6 ms·

Deere’s position on right to repair is heartbreaking to me. I paid for books (and beer) in college as a truck driver and mechanic for a custom harvest operatio

by mulmen 4y ago

Deere’s position on right to repair is heartbreaking to me. I paid for books (and beer) in college as a truck driver and mechanic for a custom harvest operation. We ran Deere 6602 combines from the 1970s, in the early 2000s. Deere’s tagline was “nothing runs like a Deere” but in my experience it was more like “nothing can be made to run like a Deere”. We spent a lot of time on maintenance but very little on repairs. We trusted those machines and they almost always did what we needed. Deere had good parts support locally but we did all the labor ourselves. For us and the farmers we served it would have been economically impossible to hire a Deere tech to do the work. Alienating these equipment operators is a disgrace for a once great brand.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Another MBA'ed company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon.
  - throwaway20222 4y ago
    I sometimes wonder if companies should/could be forced to publish a “lifetime cost” of all of their products, much like we do energy ratings for appliances. Something that would show all of the expenses over the lifetime of the products, including estimated maintenance and lifespan before replacement so people have a better idea of the true cost of the purchase. I am confident the reporting would likely be captured by the manufacturers anyway and there would be a lot of arbitrary inputs into the reports, but something to fight the short term profit taking you describe.
    - ddulaney 4y ago
      Hard to imagine this working, even in a perfect world. Set aside regulatory capture and corruption and politicking and pretend that everybody does a genuine best-effort attempt to be honest. It's extremely hard to know ahead of time which products will ultimately be reliable and which will be flaky. Most flaky components weren't designed with that in mind -- there are some exceptions, but maintenance headaches are normally a mistake by the manufacturer. And even setting that aside, a big part of "cheap to maintain" is how many units you ship: part of why it's cheap to maintain a Civic or a Corolla is because they made millions of them, parts are everywhere, and every shop knows how to deal with them. But knowing up front if your product is going to be a hit or a flop is just not generally possible, even though that has a huge impact on maintenance costs. Even in a world of angels, I don't know that this idea would work in general. Maybe if it was specific to some industries where the costs are easier to estimate?
      - robin_reala 4y ago
        It’s already the case that you have to do this for certain groups of products in France under the AGEC laws. Take for example this dishwasher: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/p/diskad-lave-vaisselle-encastrable-ikea-700-40475416/ https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/p/diskad-lave-vaisselle-encastrab... . It has an “indice de répairabilité” of 7.4, generated from a bunch of different factors such as ease of disassembly, availability of spare parts and documentation, and the ability to factory-reset it. The data sheet listing those factors for this model is here: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/files/pdf/4f/fd/4ffd4fd2/indice-de-reparabilite-lave-vaisselle-diskad.pdf https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/files/pdf/4f/fd/4ffd4fd2/indice-d...
        rand846633 4y ago
        Do you have any personal experience or opinion if this law/metric is helpful for consumers in praxis?
        robin_reala 4y ago
        No: it’s fairly recent (and in fact only a part of the wider set of AGEC requirements that include labelling for recyclability, recycled status, consumption of rare earths and precious metals, origin of textiles, etc.) And then there’s the EU-wide Digital Product Passport[1] coming in the next few years that’ll up the game again. We’ll see over the coming years what customer perception is like. [1] A report on this at https://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/files/cisl_digital_products_passport_report_v6.pdf https://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/files/cisl_digital_pro...
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    The damage is already done. MBAs had no long-term vision, so in each company they infested, they made poor strategic decisions such as moving manufacturing overseas, which then forced other companies to move their manufacturing overseas. The countries they chose have zero respect for intellectual property. So now what's left are zombie companies milking their cash cows dry as international competitors arise and take their market share.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      Solid argument. No chief executive with an MBA has ever contributed positively to the company they run. ::eyeroll::
      - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
        Well cant botch it that hard, the pals from ivy that are now in government, wont bail you out. So, guess we will never know the good from the bad >> eyescroll <<
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        well arguments like these are of course all about the statistical tendency because outliers are, by definition, not that important. But I notice you didn't actually give an example of an outlier MBA that did not behave this way and contributed positively to the company they ran?
