5 ms·

> These are all benefits for John Deere. Yep, that was my point in posting. It's usually good to hear both sides of things. > Yup, DRM and platform lock-down

> These are all benefits for John Deere. Yep, that was my point in posting. It's usually good to hear both sides of things. > Yup, DRM and platform lock-down (machinery is a platform??) increases profits Reducing manufacturing costs is not the same as increasing profits. They're not a monopoly, they still have to set prices according to the market. This allows them to price things lower. > "Platform flexibility" is nothing more than the ability for JD to lock out capabilities of the machinery that the farmer supposedly bought, and sell it as an add-on later. Do you think that when a farmer spends 100k they don't know what they're buying? I don't know what you mean when you say they 'supposedly' bought it. They order a tractor, customize it, and buy it. It allowes them to get a tractor at a lower price point and upgrade as needed

toufka 7y ago
The market is small. And that means, pragmatically, a professional farmer in search of a combine might be caught between a couple of bad choices - but that doesn't mean they endorse the business practices.
jwalgenbach 7y ago
The cost to JD to manufacture the tractor with lower horsepower limited by the software lockout is the same as it is to manufacture the tractor without the software governor. That's why it looks like a scam -- JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade. They get paid for removing the artificial limits on the product. No one is saying that different hardware (or even software) features of the tractor shouldn't be configurable and charged accordingly, but the lock-out is different. JD is crippling the capabilities.
- bricej13 7y ago
  > JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade That's true, they already spent all the dimes installing the top-of-the line engine in the tractor. > JD is crippling the capabilities. Said another way: Deere gives a discount to those who don't need the full capabilities of the engine provided. Another user pointed out that market price is $1000 per horsepower. That's a significant savings when you don't need the extra 1-300hp. The idea of buying 'Horsepower' instead of an engine is pretty weird though.
  - zaphar 7y ago
    This is all sort of an argument about semantics. But the real heart of this argument is over who owns the tractor and whether it's acceptable for someone to limit what you can do with something they sell you. Which is a "separate" question from whether the Government can limit what you can do with something you own. It's further clouded by the fact that you sign a contract when you buy it so you explicitely gave up some of your rights.
  - jwalgenbach 7y ago
    Correct, and they aren't losing money when they sell to consumers that don't need to full capabilities. Yet the tractor itself is already capable (and purchased -- or at least financed which amounts to legal ownership going to the consumer). They recoup their initial dimes in the base cost of the unit. So JD, which isn't losing money on the "entry level" product provides no actual goods or service for the upgrade, beyond removing the governor. At that point, it's more or less free money to JD -- profit with nothing provided the consumer.
- vageli 7y ago
  > The cost to JD to manufacture the tractor with lower horsepower limited by the software lockout is the same as it is to manufacture the tractor without the software governor. That's why it looks like a scam -- JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade. They get paid for removing the artificial limits on the product. > No one is saying that different hardware (or even software) features of the tractor shouldn't be configurable and charged accordingly, but the lock-out is different. JD is crippling the capabilities. This is exactly how modern chip fabrication works for computer processors. The crippling of the product at one end of the product price point spectrum allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point which ultimately benefits consumers who wouldn't be able to enter the marketplace at the otherwise higher price point. I'm not defending the practice outright but it's not such an outright scam as one might conclude upon first glance.
  - wahern 7y ago
    Whether DRM-based price discrimination "allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point" or allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a premium price point is the heart of the dispute. You can't know whether it's one or the other without modeling whether the contrapositive holds (i.e. if DRM then lower prices -> if not DRM then not lower prices), and doing that is extremely difficult. In general, though, I'd argue that historically such price discrimination (i.e. via contracts, copyright, etc) has usually served to inflate prices. You usually only find such price discrimination in non-competitive markets. In any event, anyone who says that it leads to lower prices is at best misleading. It can theoretically. In a competitive market the question is irrelevant because if it led to higher prices people would change suppliers. The question really only matters in situations where the market isn't particularly competitive.
    - askafriend 7y ago
      > Whether DRM-based price discrimination "allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point" or allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a premium price point is the heart of the dispute. You can't know whether it's one or the other without modeling whether the contrapositive hold You're making this more complicated than it has to be. You can easily know this by just looking at the capabilities that other tractor manufacturers are offering at the same price. Like he said, there's no monopoly in the tractor business. And it's not like someone is buying a fake Gucci bag by accident. These are $100,000+ purchases with a lot of back and forth. You know what you're getting into and you've presumably shopped around to look at a ton of alternatives.

