The sad reality of what it takes to pass right to repair 😢

hey everybody how's it going i'm going to try to keep this video short i'm probably going to fail i've actually tried to redo this about 10 or 20 times so at this point i've just said i'm not going to redo it if i think i got something wrong because i'm never going to wind up getting it out there long story short i want to try to get right to repair past right to repair which is something that i speak about in this video is the idea that you should not be stuck only going to the dealer if something goes wrong with your product you should not be stuck going to the dealer for for basic stuff whether it is a dishwasher cell phone laptop tractor car any of that stuff and this is something that for the past seven years i have completely failed on i have not moved the ball forward even a tiny bit i've got 1.5 million subscribers i've shown up at legislatures dozens of times and i have recorded them and uploaded them to this channel on this lobbying legislature playlist that you can see and i have horribly failed for many different devices you're still not able to get a schematic even if you want to pay for it even if you want to get authorized by the manufacturer you're still not able to buy chipsets for them even if you're even if you become authorized by the manufacturer even if you have money to pay for them they go out of their way to make it so that you're either paying these inflated rates to get it fixed by the manufacturer which are often the cost of a new one or buy a new one i failed a pushing back against this and a lot of you have asked why don't i figure out what the automotive right to repair people did and just copy them that's a great idea so as i've said on this channel there was an automotive right to repair bill that passed in 2012 which is why you can still have an independent mechanic work on your car rather than being stuck going to the dealer this ensured that they were able to continue to get access to what they need so that they can actually fix your car and this is something that passed in 2012 there was a loophole for this that got closed in 2020. so in 2012 they passed automotive right to repair in 2020 they were able to get a loophole closed so that they weren't able to lock you out by moving everything to wireless now they used a different procedure to get this passed than what i'm trying to do what i've been trying to do is show up at legislatures like this and ask the politician you know excuse me sir he looks like a majority of yours of your constituents would like right to repair paths so that they don't get abused by monopolies and can continue to own their products would you be open to considering this legislation that has the broad support of everyone who showed up here and your constituents no i mean that's pretty much what the past seven years of my life have been and you could that that's the abridged version of of all of these videos here you have politicians that stare at their phone you have politicians that literally in nebraska laughed us out of the room you have politicians that say okay we'll consider it and then you know two years later it's crickets what they did in massachusetts was something that's really revolutionary what they did is they had it put on as a direct ballot initiative what a direct ballot initiative means is that we're not waiting for politicians to get their heads out of their ass and do what their constituents want them to do you get to decide so what they did here is they put this to a vote among normal people in massachusetts and they won about 75 to 23 if i'm rounding over there this means that when you're voting instead of voting for a representative and then praying that they actually do what you want you just vote for what you want so when you have your ballot and you're going to vote it's like okay who do i want to be president by no trump okay who would i want to be senator this person or that person all right whoever want to be my uh rep you know attorney or what a district attorney or something like that you can vote there okay right to repair yes or no this bypasses the lobbying it bypasses the corruption it bypasses speaking to politicians that i you not in maine admitted to us while we're trying to explain the difference between a schematic and source code that they did not even know how to get into their government email one of the people who showed up said i'll help you get into that government he hasn't logged into his government email since he's been elected because he can't figure out how it bypasses that it bypasses the corruption it bypasses the aggravation it bypasses the indifference of those who were elected and paid a salary out of our tax dollars to represent us it's a beautiful thing here's the thing regardless of whether or not i agree with you when it comes to politics your opinions on politics could be the literally the polar opposite of mine i would still trust average everyday people who completely disagree with me on everything to vote on issue on issues like this than i would actual politicians because at the end of the day at least they care about doing what is best for their family and for the country versus just for for one person who's probably indifferent or just paid off at that point and what i think would be really amazing what a lot of you have asked is why don't you just figure out how to do a direct ballot then you want to go to legislatures and get laughed at anymore and try to convince politicians that don't know how to set up their email that a source code is different from a schematic great because at the end of the day as i've said i trust all of