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The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much

The technology itself is not the issue, the problem is that companies are at war with their customers. These companies will go to any length to extract as much revenue as possible. Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help customers be more successful (although many of them preach this, very few actually do). Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value.

sneak 7y ago
If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?
- wvenable 7y ago
  Why was this downvoted? I just made the same comment before noticing this one already done. Competition is what solves these kind of things.
  - skywhopper 7y ago
    Sure, but how do you propose to introduce competition into this market?
    - Yizahi 7y ago
      It will trickle down of course. /s
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      Declare John Deere a monopoly and break them up?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mratsim 7y ago
      I guess, convincing Elon Musk that we need tractors on Mars could stimulate some competition.
    - wvenable 7y ago
      Well the market has already been identified.
    - bjt 7y ago
      There are nearly three dozen tractor manufacturers in listed on this page: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tractor-brands/werner-brandes https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tractor-brands/werner-brand.... Deere doesn't have a monopoly. But they do have an incredibly strong brand.
- PerryCox 7y ago
  Because the bigger companies forced them out of business or acquired them.
- wetpaws 7y ago
  Because there is no competition in the US.
  - cpach 7y ago
    Does farmers in other countries somehow enjoy a plethora of tractor manufacturers to choose from?
    - davchana 7y ago
      Punjab state of India is pretty much Agriculture based, & have options of Ford, FarmTrac tractors as well as John Deere, Scot, this year models as well as from 1970s; along with local Indian Brands like Sonalika, Preet, Mahindra being equally good or better.
      - mythrwy 7y ago
        Mahindra tractors are based on the old International Harvester models I think. They sell them in the US also. They look pretty cool, simple and repairable, but I don't know if they make ones the size of commercial John Deere tractors. All the Mahnindra tractors I've looked at were small.
        davchana 7y ago
        No,not as big. All the ones I have seen in Punjab are way smaller, almost the size of an F-150 pickup truck.
    - throwaway744678 7y ago
      In Europe, Claas, New Holland Come to mind immediately. But there are definitely others.
    - lb1lf 7y ago
      Living in a rural, Norwegian area, I can remember seeing the following brands of tractors recently - Fiat, Zetor, Case, John Deere, New Holland and Massey Ferguson. I've probably not paid attention to at least a couple more - I am not a tractor aficionado...
- appleshore 7y ago
  https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski
- bsder 7y ago
  Because manufacturing isn't software. It takes a LOT of capital to build a company capable of manufacturing something like a tractor. And nobody will buy it initially because it has an unknown reliability record. Look at the article, the farmers all make predictions about exactly how long those John-Deere tractors will last because they have roughly 40 years of experience working with them.
- xnyan 7y ago
  http://www.belarus-tractor.com/en/ http://www.belarus-tractor.com/en/
  - jotm 7y ago
    I think parts availability might be a problem with those, as well as a general lack of knowledge about them. Otherwise, yeah MTZs are simple and easy to fix.
  - f311a 7y ago
    They are pretty good for their price. The factory is still producing some models that were first designed in the 1970-1980s.
- catalogia 7y ago
  How many times must it be demonstrated that "market forces" is not a silver bullet to every problem before people take the hint?
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    Market forces would work in this situation, if only the situation were different: - if there were an existing competitive market, that would help. - if there were a clear long-term market, that might inspire competition. But in this case, market forces caused the problem.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      > X could solve Y if only Y were Z That's a nice hypothetical, but hardly helps these farmers. The real solution is America's most hated four letter word: regulation.
    - deith 7y ago
      >Market forces would work in this situation, if only the situation were different That can be said every time the market fails to adjust itself.
  - gitgudnubs 7y ago
    This problem was created by regulation. It's not clear that markets can work when governments grant monopolies, and don't restrict the ensuing vertical integration. The only solution is to grant weaker monopolies.
- floren 7y ago
  Mahindra is selling small and medium tractors in the US now; I don't know for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if they were much more user-serviceable than the American brands people are complaining about.
  - kasey_junk 7y ago
    Note: This story is about heavy duty tractors. Lighter duty tractors are much more competitive marketplace.
