3 ms·

> Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this? You make it sounds so easy to start a tractor company.

notliketherest 10y ago
The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. By your logic your statement could just have easily as been "to start a car company" or "to start a rocket company" or "to start a computer company". These are all examples of industries whose existing players were supplanted by a better idea with smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs.
- andrepd 10y ago
  > The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Just two words, capital costs, suffice to throw that entire line of thought to the ground.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    It's a huge barrier to market entry effectively making for a natural monopoly. In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar and they don't have that much overlap product wise these days. If you go through the long list of farming equipment companies, they're all gone now. Defunct, or conglomeration.
    - pacaro 10y ago
      At some point anti-trust should kick in, regardless of the origin of the monopoly, the theory behind anti-trust is to protect the consumer
    - randomdata 10y ago
      > In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar Caterpillar? In agriculture? Do you mean Challenger (AGCO) or CLAAS, both of whom have used Caterpillar branding at points in the past? Although neither of them have recently. Curiously, you're the second person to have mentioned Caterpillar being involved in agriculture in this discussion. Which surprises me. They are not a player at all, outside of some overlap use of their industrial products (skidsteers, payloaders, etc.)
      - cmurf 10y ago
        Yes they explicitly target that market. http://www.cat.com/en_US/by-industry.html http://www.cat.com/en_US/by-industry.html Agriculture is a broad market, not limited to plows and combines which are more specific and that's where JD is at. Like I said, not much overlap.
        randomdata 10y ago
        Yes, like I said, they sell their segment of industrial equipment that is also useful in agriculture to people involved in agriculture. Your link echoes that. It's also small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Why are you putting them ahead of big players in agriculture like CNH and ACGO? In fact, Massey Ferguson (ACGO) is considered to have the largest tractor band in the world.
- elgenie 10y ago
  The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Then if the firms behind those products are well-run, they will use the dominant market position their products have granted them to try to raise barriers to entry and smother upstart competitors in their crib. "Car company" and "rocket company" are interesting examples, since the "smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs" in those areas needed billions in government subsidies to get off the ground []. And "computer company" includes the software side, with its low capital costs, and the hardware side, where the competitors are firmly entrenched (what's the last laptop/desktop upstart to hit it big?). [] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    > The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. That is patently incorrect. There are many examples of market failures that produce incorrect, poor quality, or even predatory results. A recent example is the total disregard for security in many (most?) "IoT" products, and the market for lemons[1] is the canonical example of a market that specifically selects for bad results ("lemons"). Note that the latter example of markets not producing "better products" was worth a Nobel Prize. In a truly free market, the product that is most efficient for the market wins. This is often (but not always) the most profitable product. Sometimes it may also be the "best" product, depending on your point of view, because profit (or price) is not the only metric that is used in determining which product is "best". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Tesla (the "car company") and SpaceX (the "rocket company") should be forever banned from discussions about the awesomeness of free market, because they're outliers. They're driven by a person with clear goals for the actual change of the world conditions, and companies themselves are used only as best available tools to achieve those goals. This is as far from your typical companies and entrepreneurs as one can get.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  This is so clearly fictional I find it difficult to argue not because you are not mistaken but because there is such a huge divide in our understanding of the world. Its as if we were discussing world affairs and you brought up the possible influence of astrology. Economics isn't a great description of reality. Its a just so story that is made to make sense after the fact because it lacks the predictive power that defines science. Messy, stupid, corrupt, emotional, irrational complicated is the rule as opposed to the exception in real life. For instance no such animal as the free market you describe exists. Just because hard/impossible to repair tractors is a bad thing doesn't mean that anyone is inspired to fix this, that such a company would succeed in the fact of competition ethical and not so ethical. The extremely probable failure of such an effort doesn't imply that the world wouldn't be a better place if this was so and so if this is important it falls on us as citizens to outline to the players what is acceptable and not via regulation.
andrewchambers 10y ago
I didn't say start one, there are lots of existing companies, perhaps someone with a lower market share could try it.
- dsmithatx 10y ago
  They don't have the capital and market share to innovate the way the current monopoly (Deere) has. As long as our government is ran by lobbyist awarding the rich, competition will remain a myth. Your comment reads like someone who believes there is a free market. I don't think most Americans realize lobbyist are the opposition and their sole purpose is to ensure a free market does not exist in their respective industry.
  - digitalzombie 10y ago
    I was going to point to free market and libertarian but I didn't want to incite politic. But yeah, many people that believe in this, thinks it's simple. One example is my buddy who thinks automation is good and don't account the people who are displaced by it. When press for what he would do for these people. It took 20 minute for him to say: 1. charity 2. community 3. family to help those people. He also counter that because there's less worker due to automation their wages would rise. Articles have shown that their wages would do the opposite actually. But notice there is no government safety net for these people. It's quite interesting. If you want this free market, you want your country labor force to run at maximum. So in my opinion, free market people, should at least support some social safety net to transition these people into a new labor sector. In general this free market thing isn't some law that came about from nature. It's a human invention... so the fear of having more laws or laws being abuse is crazy. I am incline to believe these people are arm chair economists, just like myself, but with more faith in this mystical concept of free market.