you even if you disagree with me on virtually everything more than i trust politicians to do jack so how do i get on the ballot well i decided to start an organization that is dedicated to moving right to repair forward as a cultural movement legally and also to help out repair shops with things that that they need help with that and one of the things that i wanted to start with was contacting the people that got this past and asking how'd you do it because all of you have been saying listen they already passed it why don't you figure out what they did so i figured out who was responsible for this did a little bit of digging got some contact information got a meeting and they told me what they did direct battle initiative it's a simple thing it's just insanely expensive and they they reiterated what i already knew that when you go through the legislative process it really only requires a very very teeny tiny amount of doubt in order to ensure that a bill gets shelved forever even if you're right with a direct ballot initiative you have to convince normal people and if more people agree with the bill then you can get it passed it's a way to bypass all of that so that you don't have to wait 30 to 50 years to get a piece of legislation passed and the way you do it you know if you got to get about 80 000 signatures or something like that after you get those signatures then it's going to be a very expensive process of grassroots advocacy so first you've got to pay to get to have a bill written up then you have to pay for the to get the 80 000 or so signatures after that you're going to have to pay for the for polling and advertisements so one of the things i remember going over when this first came out were the just the commercials it was cool because the people i spoke to actually they didn't recognize me immediately but then they knew me from these videos that i had done on the bs commercials so there were these commercials that got done where they were acting like if right to repair pastor if independent mechanics can fix your car you're going to get beaten and raped in a parking lot absolute insane so this is one of the ads data stored in your vehicle domestic violence advocates say a sexual predator could use the data to stalk their victims pinpoint exactly where you are whether you are alone even take control of your vehicle you see where the stupid is going so they said that there is going to be all sorts of horrible ads run against this to ensure that people vote no on right to repair so you're going to have to constantly do polling to figure out why people are concerned about that question and what are people's specific concerns that are causing the vote no what do they believe is the case as a result of ads like this and then you're going to have to put out your own ads and specifically target it to the specific areas of people that believe the opposite of what you believe to be correct this is going to be incredibly expensive and incredibly painful your opposition they said is probably going to lie about you because even if they post something that's fundamentally false they're not going to get in trouble for it for three to six to nine months and by then they're just going to get a slap in the wrist fine which is which is you know by then you've already lost the election so it doesn't really even matter you're gonna have to stay on top of this in all these different areas and that the cost of the constant polling the cost of the of of getting all these signatures and the cost of going forward with a direct ballot measure that's genuinely going to be successful in their experience from the ones that they've passed is going to be in the range of 5 to 20 million dollars now the first thing that i asked is okay well it's 2021 we have reddit we have youtube you know there's tick tock there's there's there's memes there's all these different ways of being able to get uh get your voice heard and get a message out there that are not you know advertising on cnbc or days of our lives that's very expensive advertising and that type of advertising is the olden days of advertising isn't there a way that this could be done more affordably if i were to try and leverage the uh you know the the youtube following that i have of 1.5 million people is there a way that i could get this done is there a way that i can attract enough media attention through my pursuits if i try to do this without five to twenty million dollars that i can somehow find a cheaper way to do the polling or advertise online or go door to door or whatever and he was they were they were very very polite and kind and they said you do that you're going to be pretty much pissing your money away it's not going to work i wouldn't even want to be a part of it because you're going to wind up i'd rather you either do it or you don't but but the way they explained is pretty much if i take let's say 500k or a million dollars from you and i know it's not going to get passed i'm not going to take suggest that you do that you're most likely going to fail you are going to fail pretty much and a small part of me walked away from that discussion thinking i know but i still want to try like i still i i just i refuse part of my brain refuses to believe that in 2021 i need that much of a budget to do polling pr advertising and advocacy you know and i have had people reach out to me and say you know he i would be open to giving 500 000 or 1 million dollars i like what you're doing you know keep doing it but even that that's not even remotely close to five to twenty million now what happens here is if let's say i try to go the direct ballot route the route and i don't do it