    - floren 7y ago
      Yeah, Mahindra has some reasonably large tractors on their website, but the really Big Tractors you'll find from say John Deere aren't available. According to Wikipedia they're the largest tractor seller in the world, so maybe they'll expand!
- lostgame 7y ago
  If you don't know the answer to that - you may have wanted to think it through a little more. Manufacturing at scale is hard and expensive. John Deere has been doing it for years, creating the most reliable tractors in the world for decades and has only recently decided to bend customers over to give them the ol' in-out-in-out. A new brand would need to start from almost smaller than scratch, and have tens of million dollars of investment to even get started producing their own tractors. Then they'd have the uphill battle of a set of people who are extremely reliant on these machines to trust a new company with no track record with highly mission-critical equipment. It would be an incredibly high-risk investment, with little to no guarantee of success. Instead, as the article says - these farmers are not buying new tractors from anyone at the moment.
  - okareaman 7y ago
    I like to do road trips as a hobby and I see a lot of Japanese and other Asian brand tractors in American farming areas,so there is competition
  - Vesuvium 7y ago
    Is that really a problem in the country of the Silicon Valley? Actually, that might be the only thing preventing this from happening.
  - tastygreenapple 7y ago
    John Deere has not been making the 'most reliable tractors in the world for decades'. Their products are categorically inferior to Japanese products like those made by Kubota, and frankly I'd trust a Mahindra to go the distance before a Deere. I think Deere was supported by blind patriotism on small/medium farms and really good post-sale support for large operations. I'm pretty sure their unit sales are falling, hardly a sign of a company that's getting its product right.
  - solatic 7y ago
    In today's market, your argument doesn't hold water. A new brand would need to start from smaller than scratch? So what? People start new companies every day. It would require tens of millions of dollars of investment? So what? We keep being told how capital markets are just sloshing with cash looking for investment opportunities; that one of the reasons for rising inequality is due to the dearth of investment opportunities for the rich to use to seek returns. They'd have trouble finding customers willing to give them a shot? So what? Every startup has this problem. You solve it by differentiating yourself from your incumbent competitor. When your competitor is so hated that they're getting negative press in national news outlets and state legislatures are being pressured to pass laws, your differentiation proposition is practically written for you. I'm sure there are tractor upstarts out there trying to get funding. The question is, if they're not getting funding then why not, and why doesn't anybody know about them?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors? Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are often forced to accept minimally acceptable deals, as long as the capital-holders are able to maintain barriers to entry (like large investments in capital). A new market entrant will likely be tempted (eventually, if not immediately) to implement DRM just like Deere has. And Deere can always drop DRM temporarily if it will let them fend off a competitive threat.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    > The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.
    - CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it. Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.
- skywhopper 7y ago
  Because it would be really expensive to start a new tractor manufacturing business; it would take years to even get prototypes up and running; you'd still have to prove that your tractors were as good as or better than these 40 year old antiques (which they probably wouldn't be at first); you'd have to be able to make something that could meet safety and efficiency standards of today while giving up the advantages of tight control over maintenance; you'd have to figure out how to compete with the dealer, mechanic, and parts networks that represent a huge advantage of the existing players; and you'd have to figure out how to do all of that without running out of money. It's probably a twenty-year project. You up for it?
  - jay_kyburz 7y ago
    Could you not simply copy the 40 year old tractors almost exactly. Any patents should be expired.
    - andybalholm 7y ago
      Nope. If you did, I'm pretty sure the EPA would shut you down. Emissions regulations aren't quite as strict for tractors as for cars and trucks, but they are headed in the same direction. I don't think it's possible to meet emissions without computerized controls. And once you've put hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of electronics on the tractor, it's hard to resist the temptation to add DRM.
      - jay_kyburz 7y ago
        I know nothing about engines and found this article a good introduction about how computer controls help reduce emissions. https://www.pitchcare.com/news-media/diesel-engine-emissions-all-you-need-to-know.html https://www.pitchcare.com/news-media/diesel-engine-emissions...
