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In the end market should take of this. If repairability is a major concern for the farmers they would just eventually buy the tractors with less of a high-tech
by Glavnokoman 5y ago
In the end market should take of this. If repairability is a major concern for the farmers they would just eventually buy the tractors with less of a high-tech bells and whistles. And also cheaper I guess.
- zwirbl 5y agoIt should, but will it? The magically all-mighty market does not fix all problems without intervention
- Glavnokoman 5y agoIt probably won't. But that does not dismiss that it should :).
- nspattak 5y agoThis is an oversimplification that overlooks at automotive engineering history (if not history in general). Are there 2T engines or Wankel engines available for people to choose?
- WalterBright 5y agoHeavy regulation of the automotive industry is why I can't buy a new Dodge Coronet.
- patrickmclaren 5y agoCan you expand on how this would come to be, in practice?
- apples_oranges 5y agoWell, it's not that hard to imagine, is it? Someone founds a company that produces tractors but they are simpler, cheaper and can be repaired. If that's what customers want, they _will_ gain market share. If not, then the demand isn't there.
- xxs 5y ago...and of course, there will be zero patents infringed that would cause no injunction.
- wccrawford 5y agoThen the next argument would be that John Deere is destroying competition by artificially selling their tractors below cost, making it impossible to compete with them. Because yeah, that's what you do when you recoup the rest of the cost in the subscription/maintenance. It's the same model that game consoles use to keep the hardware costs low. They make it up in the game and peripheral licensing fees. If JD dropped the subscriptions, but instead charged full price for the tractors, people would just scream about the prices instead. I actually agree that farmers should legally be able to repair their own tractors, or have anyone else do it. But gaining that "right" back wouldn't actually fix their complaints, just shift them.
- petewailes 5y agoI'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't live in a farming community...
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoPleasse stop rehashing free market platitudes without any thinking. Look at the actual manufacturers, realise that noone is producing simple tractors any more, where are they going to come from?
- vbezhenar 5y agoBelarus produces simple and cheap tractors since forever, they are popular in Russia and other CIS countries. Just import them.
- petewailes 5y agoAn old Belarus 420A is a simple tractor. Even a modern 742 or 1220 isn't that complex. But it's simply not as capable as a Fastrac 4 or 8 series, or a Valtra N or C series, or a Deere 6, 7 or 8 series for example. They're just not in the same league in terms of what they can do with tool management, fitness for specific tasks or tool interop. As a single example, there's nothing that Belarus make that I'd want to use for buckraking a heap of any real size. They don't have a JCB 435S equivalent, or a heavier Fendt or Claas. They're great tools, but you're not going to get the hectares per hour of sowing or harvest or the movement of tonnage of the modern competitors.
- cowl 5y agoBut isn't this self-defeating reasoning? on one side you say things need to be simpler to repair, on the other you say simple technology doesn't cover your needs. A lot of these advanced features are so complex and so intertwined to each other that you really want only a qualified person to be able to "try to fix it"
- sequesteredmar 5y agoShould there not be the option to break whatever you own however you want to? People who know they can fix X should be allowed to fix X