full properly and because i didn't do it properly it gets voted out i get i get a no vote that there's i think there winds up being a moratorium on the amount of time before i can do it again so let's say i sit this session out i don't have five to twenty million bucks i can't do it in 2022 but let's say someone comes along with 5 to 20 million bucks in 2024 i can do it in 2024 but if i fail in 2021 and 2022 there's a moratorium to where now you have to wait until 2026 or 2028 to get it done and you're truly screwed so i'm kind of weighing this in my head like on one hand i'd feel bad if i tried to do it and i failed because then you have to wait six years but at the same time i don't see anybody coming along with five to 20 million dollars that's going to help me out anytime soon like me not have it's not like oh you know i have a hundred thousand in my bank account now and one year from now i'll have five or 20 million like that's not how this works i'm i'm probably not going to have five to 20 million dollars throughout the course of my natural life that's not something that's that's going to be in the cards for me and further i genuinely question if this industry is still going to exist by 2024 or 2025. you see how many companies are serializing parts and components you see what they're doing with uh with tractors you see what they're doing with with chipsets where i go to the vendor and i say i'd like to buy a thousand of this chip and they say sorry we we can't sell it to you we're not the manufacturer of the product said that we can't sell this to you is this even going to be an industry by then if i wait would it be best if i did if i genuinely put my best effort in to get a direct ballot initiative passed and kind of tried to record it for all of you because one thing that i noticed with this channel is that when i do repair videos and stuff like that like genuinely nobody gives a like once a month i'll get some virtue signaling comments saying i'm unsubscribing i was here for board repair videos and it's like no you're not every time i do one of those they get like 3 000 or 5 000 views and a channel with 1.5 million subscribers but when there's a story arc to follow people seem to actually be interested like last year with eugene the contractor that that that got 10 times the viewership of any of my normal videos people were just excited or when i was doing the real estate series where i was looking for a new place you know people wanted to check in to see what was going on it was kind of like a reality show and people really got into that and what i'm thinking of myself right now what if i make the process of trying to get a direct ballot initiative passed into a a television series the same way that i did that that people and people actually want to watch and what if the viewership that i get as a result of that winds up creating the press buzz that i need in order to get on tv in those areas to get in the newspaper in those areas so that voters actually know about it as an issue without me spending five to twenty million dollars to where i'll be able to poll normal people in an organic way where i'm going door to door or i'm um in asking people in in a state what do you think of this do you think this is passable like if i kind of can turn that into a story and then i can turn the channel into the story of the year and a half of my life that i spend trying to get this past is it possible that i could generate enough buzz and attention that i can actually get some of that attention that i and uh maybe access to polling professionals that would typically cost in the 5 to 20 million area because one thing you notice if you look at massachusetts question one you look at this page on ballotipedia here and i'm just going to show you the amount of money that went into this so when you see the people that opposed it they spent a lot of money this is what like 26 million you have general motors putting in 5 million toyota putting in four and a half ford putting in 4.4 million by the way very american thing to do is deny people the ability to fix their own car thumbs up ford uh american honda motor company put in 2.9 million nissan put in 2.4 million you know your tax dollars bailed out a company that's now using their money to lobby against your ability to fix the half-assed car that they built for you you could see here that they all gave money however the pro right to repair side also had 24 million dollars they had from auto care association 4.5 million coalition of automotive repair eq quality 4.1 million autozone 3 million advance auto parts 3 million genuine parts company 3 million o'reilly auto parts 3 million so it's not like this wasn't really that as much of a david and goliath as people would think it's not like you know the the giant uh auto manufacturers versus the teeny tiny mechanics they had parts vendors for these devices i mean for these cars i called the devices i they had parts vendors for these cars willing to spend three four five million dollars in pursuit of getting this passed they did not get this passed you know with a couple of hundred thousand dollars or even one million so i'm kind of at a crossroads like my my instinct is to try and get this past regardless of whether i actually have a budget for it and to kind of try and turn the story into how i go about getting this passed you know moving moving to a state going through the entire legislative process the ups and the downs and the excitement and all of it like trying to turn that into the theme of the channel and seeing if that gains some buzz and traction as a result of it being interesting to the point where i don't really need