    - jdboyd 7y ago
      I think that you would have a hard time getting EPA approval if you starting making brand new copies of legacy engine designs. A new diesel tractor engine has to meet EPA Final Tier 4/ Stage IV standards. I don't know what would stand in the way of making a knock off of the 4440 chassis and transmission that uses a new Cummins or other crate engine though.
Spooky23 7y ago
Farmers are doing the same thing, especially big midwest grain operations. The family farmers are dinosaurs that will be out of business anyway. The regulatory framework, market consolidation and finances work against them. The only way to thrive is to be really big or really small.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
In other markets, customers could just switch to a new business that was less shady. In this particular case, it doesn't seem like there are many alternative suppliers, so farmers have no other options. If they did, they would've gone with them. Buying decades-old tractors suggested they somewhat already have tried to find alternatives.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  In which markets, though? I'm having a hard time identifying a market not overrun by companies at war with their customers.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scarmig 7y ago
> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. It clearly is good for business, even if it's bad for customers and society at large. Pretending it's bad for business just encourages complacency because it suggests that the natural discipline of the market will drive the milkers out of business and encourage good business practices. But that doesn't happen, and if we want that to change there needs to be some source of external regulations to prevent it from happening.
- burlesona 7y ago
  Or competition, or the farmers pushing back as they are. Regulation is only one of many tools for policing businesses.
- Vesuvium 7y ago
  These companies are losing customers. That is never good for business. Eventually, someone will take the matter into his own hand and start making 80s-like tractors, so these companies will lose even more customers. They could do the same, but at this point they lost the trust of their customers, so it will be very hard to gain them back.
  - minikites 7y ago
    Really? Which products are getting more repairable with time? Nobody is bringing back easily repairable washing machines or easily repairable automobiles.
    - aj7 7y ago
      Very true.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      That's partly because there's so much older stock. Also, the "easily-repairable" products of the past were not nearly as cheap! The closest comparison today would be "heavy-duty", "pro" models, often built by niche manufacturers, which do advertise ease of servicing as part of the value.
milofeynman 7y ago
To add some sources to this, the tractor companies have been milking farmers by forcing them to require subscriptions or use overpriced repair techs in order to get firmware updates/repairs. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzp7ny/tractor-hacking-right-to-repair https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzp7ny/tractor-hacking-ri... https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/09/523024776/farmers-look-for-ways-to-circumvent-tractor-software-locks https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/09/52...
- WaylonKenning 7y ago
  This could be a business opportunity for another tractor manufacturer. You're not forced to buy a John Deere. Boutique tractors, hand repairable, simple parts. If people are hoarding onto 40 year old tractors, then that's a market signal that people want those type of tractors.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Yes, lets keep hoping the Market will solve everything, and that somehow, the trend of consolidation will magically reverse itself on its own, despite how ever fewer companies control each market. Wouldn't want to realize people have more power than just what they buy.
    - kapuasuite 7y ago
      Why not loosen copyrights and other restrictions that make third party services impossible or impractical?
    - DickingAround 7y ago
      The power to walk away and not buy is an almost ultimate power; and companies/everyone does respond aggressively to it. It is extreme hubris to think you can use some other power to get consumers a product that they magically want more than the one they're going to choose to spend their own money on. People value their money; they'll try and get the best value they can for it.
minikites 7y ago
>I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers Sometimes the invisible hand is invisible because it's not there. I don't understand how "fewer regulations" is supposed to address problems like these, or really any market failure state.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Perhaps if you consider "regulations" like the DMCAA, "intellectual copyright" laws, patent laws and a host of other laws and regulations that criminalize the repair or alteration of machinery or other items that have been purchased you might garner a better understanding. If farmers weren't prevented by law from repairing or altering the equipment they've purchased this problem largely would not exist.
ciconia 7y ago
