The right to repair is really a right to understand

Glued-shut devices and serialised parts are not an engineering necessity, they are a business model. But the loss is bigger than money. A generation is growing up surrounded by objects that cannot be opened, and something happens to how you relate to the physical world when everything in it is a sealed box. Repair teaches you that things have insides, that they are comprehensible, that you are allowed to intervene. That habit of mind transfers directly to institutions, which is perhaps why nobody is in a hurry to bring it back.