five or ten million dollars for ads because people are watching my channel more than they are the commercials on television and then they're they're telling their family members about it when it actually comes up for a vote so that they all vote yes on it a part of me genuinely refuses to believe that i need five to twenty million dollars in order to do this their advice was don't take donations from normal people don't take donations from small repair shops or end users because if you do take their money a it's not going to be enough and b if you fail they're going to be pissed off at you what you could do is you could find the large parts companies or the large repair companies in your industry that actually have millions of dollars that they could use and pay for something like this you know he they said find the o'reilly or find the auto zone of your business and then get them to donate and then use their money to go on the direct ballot but i'm kind of at a loss for whether or not there are companies in this business that just have like one or three or four million dollars you know again like the chances of me going out to mobile centrics or injured gadgets or union repair or asset genie with my cup out going you know i'd like to get right to repair passed i'd re hey listen i know if you give me money i can win like i just i don't see how that's going to work i like they were able to do it they were able to accomplish it they were able to get autozone and auto care and o'reilly auto parts and all these companies to just write them checks for three to three to five million dollars to try and get this passed but i don't really know how i could go about raising that money i don't know how to do that if i knew how to raise five to twenty million dollars for something i probably would have done it by now i'm really kind of wondering how i could go about some doing something like this or should i come up should i try and come up with a framework to get this passed over the next year and a half even if i don't have that amount of money what what can i do what can the internet accomplish what can like reddit youtube social media you know and just like what what can we do that even 10 years ago would have been considered insane and would it be considered insane now you know i wonder i really do and i'm like a part of me really does kind of want to spend the next year or a half of my life proving wrong the idea that you need five to 20 million dollars to do this because like there was the responsible thing to do would be to wait until you have five to twenty million dollars but five to like i i'm i'm never gonna have five to twenty million dollars like that's just not in the cards so i think the the best thing to do would be to do something and see what happens like again i'm not an expert at this this is not my uh my this is this is not my uh getting something on the ballot on on for direct ballot knocking on every single door in a state and then repeatedly doing that to figure out what people's concerns are how to get if you're knocking on doors how to not get people to slam the door in your face and say gtfo a salesman or whatever i don't know how to do that but i'm kind of curious if it would be fun to find out and i'm also curious if it will be worth doing that rather than doing nothing i'm not a person that's good at accepting that there's nothing you can do i'm not good at that i'm not good at sitting on the sidelines i'm not good at being told you know sorry you have to wait until you get x i mean if i did that i really like on one hand i see where that point comes from which is if you fail then you it up for anybody else to be able to try for four to six years but i don't see anybody else really trying to do that kind of thing and i'm not the type of person that's going to accept that i'm not going to accept that you know unless you're authorized by the manufacturer you can't fix the motherboard i mean really my entire business is based on the concept that waiting to do something waiting until everything is perfect to do it is is not going to get you anywhere i mean if i did that with my own life i wouldn't get anywhere and at this point i kind of think i'm i'm really fishing for some confirmation bias from the audience but i really don't see what the alternative is like what is the alternative the only alternative to trying to dedicate my next year and a half to two years of my life to getting this passed as a full-time job and actually hitting the road you know meeting with people whether it's in colleges clubs political forums uh do it literally knocking door-to-door wins to try to get signatures the alternative to that is to you know wait to get five or 20 million bucks like that's just not something that's going to happen so for all of you who have been saying try to get this push as the direct ballot initiative can you see if you can get a push as a direct ballot initiative why don't you get a direct ballot initiative i could really use your feedback at this point in time like what would you do what should i do what do you think i'm capable of doing because ah because again doing nothing yeah that's just that that's just not one of the things that's in the cards for me so that's about it for today i'll see you in the next video bye now

Channel: Louis Rossmann

Views: 101,675

Keywords: right to repair, right to repair movement, right to repair massachusetts, right to repair john deere, right to repair apple, right to repair hearing, right to repair louis rossmann, right to repair act, right to repair law, right to repair lobbyist

Id: U8wBKfaZ1jw

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021