> The technology itself is not the issue... In a way, it is. There's no argument today's machines (including even consumer cars) are more technologically complicated than those of 40 years ago. There's more stuff (read features) that can break, and there's more microcontrollers and embedded computers that run software (read bugs) with sometimes intricate behavior. Those 40-year old tractors are easier to maintain because everything is mechanical, so it's easier to diagnose and easier to fix.
- BatFastard 7y ago
  New product for Tesla, CyberTractor!
Vysero 7y ago
Big AGG works the same way as any other industry: make enough money to grind your competition into the dust. If that means yanking features from a product so that you can sell it at multiple price points or if it means adding self destruct mechanizes that only you can fix then so be it. Obviously, not all entities work this way (bless their hearts) but I think it's fair to say most of the successful ones do.
hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
Not long ago, it seems companies were still in the business of making tractors, or cars, or cakes, or something... Nowadays it seems every company is in the business of making money and paying bonuses for directors. The rest is an excuse.
- ianmcgowan 7y ago
  There are some robber baron's from the late 1800's that would like to have a word... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
  - hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
    The fact we label those "Robber Baron's", but not today's ones as such, speaks a lot.
- smabie 7y ago
  The teleological purpose of a company is to make money. Also, what time period are you talking about, exactly?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Perhaps at the time people did not accept this concept? I mean, if people don't see a problem with switching terminal values (feeding people) and instrumental values (making money) around, then there's no hope for humanity anymore.
aj7 7y ago
It appears that their customers are particularly defenseless, in contradistinction to other industrial markets.
darksaints 7y ago
> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. That is unless you are a government contractor...
ng7j5d9 7y ago
> Milking your customers is not good for business Maybe that's true in high-choice, low-stakes consumer situations, like "where should I eat dinner tonight?", but is it true in industries with high barriers of entry? If I decide I'm flying across the country to visit family, I'm going to buy a ticket from some airline that is in fact trying to extract as much revenue as possible from customers. And the airline business seems to be healthy. If I need to buy a new car, I'm going to be presented with models and trim packages designed specifically to extract the most money from the customer. Honda doesn't offer DX, LX and EX trim packages to save you money - they bundle things together so that even if all you care about is a sunroof, you're also paying for alloy wheels, fog lights, etc. I've never shopped for tractors, but I'd suspect that maybe the tractor companies that stay in business are in fact the ones which extract as much revenue as possible from customers.
vmchale 7y ago
> Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value. Seems like an American thing, in part.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Yes this only happens in America. In the rest of the world businesses are done strictly by folks with a good heart and no ulterior motives.
ttcbj 7y ago
I'm not convinced this is accurate. When an industry is offered a technology-based productivity improvement by a vendor, the increased profit associated with that improvement can go to three places: 1. The technology vendor itself 2. The business purchasing the technology 3. The customer When the business purchasing the technology is a commodity business (its product is undifferentiated from a large number of competitive producers, e.g. corn, soybeans), the value from the technology will generally either stay with the technology vendor or flow down to the consumer in the form of lower prices. This is why technology investment in a commodity business is often about a need to keep up with your competitors and not about actually increasing your profit. To paraphrase Charlie Munger, the productivity improvement doesn't 'stick to your ribs' if you are the farmer. I think any business sophisticated enough to build highly automated farm tractors is also going to be sophisticated enough to realize that it doesn't make sense for the farmers to own the value associated with those productivity improvements. That is the plight of a commodity producer in the supply chain, I don't think it's a moral failing of the technology vendor.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help customers be more successful (although many of them preach this, very few actually do). Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value. You're probably gonna need to wait until the current generation of MBAs retires for that. This is an educational issue to some extent. All the problems that are now coming home to roost are the result of things business schools have been preaching as gospel from the 80s to present. New ideas are going to need to come along and all those people trained in the old ways are going to need to cycle out before we see meaningful change.

