – replace the entire power-supply board. That took five minutes. Half an hour and $270 after the two walked in the door they were gone. I was left with the feeling that they also were ready to replace the tuner circuit board if the first “fix” didn’t work.

I insisted on retaining the discarded power supply. It will be a simple job to un-solder the two burnt-out capacitors and replace them with new items of the correct value. My son will then have a spare in case of future failure. Judging by the very basic, flimsy and plastic nature of the TV set, with an inadequate cooling fan, that is pretty sure to happen. And I quickly formed the view these flat-screen TVs have been grossly expensive for what goes into them.

So how did Australia get itself into a situation where labour is so over-priced that it’s no longer economic to run a TV/radio repair shop, or worthwhile training young people in electronics?  The result is a throw-away culture where nothing is repaired any more, and manufacturers are turning out appliances at low prices  so cheaply made their useful life expectancy is half what it used to be.

Never mind, the kids who once could get a useful career job on a technical diploma can now aspire to pouring a perfect caffè latte with an elegant floral design in the milk.

Geoffrey Luck was an ABC journalist from 1950 until 1976