8 ms·

John Deere will just claim they never sold him a tractor, but rather signed a custom contract with him that gives him access and custody of one in return of som

by rafale 5y ago

John Deere will just claim they never sold him a tractor, but rather signed a custom contract with him that gives him access and custody of one in return of some constraints he agreed upon. If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. But you could argue it's already undermined, both by the government itself and the fact that somehow John Deere managed to achieve a monopoly in a sector critical to national security.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
OnlineGladiator 5y ago
> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. Good. Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money, workers would be paid below minimum wage, child labor would be rampant, and so on. The government is supposed to represent the people, although clearly money is the real voting power today. I'd like to see John Deere get sued into bankruptcy and laws set in place to avoid predatory techniques like this moving forward. I'm not hopeful though, and the stock market has certainly voted in favor of John Deere.
- dvt 5y ago
  > Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money... I honestly can't tell if this is meant to be satire.
  - dabber21 5y ago
    it's all about the money, no matter the cost, that's why they mostly operate in grey zones/areas, always trying to circumvent the law somehow. "What do you mean we can't dump all the waste into the river? we actually have to dispose it properly and pay for it?" and I get it they want to increase their profit. Even if a company wanted to dispose it properly he won't be able to offer competitive prices if nobody else does it
    - mcronce 5y ago
      Exactly right, and that's why we have regulations. Even in a situation where _nobody_ wants to e.g. dump all their waste in the river, if you're allowed to do it, it's essentially mandatory to do it if you want to compete.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      The government didn't force anyone to give AAA ratings to junk financial assets.
      - athrun 5y ago
        Forced no, but that's the issue with complex regulations, they all interact in subtle ways and no one can fully predict the side effects. One can argue that public agencies created bad incentives with regulations that mandated ratings agencies' assessments, and then shielded various parties from any accountability by bailing them out, thus removing the main feedback loop of the system (ie: you mess up, you fail).
        hiptobecubic 5y ago
        If you swap out "regulations" with "financial instruments" your first comment makes a lot more sense.
        mannykannot 5y ago
        One problem is, "you mess up, you fail", is not a sufficiently effective feedback mechanism - at least since the debtors' prisons were closed, but even they were not effective, either. One problem is that, even under this doctrine, the risk to the individual instigator is not commensurate with the totality of the damage done. Another is that the feedback comes too late, and delayed feedback results in instability.
      - aeternum 5y ago
        The government does however have hundreds of regulations around bond/debt ratings. This regulatory capture ensures that only a few rating companies can legally provide ratings. It's interesting to consider whether the ratings do more harm than good at this point. Would a better rating system emerge if we got rid of all the legislation around bond/debt rating?
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Bailouts aren't regulation, they're what happens when people are allowed to make messes that they aren't responsible (either through lack of ability or purchased privilege) for cleaning up.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      All regulation is ostensibly about the government stepping in and "cleaning up" private behavior that is detrimental to society. Bailouts fit that description too, so they're very similar if not in name. The government stepped in and decided that it would not let a company fail as "the market decided" it should, but instead it should change that outcome and spend money to keep these failed companies running. This is certainly not a case of the market running itself. Ignoring the massive regulations on banks and inter dependency between banking and fiscal and economic policy for a minute, you might say "oh but the market did run itself and these banks crashed and it would have been bad for society if that were to happen so the government had to step in". But that's how all regulation is justified. I think that's where the other comments are coming from anyway. But I'm not sure it's entirely fair, because I think it's not unreasonable to say some amount of regulation makes sense to prevent problems that would require more invasive and costly regulation or intervention later. In other words, heap big regulation bad not mean little regulation bad.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Why would you? That is hardly a fringe position for someone to take. "Regulate the bankers rather than bailing them out every X years" was probably the majority position around 2010 or so, depending on how you phrase the question.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    It's clearly nonsaterical, and based on the studies that show the crash of 2008 was directly attributable to the removal of regulations in the late '90s on. It's not a statement that some people don't argue with, but it doesn't seem to be a question that without Glass-Stegal removal, the 2008 crisis would have not spread as far as it did.
thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
The free market as it relates to farming is pure kayfabe. Subsidised, targeted crops* sold only to approved customers using publicly-funded roads. *or even subsidising a lack of crops
- kazen44 5y ago
  the food supply also shouldn't be a free market. People speculating on food prices/availablity (or even worse, hoarding it to influence price) is usually not taken very kindly by the population or goverment because of the results in massive social upheaval. Food is actually subsidized to an extent, because not having your basic needs met usually results in massive undermining of the power of the state.
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    Yeah, a state which doesn't subsidize food production will not survive very long. It's a practice that dates as far back as the Akkadian Empire. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/akkadian-empire/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/cha...
brokenmachine 5y ago
>If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. Haha, free market! Hilarious!
indymike 5y ago
I suspect what will happen is an exhibition of Magnuson-Moss warranty act.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johnhowardstein 5y ago