toufka 7y ago

The market is small. And that means, pragmatically, a professional farmer in search of a combine might be caught between a couple of bad choices - but that doesn't mean they endorse the business practices.

jwalgenbach 7y ago

The cost to JD to manufacture the tractor with lower horsepower limited by the software lockout is the same as it is to manufacture the tractor without the software governor. That's why it looks like a scam -- JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade. They get paid for removing the artificial limits on the product. No one is saying that different hardware (or even software) features of the tractor shouldn't be configurable and charged accordingly, but the lock-out is different. JD is crippling the capabilities.

bricej13 7y ago
> JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade That's true, they already spent all the dimes installing the top-of-the line engine in the tractor. > JD is crippling the capabilities. Said another way: Deere gives a discount to those who don't need the full capabilities of the engine provided. Another user pointed out that market price is $1000 per horsepower. That's a significant savings when you don't need the extra 1-300hp. The idea of buying 'Horsepower' instead of an engine is pretty weird though.
- zaphar 7y ago
  This is all sort of an argument about semantics. But the real heart of this argument is over who owns the tractor and whether it's acceptable for someone to limit what you can do with something they sell you. Which is a "separate" question from whether the Government can limit what you can do with something you own. It's further clouded by the fact that you sign a contract when you buy it so you explicitely gave up some of your rights.
- jwalgenbach 7y ago
  Correct, and they aren't losing money when they sell to consumers that don't need to full capabilities. Yet the tractor itself is already capable (and purchased -- or at least financed which amounts to legal ownership going to the consumer). They recoup their initial dimes in the base cost of the unit. So JD, which isn't losing money on the "entry level" product provides no actual goods or service for the upgrade, beyond removing the governor. At that point, it's more or less free money to JD -- profit with nothing provided the consumer.
vageli 7y ago
> The cost to JD to manufacture the tractor with lower horsepower limited by the software lockout is the same as it is to manufacture the tractor without the software governor. That's why it looks like a scam -- JD doesn't spend a dime to deliver the upgrade. They get paid for removing the artificial limits on the product. > No one is saying that different hardware (or even software) features of the tractor shouldn't be configurable and charged accordingly, but the lock-out is different. JD is crippling the capabilities. This is exactly how modern chip fabrication works for computer processors. The crippling of the product at one end of the product price point spectrum allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point which ultimately benefits consumers who wouldn't be able to enter the marketplace at the otherwise higher price point. I'm not defending the practice outright but it's not such an outright scam as one might conclude upon first glance.
- wahern 7y ago
  Whether DRM-based price discrimination "allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point" or allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a premium price point is the heart of the dispute. You can't know whether it's one or the other without modeling whether the contrapositive holds (i.e. if DRM then lower prices -> if not DRM then not lower prices), and doing that is extremely difficult. In general, though, I'd argue that historically such price discrimination (i.e. via contracts, copyright, etc) has usually served to inflate prices. You usually only find such price discrimination in non-competitive markets. In any event, anyone who says that it leads to lower prices is at best misleading. It can theoretically. In a competitive market the question is irrelevant because if it led to higher prices people would change suppliers. The question really only matters in situations where the market isn't particularly competitive.
  - askafriend 7y ago
    > Whether DRM-based price discrimination "allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a lower price point" or allows the manufacturer to sell the device at a premium price point is the heart of the dispute. You can't know whether it's one or the other without modeling whether the contrapositive hold You're making this more complicated than it has to be. You can easily know this by just looking at the capabilities that other tractor manufacturers are offering at the same price. Like he said, there's no monopoly in the tractor business. And it's not like someone is buying a fake Gucci bag by accident. These are $100,000+ purchases with a lot of back and forth. You know what you're getting into and you've presumably shopped around to look at a ton of alternatives.