sneak 7y ago

If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

wvenable 7y ago
Why was this downvoted? I just made the same comment before noticing this one already done. Competition is what solves these kind of things.
- skywhopper 7y ago
  Sure, but how do you propose to introduce competition into this market?
  - Yizahi 7y ago
    It will trickle down of course. /s
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    Declare John Deere a monopoly and break them up?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mratsim 7y ago
    I guess, convincing Elon Musk that we need tractors on Mars could stimulate some competition.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    Well the market has already been identified.
  - bjt 7y ago
    There are nearly three dozen tractor manufacturers in listed on this page: https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tractor-brands/werner-brandes https://www.ranker.com/list/best-tractor-brands/werner-brand.... Deere doesn't have a monopoly. But they do have an incredibly strong brand.
PerryCox 7y ago
Because the bigger companies forced them out of business or acquired them.
wetpaws 7y ago
Because there is no competition in the US.
- cpach 7y ago
  Does farmers in other countries somehow enjoy a plethora of tractor manufacturers to choose from?
  - davchana 7y ago
    Punjab state of India is pretty much Agriculture based, & have options of Ford, FarmTrac tractors as well as John Deere, Scot, this year models as well as from 1970s; along with local Indian Brands like Sonalika, Preet, Mahindra being equally good or better.
    - mythrwy 7y ago
      Mahindra tractors are based on the old International Harvester models I think. They sell them in the US also. They look pretty cool, simple and repairable, but I don't know if they make ones the size of commercial John Deere tractors. All the Mahnindra tractors I've looked at were small.
      - davchana 7y ago
        No,not as big. All the ones I have seen in Punjab are way smaller, almost the size of an F-150 pickup truck.
  - throwaway744678 7y ago
    In Europe, Claas, New Holland Come to mind immediately. But there are definitely others.
  - lb1lf 7y ago
    Living in a rural, Norwegian area, I can remember seeing the following brands of tractors recently - Fiat, Zetor, Case, John Deere, New Holland and Massey Ferguson. I've probably not paid attention to at least a couple more - I am not a tractor aficionado...
appleshore 7y ago
https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski
bsder 7y ago
Because manufacturing isn't software. It takes a LOT of capital to build a company capable of manufacturing something like a tractor. And nobody will buy it initially because it has an unknown reliability record. Look at the article, the farmers all make predictions about exactly how long those John-Deere tractors will last because they have roughly 40 years of experience working with them.
xnyan 7y ago
http://www.belarus-tractor.com/en/ http://www.belarus-tractor.com/en/
- jotm 7y ago
  I think parts availability might be a problem with those, as well as a general lack of knowledge about them. Otherwise, yeah MTZs are simple and easy to fix.
- f311a 7y ago
  They are pretty good for their price. The factory is still producing some models that were first designed in the 1970-1980s.
catalogia 7y ago
How many times must it be demonstrated that "market forces" is not a silver bullet to every problem before people take the hint?
- dsr_ 7y ago
  Market forces would work in this situation, if only the situation were different: - if there were an existing competitive market, that would help. - if there were a clear long-term market, that might inspire competition. But in this case, market forces caused the problem.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    > X could solve Y if only Y were Z That's a nice hypothetical, but hardly helps these farmers. The real solution is America's most hated four letter word: regulation.
  - deith 7y ago
    >Market forces would work in this situation, if only the situation were different That can be said every time the market fails to adjust itself.
- gitgudnubs 7y ago
  This problem was created by regulation. It's not clear that markets can work when governments grant monopolies, and don't restrict the ensuing vertical integration. The only solution is to grant weaker monopolies.
floren 7y ago
Mahindra is selling small and medium tractors in the US now; I don't know for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if they were much more user-serviceable than the American brands people are complaining about.
- kasey_junk 7y ago
  Note: This story is about heavy duty tractors. Lighter duty tractors are much more competitive marketplace.
  - floren 7y ago
    Yeah, Mahindra has some reasonably large tractors on their website, but the really Big Tractors you'll find from say John Deere aren't available. According to Wikipedia they're the largest tractor seller in the world, so maybe they'll expand!
lostgame 7y ago