notliketherest 10y ago

The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. By your logic your statement could just have easily as been "to start a car company" or "to start a rocket company" or "to start a computer company". These are all examples of industries whose existing players were supplanted by a better idea with smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs.

andrepd 10y ago
> The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Just two words, capital costs, suffice to throw that entire line of thought to the ground.
- cmurf 10y ago
  It's a huge barrier to market entry effectively making for a natural monopoly. In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar and they don't have that much overlap product wise these days. If you go through the long list of farming equipment companies, they're all gone now. Defunct, or conglomeration.
  - pacaro 10y ago
    At some point anti-trust should kick in, regardless of the origin of the monopoly, the theory behind anti-trust is to protect the consumer
  - randomdata 10y ago
    > In farm equipment it's John Deere and Caterpillar Caterpillar? In agriculture? Do you mean Challenger (AGCO) or CLAAS, both of whom have used Caterpillar branding at points in the past? Although neither of them have recently. Curiously, you're the second person to have mentioned Caterpillar being involved in agriculture in this discussion. Which surprises me. They are not a player at all, outside of some overlap use of their industrial products (skidsteers, payloaders, etc.)
    - cmurf 10y ago
      Yes they explicitly target that market. http://www.cat.com/en_US/by-industry.html http://www.cat.com/en_US/by-industry.html Agriculture is a broad market, not limited to plows and combines which are more specific and that's where JD is at. Like I said, not much overlap.
      - randomdata 10y ago
        Yes, like I said, they sell their segment of industrial equipment that is also useful in agriculture to people involved in agriculture. Your link echoes that. It's also small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. Why are you putting them ahead of big players in agriculture like CNH and ACGO? In fact, Massey Ferguson (ACGO) is considered to have the largest tractor band in the world.
elgenie 10y ago
The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. Then if the firms behind those products are well-run, they will use the dominant market position their products have granted them to try to raise barriers to entry and smother upstart competitors in their crib. "Car company" and "rocket company" are interesting examples, since the "smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs" in those areas needed billions in government subsidies to get off the ground []. And "computer company" includes the software side, with its low capital costs, and the hardware side, where the competitors are firmly entrenched (what's the last laptop/desktop upstart to hit it big?). [] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > The result of a free market is that the better products will always win out. That is patently incorrect. There are many examples of market failures that produce incorrect, poor quality, or even predatory results. A recent example is the total disregard for security in many (most?) "IoT" products, and the market for lemons[1] is the canonical example of a market that specifically selects for bad results ("lemons"). Note that the latter example of markets not producing "better products" was worth a Nobel Prize. In a truly free market, the product that is most efficient for the market wins. This is often (but not always) the most profitable product. Sometimes it may also be the "best" product, depending on your point of view, because profit (or price) is not the only metric that is used in determining which product is "best". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Tesla (the "car company") and SpaceX (the "rocket company") should be forever banned from discussions about the awesomeness of free market, because they're outliers. They're driven by a person with clear goals for the actual change of the world conditions, and companies themselves are used only as best available tools to achieve those goals. This is as far from your typical companies and entrepreneurs as one can get.
michaelmrose 10y ago
This is so clearly fictional I find it difficult to argue not because you are not mistaken but because there is such a huge divide in our understanding of the world. Its as if we were discussing world affairs and you brought up the possible influence of astrology. Economics isn't a great description of reality. Its a just so story that is made to make sense after the fact because it lacks the predictive power that defines science. Messy, stupid, corrupt, emotional, irrational complicated is the rule as opposed to the exception in real life. For instance no such animal as the free market you describe exists. Just because hard/impossible to repair tractors is a bad thing doesn't mean that anyone is inspired to fix this, that such a company would succeed in the fact of competition ethical and not so ethical. The extremely probable failure of such an effort doesn't imply that the world wouldn't be a better place if this was so and so if this is important it falls on us as citizens to outline to the players what is acceptable and not via regulation.

andrewchambers 10y ago

I didn't say start one, there are lots of existing companies, perhaps someone with a lower market share could try it.

dsmithatx 10y ago
They don't have the capital and market share to innovate the way the current monopoly (Deere) has. As long as our government is ran by lobbyist awarding the rich, competition will remain a myth. Your comment reads like someone who believes there is a free market. I don't think most Americans realize lobbyist are the opposition and their sole purpose is to ensure a free market does not exist in their respective industry.
- digitalzombie 10y ago
  I was going to point to free market and libertarian but I didn't want to incite politic. But yeah, many people that believe in this, thinks it's simple. One example is my buddy who thinks automation is good and don't account the people who are displaced by it. When press for what he would do for these people. It took 20 minute for him to say: 1. charity 2. community 3. family to help those people. He also counter that because there's less worker due to automation their wages would rise. Articles have shown that their wages would do the opposite actually. But notice there is no government safety net for these people. It's quite interesting. If you want this free market, you want your country labor force to run at maximum. So in my opinion, free market people, should at least support some social safety net to transition these people into a new labor sector. In general this free market thing isn't some law that came about from nature. It's a human invention... so the fear of having more laws or laws being abuse is crazy. I am incline to believe these people are arm chair economists, just like myself, but with more faith in this mystical concept of free market.