chrisbolt 5y ago
> somehow John Deere managed to achieve a monopoly Do they actually have a monopoly?
- mkoubaa 5y ago
  There are global competitors but not much in north america
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  From here[1]: > Deere & Co. is the largest farm equipment corporation in the world, selling twice as much machinery as its two next-largest competitors combined. Deere controls 53 percent of the U.S. market for large tractors and 60 percent of the U.S. market for farm combines. These sub-sectoral monopolies help explain Deere’s 18 percent share of the overall farming equipment market, the largest of any corporation in a market where the four largest operators control 45 percent of all sales. > Deere has also bought up dominant producers of heavy machinery in other sectors. It purchased the largest road construction equipment maker in the world for $5 billion in 2017, and the world’s largest timber harvesting machinery company for an undisclosed sum in 2000. > Deere did not come by this control honestly. It bought market share, used public resources to capture private profit, and engineered elaborate financial shell games to hide its profits from U.S. tax authorities. > Having negated meaningful competitive pressures, Deere does what monopolists everywhere do: It abuses its size advantage to bully competitors, customers, and workers, prioritizing shareholder interests over all others. In the US, they have a monopoly in certain markets. Note that anti-trust regulators don't use the layman definition of monopoly, either. The definition they use is a company with significant and durable market power, such as having the ability to raise prices or exclude competition[2]. [1] https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-john-deere-story/ https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-j... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
- Diesel555 5y ago
  > alleging the company’s proprietary tractor software is creating a monopoly that’s unfair to small farmers. (from the article) The monopoly is in repairing their own goods, not on the tractor market. Usually the debate for right to repair includes the argument that repairing a good should be a competitive market on its own. The definition of the market is key (is it the tractor market or the repair of John Deer tractors market). If it's the first, debatable on the monopoly. If it's the second, clearly a monopoly. I do recognize you were responding to the OP's claim that John Deer is a monopoly, not to the article's description of it. But I wanted to mention the article's description as related to right to repair.
gtvwill 5y ago
Lol that you think markets are free. Regulation exists in swathes. Free market economics is a lie, its never existed.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. The "free market" without regulation is mythic ideal that's never actually existed. Regulations are necessary to maintain healthy markets, and markets rely on states to enforce the terms that make trade and markets possible.
- badRNG 5y ago
  Free markets have a well established, well understood "tendency towards monopoly." A truly free market is one dominated by cartels [0] (not to be thought of as something unique to the drug industry.) The market forces that spur innovation like competition, absent a government that intervenes, best resolves competition through either ceaseless merging or subsumption of the competition. The domination of markets by cartels is seen in countries whose governments have either been effectively captured by industry or are otherwise incapable of intervening in the affairs of the market. Prior to antitrust legislation, cartels dominated industries at the dawn of the capitalist economy. Merging with competition allows both players to charge more without providing greater value, which is always the best option for both players. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > Free markets have a well established, well understood "tendency towards monopoly." There is actually a lot of debate about what causes this. The argument on one side is, of course companies unconstrained by laws would collude with each other to fix prices etc. The argument on the other side is, as soon as they start doing this it becomes profitable for someone else to enter the market. Is the cartel charging $40 for something that should cost $20? Go around to all the customers and tell them you'll sell to them for $25 tomorrow if they agree to a long-term contract today to buy from you at that price. Then you have enough guaranteed customers to pay off your new factory, so you can build it without being bankrupted by the incumbents slashing prices. And because anyone can do this, the incumbents don't collude to charge $40 to begin with because they know they would invite it. Under this theory, monopolies form because of regulatory capture. The large incumbents don't want to compete in a commodity market, so they pay off the government to erect barriers to entry. Then once no one new can enter the market, they can buy each other or collude or use conscious parallelism without risk of new competitors. It seems to me that it's kind of both. Without the second one, companies would rarely if ever get big enough that no one could compete with them. But once they are, somebody's got to break them up. Most importantly, we need to fix the regulatory environment so that it facilitates rather than impairs competition, or it will just happen again.
FpUser 5y ago
Government can do the other thing. It can "stop interfering" and refuse to protect those monopolists. Make it so that once they fail co conduct business in fair (however that defined) manner deny them rights to chase others in court.
jlcoff 5y ago
> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. There is no free market in the US. The US economy is cronyism where all the elites play golf together / marry among themselves, trying to only pass the minimum regalation to perpetuate the system / silence the People and where laws is actually to maximize their own interest. I'm 100% sure a federal Right-to-repair bill will actually strengthen the actual system (ie. bill does the exact opposite of its name)
- weq 5y ago
  THIS
  - diordiderot 5y ago
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market If "custom contracts that give access and custody but have constraints" are the sort of thing the free market enables, it should be undermined. People are supposed to own things. This "you own nothing" bullshit needs to end.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. The market isn't free if the government enforces private contracts. Once we stop humoring those who pretend we have anything resembling a free market we can begin to debate what other forms of government intervention in markets are desirable.
siruncledrew 5y ago
Pretty soon there will only be some kind of Equipment as a Service subscription model.

