What can ordinary people do (besides call their favorite politician, LOL)? "Only buy cars built before the 80s" is going to be less and less a viable option over time. Is there even a single auto manufacturer building repairable cars anymore?
This is the same question I ask every time I'm shopping for a new computer, where is my open firmware mainboard / CPU / no proprietary microcode / open source hard drive firmware / etc computer so I can actually inspect, improve, and trust the pieces I rely on every day for my work.
The Raptor Talos Workstation is the closest thing we have to a enthusiast car without wholly proprietary internals, which is just incredibly bad.
Note, the Massachusetts Right to Repair came from a ballot measure, so it didn't require calling a politician and passed with huge support from the general public (86% Yes).
If your state has this option[1], you can bring ballots forward on this topic and it should be possible to get signatures and they are extremely likely to pass. (I originally said easy to get signatures, but getting 365,880 signatures, as is currently required in California, would not be easy, but should be possible if you are a good organizer.)
This was actually passed using a common Massachusetts strategy to force the hands of the members of the Great and General Court (the legislature).
You run a petition campaign to get a good, but draconian, measure on the ballot. You do this carefully, and gather a solid margin of extra signatures. When you're about 50% there, you schedule a demonstration at the State House. If you can turn out 200-300 people at the State House, it's good. You do a little "What do we want? Open Systems. When do we want them? Now!" chanting, and you talk to the press. You then get people to talk to their reps and state senators, and ask for THEIR signatures (as voters) on the initiative. If they oppose it, they have to look a constituent in the eye and say "no."
Then you finish the signature drive, in plenty of time to get the signatures certified by the town clerks.
Then, the legislature should be primed to pass good legislation to head off the good ballot bill. In this case (right to repair) the ballot bill passed anyway, because the legislature was distracted (the Speaker was being prosecuted for corruption).
That's how we got the law commonly and wrongly known as Romneycare passed. In that case, the legislature did their jobs when forced.
It's NEVER a bad thing to have your state senator know who you are.