If you don't know the answer to that - you may have wanted to think it through a little more. Manufacturing at scale is hard and expensive. John Deere has been doing it for years, creating the most reliable tractors in the world for decades and has only recently decided to bend customers over to give them the ol' in-out-in-out. A new brand would need to start from almost smaller than scratch, and have tens of million dollars of investment to even get started producing their own tractors. Then they'd have the uphill battle of a set of people who are extremely reliant on these machines to trust a new company with no track record with highly mission-critical equipment. It would be an incredibly high-risk investment, with little to no guarantee of success. Instead, as the article says - these farmers are not buying new tractors from anyone at the moment.
- okareaman 7y ago
  I like to do road trips as a hobby and I see a lot of Japanese and other Asian brand tractors in American farming areas,so there is competition
- Vesuvium 7y ago
  Is that really a problem in the country of the Silicon Valley? Actually, that might be the only thing preventing this from happening.
- tastygreenapple 7y ago
  John Deere has not been making the 'most reliable tractors in the world for decades'. Their products are categorically inferior to Japanese products like those made by Kubota, and frankly I'd trust a Mahindra to go the distance before a Deere. I think Deere was supported by blind patriotism on small/medium farms and really good post-sale support for large operations. I'm pretty sure their unit sales are falling, hardly a sign of a company that's getting its product right.
- solatic 7y ago
  In today's market, your argument doesn't hold water. A new brand would need to start from smaller than scratch? So what? People start new companies every day. It would require tens of millions of dollars of investment? So what? We keep being told how capital markets are just sloshing with cash looking for investment opportunities; that one of the reasons for rising inequality is due to the dearth of investment opportunities for the rich to use to seek returns. They'd have trouble finding customers willing to give them a shot? So what? Every startup has this problem. You solve it by differentiating yourself from your incumbent competitor. When your competitor is so hated that they're getting negative press in national news outlets and state legislatures are being pressured to pass laws, your differentiation proposition is practically written for you. I'm sure there are tractor upstarts out there trying to get funding. The question is, if they're not getting funding then why not, and why doesn't anybody know about them?
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors? Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are often forced to accept minimally acceptable deals, as long as the capital-holders are able to maintain barriers to entry (like large investments in capital). A new market entrant will likely be tempted (eventually, if not immediately) to implement DRM just like Deere has. And Deere can always drop DRM temporarily if it will let them fend off a competitive threat.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it. Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.
skywhopper 7y ago
Because it would be really expensive to start a new tractor manufacturing business; it would take years to even get prototypes up and running; you'd still have to prove that your tractors were as good as or better than these 40 year old antiques (which they probably wouldn't be at first); you'd have to be able to make something that could meet safety and efficiency standards of today while giving up the advantages of tight control over maintenance; you'd have to figure out how to compete with the dealer, mechanic, and parts networks that represent a huge advantage of the existing players; and you'd have to figure out how to do all of that without running out of money. It's probably a twenty-year project. You up for it?
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  Could you not simply copy the 40 year old tractors almost exactly. Any patents should be expired.
  - andybalholm 7y ago
    Nope. If you did, I'm pretty sure the EPA would shut you down. Emissions regulations aren't quite as strict for tractors as for cars and trucks, but they are headed in the same direction. I don't think it's possible to meet emissions without computerized controls. And once you've put hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of electronics on the tractor, it's hard to resist the temptation to add DRM.
    - jay_kyburz 7y ago
      I know nothing about engines and found this article a good introduction about how computer controls help reduce emissions. https://www.pitchcare.com/news-media/diesel-engine-emissions-all-you-need-to-know.html https://www.pitchcare.com/news-media/diesel-engine-emissions...
  - jdboyd 7y ago
    I think that you would have a hard time getting EPA approval if you starting making brand new copies of legacy engine designs. A new diesel tractor engine has to meet EPA Final Tier 4/ Stage IV standards. I don't know what would stand in the way of making a knock off of the 4440 chassis and transmission that uses a new Cummins or other crate engine though.