by rafale 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

OnlineGladiator 5y ago

> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. Good. Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money, workers would be paid below minimum wage, child labor would be rampant, and so on. The government is supposed to represent the people, although clearly money is the real voting power today. I'd like to see John Deere get sued into bankruptcy and laws set in place to avoid predatory techniques like this moving forward. I'm not hopeful though, and the stock market has certainly voted in favor of John Deere.

dvt 5y ago
> Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money... I honestly can't tell if this is meant to be satire.
- dabber21 5y ago
  it's all about the money, no matter the cost, that's why they mostly operate in grey zones/areas, always trying to circumvent the law somehow. "What do you mean we can't dump all the waste into the river? we actually have to dispose it properly and pay for it?" and I get it they want to increase their profit. Even if a company wanted to dispose it properly he won't be able to offer competitive prices if nobody else does it
  - mcronce 5y ago
    Exactly right, and that's why we have regulations. Even in a situation where _nobody_ wants to e.g. dump all their waste in the river, if you're allowed to do it, it's essentially mandatory to do it if you want to compete.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    The government didn't force anyone to give AAA ratings to junk financial assets.
    - athrun 5y ago
      Forced no, but that's the issue with complex regulations, they all interact in subtle ways and no one can fully predict the side effects. One can argue that public agencies created bad incentives with regulations that mandated ratings agencies' assessments, and then shielded various parties from any accountability by bailing them out, thus removing the main feedback loop of the system (ie: you mess up, you fail).
      - hiptobecubic 5y ago
        If you swap out "regulations" with "financial instruments" your first comment makes a lot more sense.
      - mannykannot 5y ago
        One problem is, "you mess up, you fail", is not a sufficiently effective feedback mechanism - at least since the debtors' prisons were closed, but even they were not effective, either. One problem is that, even under this doctrine, the risk to the individual instigator is not commensurate with the totality of the damage done. Another is that the feedback comes too late, and delayed feedback results in instability.
    - aeternum 5y ago
      The government does however have hundreds of regulations around bond/debt ratings. This regulatory capture ensures that only a few rating companies can legally provide ratings. It's interesting to consider whether the ratings do more harm than good at this point. Would a better rating system emerge if we got rid of all the legislation around bond/debt rating?
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Bailouts aren't regulation, they're what happens when people are allowed to make messes that they aren't responsible (either through lack of ability or purchased privilege) for cleaning up.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    All regulation is ostensibly about the government stepping in and "cleaning up" private behavior that is detrimental to society. Bailouts fit that description too, so they're very similar if not in name. The government stepped in and decided that it would not let a company fail as "the market decided" it should, but instead it should change that outcome and spend money to keep these failed companies running. This is certainly not a case of the market running itself. Ignoring the massive regulations on banks and inter dependency between banking and fiscal and economic policy for a minute, you might say "oh but the market did run itself and these banks crashed and it would have been bad for society if that were to happen so the government had to step in". But that's how all regulation is justified. I think that's where the other comments are coming from anyway. But I'm not sure it's entirely fair, because I think it's not unreasonable to say some amount of regulation makes sense to prevent problems that would require more invasive and costly regulation or intervention later. In other words, heap big regulation bad not mean little regulation bad.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Why would you? That is hardly a fringe position for someone to take. "Regulate the bankers rather than bailing them out every X years" was probably the majority position around 2010 or so, depending on how you phrase the question.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  It's clearly nonsaterical, and based on the studies that show the crash of 2008 was directly attributable to the removal of regulations in the late '90s on. It's not a statement that some people don't argue with, but it doesn't seem to be a question that without Glass-Stegal removal, the 2008 crisis would have not spread as far as it did.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago

The free market as it relates to farming is pure kayfabe. Subsidised, targeted crops* sold only to approved customers using publicly-funded roads. *or even subsidising a lack of crops

kazen44 5y ago
the food supply also shouldn't be a free market. People speculating on food prices/availablity (or even worse, hoarding it to influence price) is usually not taken very kindly by the population or goverment because of the results in massive social upheaval. Food is actually subsidized to an extent, because not having your basic needs met usually results in massive undermining of the power of the state.
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  Yeah, a state which doesn't subsidize food production will not survive very long. It's a practice that dates as far back as the Akkadian Empire. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/akkadian-empire/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/cha...

brokenmachine 5y ago

>If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. Haha, free market! Hilarious!

indymike 5y ago

I suspect what will happen is an exhibition of Magnuson-Moss warranty act.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

johnhowardstein 5y ago

chrisbolt 5y ago

> somehow John Deere managed to achieve a monopoly Do they actually have a monopoly?

mkoubaa 5y ago
There are global competitors but not much in north america
heavyset_go 5y ago
From here[1]: > Deere & Co. is the largest farm equipment corporation in the world, selling twice as much machinery as its two next-largest competitors combined. Deere controls 53 percent of the U.S. market for large tractors and 60 percent of the U.S. market for farm combines. These sub-sectoral monopolies help explain Deere’s 18 percent share of the overall farming equipment market, the largest of any corporation in a market where the four largest operators control 45 percent of all sales. > Deere has also bought up dominant producers of heavy machinery in other sectors. It purchased the largest road construction equipment maker in the world for $5 billion in 2017, and the world’s largest timber harvesting machinery company for an undisclosed sum in 2000. > Deere did not come by this control honestly. It bought market share, used public resources to capture private profit, and engineered elaborate financial shell games to hide its profits from U.S. tax authorities. > Having negated meaningful competitive pressures, Deere does what monopolists everywhere do: It abuses its size advantage to bully competitors, customers, and workers, prioritizing shareholder interests over all others. In the US, they have a monopoly in certain markets. Note that anti-trust regulators don't use the layman definition of monopoly, either. The definition they use is a company with significant and durable market power, such as having the ability to raise prices or exclude competition[2]. [1] https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-john-deere-story/ https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-j... [2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Diesel555 5y ago
> alleging the company’s proprietary tractor software is creating a monopoly that’s unfair to small farmers. (from the article) The monopoly is in repairing their own goods, not on the tractor market. Usually the debate for right to repair includes the argument that repairing a good should be a competitive market on its own. The definition of the market is key (is it the tractor market or the repair of John Deer tractors market). If it's the first, debatable on the monopoly. If it's the second, clearly a monopoly. I do recognize you were responding to the OP's claim that John Deer is a monopoly, not to the article's description of it. But I wanted to mention the article's description as related to right to repair.