Spooky23 7y ago

Farmers are doing the same thing, especially big midwest grain operations. The family farmers are dinosaurs that will be out of business anyway. The regulatory framework, market consolidation and finances work against them. The only way to thrive is to be really big or really small.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

In other markets, customers could just switch to a new business that was less shady. In this particular case, it doesn't seem like there are many alternative suppliers, so farmers have no other options. If they did, they would've gone with them. Buying decades-old tractors suggested they somewhat already have tried to find alternatives.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
In which markets, though? I'm having a hard time identifying a market not overrun by companies at war with their customers.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

scarmig 7y ago

> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. It clearly is good for business, even if it's bad for customers and society at large. Pretending it's bad for business just encourages complacency because it suggests that the natural discipline of the market will drive the milkers out of business and encourage good business practices. But that doesn't happen, and if we want that to change there needs to be some source of external regulations to prevent it from happening.

burlesona 7y ago
Or competition, or the farmers pushing back as they are. Regulation is only one of many tools for policing businesses.
Vesuvium 7y ago
These companies are losing customers. That is never good for business. Eventually, someone will take the matter into his own hand and start making 80s-like tractors, so these companies will lose even more customers. They could do the same, but at this point they lost the trust of their customers, so it will be very hard to gain them back.
- minikites 7y ago
  Really? Which products are getting more repairable with time? Nobody is bringing back easily repairable washing machines or easily repairable automobiles.
  - aj7 7y ago
    Very true.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    That's partly because there's so much older stock. Also, the "easily-repairable" products of the past were not nearly as cheap! The closest comparison today would be "heavy-duty", "pro" models, often built by niche manufacturers, which do advertise ease of servicing as part of the value.

milofeynman 7y ago

To add some sources to this, the tractor companies have been milking farmers by forcing them to require subscriptions or use overpriced repair techs in order to get firmware updates/repairs. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzp7ny/tractor-hacking-right-to-repair https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kzp7ny/tractor-hacking-ri... https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/09/523024776/farmers-look-for-ways-to-circumvent-tractor-software-locks https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/09/52...

WaylonKenning 7y ago
This could be a business opportunity for another tractor manufacturer. You're not forced to buy a John Deere. Boutique tractors, hand repairable, simple parts. If people are hoarding onto 40 year old tractors, then that's a market signal that people want those type of tractors.
- deogeo 7y ago
  Yes, lets keep hoping the Market will solve everything, and that somehow, the trend of consolidation will magically reverse itself on its own, despite how ever fewer companies control each market. Wouldn't want to realize people have more power than just what they buy.
  - kapuasuite 7y ago
    Why not loosen copyrights and other restrictions that make third party services impossible or impractical?
  - DickingAround 7y ago
    The power to walk away and not buy is an almost ultimate power; and companies/everyone does respond aggressively to it. It is extreme hubris to think you can use some other power to get consumers a product that they magically want more than the one they're going to choose to spend their own money on. People value their money; they'll try and get the best value they can for it.

minikites 7y ago

>I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers Sometimes the invisible hand is invisible because it's not there. I don't understand how "fewer regulations" is supposed to address problems like these, or really any market failure state.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
Perhaps if you consider "regulations" like the DMCAA, "intellectual copyright" laws, patent laws and a host of other laws and regulations that criminalize the repair or alteration of machinery or other items that have been purchased you might garner a better understanding. If farmers weren't prevented by law from repairing or altering the equipment they've purchased this problem largely would not exist.

ciconia 7y ago

> The technology itself is not the issue... In a way, it is. There's no argument today's machines (including even consumer cars) are more technologically complicated than those of 40 years ago. There's more stuff (read features) that can break, and there's more microcontrollers and embedded computers that run software (read bugs) with sometimes intricate behavior. Those 40-year old tractors are easier to maintain because everything is mechanical, so it's easier to diagnose and easier to fix.