gtvwill 5y ago

Lol that you think markets are free. Regulation exists in swathes. Free market economics is a lie, its never existed.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. The "free market" without regulation is mythic ideal that's never actually existed. Regulations are necessary to maintain healthy markets, and markets rely on states to enforce the terms that make trade and markets possible.

badRNG 5y ago
Free markets have a well established, well understood "tendency towards monopoly." A truly free market is one dominated by cartels [0] (not to be thought of as something unique to the drug industry.) The market forces that spur innovation like competition, absent a government that intervenes, best resolves competition through either ceaseless merging or subsumption of the competition. The domination of markets by cartels is seen in countries whose governments have either been effectively captured by industry or are otherwise incapable of intervening in the affairs of the market. Prior to antitrust legislation, cartels dominated industries at the dawn of the capitalist economy. Merging with competition allows both players to charge more without providing greater value, which is always the best option for both players. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Free markets have a well established, well understood "tendency towards monopoly." There is actually a lot of debate about what causes this. The argument on one side is, of course companies unconstrained by laws would collude with each other to fix prices etc. The argument on the other side is, as soon as they start doing this it becomes profitable for someone else to enter the market. Is the cartel charging $40 for something that should cost $20? Go around to all the customers and tell them you'll sell to them for $25 tomorrow if they agree to a long-term contract today to buy from you at that price. Then you have enough guaranteed customers to pay off your new factory, so you can build it without being bankrupted by the incumbents slashing prices. And because anyone can do this, the incumbents don't collude to charge $40 to begin with because they know they would invite it. Under this theory, monopolies form because of regulatory capture. The large incumbents don't want to compete in a commodity market, so they pay off the government to erect barriers to entry. Then once no one new can enter the market, they can buy each other or collude or use conscious parallelism without risk of new competitors. It seems to me that it's kind of both. Without the second one, companies would rarely if ever get big enough that no one could compete with them. But once they are, somebody's got to break them up. Most importantly, we need to fix the regulatory environment so that it facilitates rather than impairs competition, or it will just happen again.

FpUser 5y ago

Government can do the other thing. It can "stop interfering" and refuse to protect those monopolists. Make it so that once they fail co conduct business in fair (however that defined) manner deny them rights to chase others in court.

jlcoff 5y ago

> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. There is no free market in the US. The US economy is cronyism where all the elites play golf together / marry among themselves, trying to only pass the minimum regalation to perpetuate the system / silence the People and where laws is actually to maximize their own interest. I'm 100% sure a federal Right-to-repair bill will actually strengthen the actual system (ie. bill does the exact opposite of its name)

weq 5y ago
THIS
- diordiderot 5y ago

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market If "custom contracts that give access and custody but have constraints" are the sort of thing the free market enables, it should be undermined. People are supposed to own things. This "you own nothing" bullshit needs to end.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

>If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. The market isn't free if the government enforces private contracts. Once we stop humoring those who pretend we have anything resembling a free market we can begin to debate what other forms of government intervention in markets are desirable.

siruncledrew 5y ago

Pretty soon there will only be some kind of Equipment as a Service subscription model.