BatFastard 7y ago
New product for Tesla, CyberTractor!

Vysero 7y ago

Big AGG works the same way as any other industry: make enough money to grind your competition into the dust. If that means yanking features from a product so that you can sell it at multiple price points or if it means adding self destruct mechanizes that only you can fix then so be it. Obviously, not all entities work this way (bless their hearts) but I think it's fair to say most of the successful ones do.

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago

Not long ago, it seems companies were still in the business of making tractors, or cars, or cakes, or something... Nowadays it seems every company is in the business of making money and paying bonuses for directors. The rest is an excuse.

ianmcgowan 7y ago
There are some robber baron's from the late 1800's that would like to have a word... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
- hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
  The fact we label those "Robber Baron's", but not today's ones as such, speaks a lot.
smabie 7y ago
The teleological purpose of a company is to make money. Also, what time period are you talking about, exactly?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Perhaps at the time people did not accept this concept? I mean, if people don't see a problem with switching terminal values (feeding people) and instrumental values (making money) around, then there's no hope for humanity anymore.

aj7 7y ago

It appears that their customers are particularly defenseless, in contradistinction to other industrial markets.

darksaints 7y ago

> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency. That is unless you are a government contractor...

ng7j5d9 7y ago

> Milking your customers is not good for business Maybe that's true in high-choice, low-stakes consumer situations, like "where should I eat dinner tonight?", but is it true in industries with high barriers of entry? If I decide I'm flying across the country to visit family, I'm going to buy a ticket from some airline that is in fact trying to extract as much revenue as possible from customers. And the airline business seems to be healthy. If I need to buy a new car, I'm going to be presented with models and trim packages designed specifically to extract the most money from the customer. Honda doesn't offer DX, LX and EX trim packages to save you money - they bundle things together so that even if all you care about is a sunroof, you're also paying for alloy wheels, fog lights, etc. I've never shopped for tractors, but I'd suspect that maybe the tractor companies that stay in business are in fact the ones which extract as much revenue as possible from customers.

vmchale 7y ago

> Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value. Seems like an American thing, in part.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
Yes this only happens in America. In the rest of the world businesses are done strictly by folks with a good heart and no ulterior motives.

ttcbj 7y ago

I'm not convinced this is accurate. When an industry is offered a technology-based productivity improvement by a vendor, the increased profit associated with that improvement can go to three places: 1. The technology vendor itself 2. The business purchasing the technology 3. The customer When the business purchasing the technology is a commodity business (its product is undifferentiated from a large number of competitive producers, e.g. corn, soybeans), the value from the technology will generally either stay with the technology vendor or flow down to the consumer in the form of lower prices. This is why technology investment in a commodity business is often about a need to keep up with your competitors and not about actually increasing your profit. To paraphrase Charlie Munger, the productivity improvement doesn't 'stick to your ribs' if you are the farmer. I think any business sophisticated enough to build highly automated farm tractors is also going to be sophisticated enough to realize that it doesn't make sense for the farmers to own the value associated with those productivity improvements. That is the plight of a commodity producer in the supply chain, I don't think it's a moral failing of the technology vendor.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>I hope in the future there are more companies that try to align incentives with their customers, such that their business practices help customers be more successful (although many of them preach this, very few actually do). Many businesses these days seem to be geared toward making a quick buck, rather than really providing any value. You're probably gonna need to wait until the current generation of MBAs retires for that. This is an educational issue to some extent. All the problems that are now coming home to roost are the result of things business schools have been preaching as gospel from the 80s to present. New ideas are going to need to come along and all those people trained in the old ways are going to need to cycle out before we see meaningful change.