        listenallyall 4y ago
        I assumed in 2023 we're beyond simply applying negative stereotypes to people based on perceptions of a group, but apparently you aren't
        hutzlibu 4y ago
        Erm no, if there is a group of hooligans, than I will still assume that they are up for violence and if there is a bunch of MBAs taking over companies, I will assume that they are there for short term profit.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon. I can't see how, the same people pushing for WTO/NAFTA are those who profited immensely from outsourcing in the 80s-90s are now the same one who likely stand to benefit the most from either supply chain disruptions, and war. The truth is that JD is just another monopoly ([0] over 50% market share of tractors) that represents the underlying aspects of crony capitalism writ large. This is just another example how the mantra that 'tech should be in everything' needs to die, and how pervasive these horrible practices can become for the small sector of humans (less than 1% of the Human population feeds the other 99%) who grow the food everyone eats. MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: quick profits are the way to get fat bonuses and stock options in order to bail out when even the slightest hint of head-winds occur. This is just a symptom, not the cause and a reason why US manufacturing will likely take some time before it can get off it's addiction to the garbage made in China. 0: https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-john-deere-story/# https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-j...
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: Also reflected in what is most rewarded by consumers: lower prices. No business was ever going to thrive selling US manufactured goods at a significant price premium compared to non US manufactured goods.
      - i_am_proteus 4y ago
        Hoss, ask yer mechanic if his wrenches are Snap On or Harbor Freight.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        >a significant price premium Obviously paying the premium for Snap-On over harbor freight is worth it, for some people. Harbor Freight still makes the most sense for a huge portion of the market, reducing the market for US made tools. Whatever the result, it will be visible in what succeeds in the market over the long term.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    What's the flip side? VC's? You know, the people who won't even start a company unless there's a way to try to monopolize the position, buy up all supply with seed money, and then extract ALL the possible rent from the market segment? "Long-term" thinking with precisely the same anti-competitive, anti-consumer end result.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- etempleton 4y ago
  First you have the product people. They make the product that people like and build a strong company off of a good product. After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer. Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever. Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave. The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.
boltzmann-brain 4y ago
Here's my analysis of what's going to happen if this goes through. First, quote from the MOU [1]: > AFBF agrees to encourage state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize the commitments made in this MOU and refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state "Right to Repair" legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this MOU. In the event any state or federal legislation or regulation relating to issues covered by this MOU and/or "Right to Repair" is enacted, each of AFBF and Manufacturer reserve the right, upon fifteen (15) days written notice, to withdraw from this MOU. It might play out like this: 1. Deere starts a half hearted parts process. They will provide some parts, there will be year long delays in roll out, it will be annoying to use, documentation will be made incomplete on purpose by leaving out random pages or drawings and there will be no way to get them to fix it. 2. Farmers are now locked into using this service for their existing deere equipment because anything else will bankrupt them. Those machines will remain in service for a good 10-20 years which is an important time frame, because 3. Deere will spin off a subsidiary or buy a competitor which will sell what used to be Deere branded technology, "under license". This "new company" will keep all the anti-repair technology in place. New products will primarily come from this company going forward, and the products will be priced so that actual Deere-branded products are not competitive any more, especially second-hand ones. 4. It is now 2028. The MOU cannot be broken because farmers still need parts for their "old" Deere products. Deere anti right to repair lives on in the artificial competitor, which now retains 90% market ownership. Farmers cannot argue for right to repair any more. They've been sold out. Everything has gone back to normal for at least the next 25 years, as far as Deere is concerned. [1] https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago
  Wow, this just heaps more disgrace on Deere. Despicable.
  - boltzmann-brain 4y ago
    It's almost certainly what is going to happen. They're just buying time (a LOT OF time) in order to regroup and come back in force and once again take away our right to repair or own our things, this time in a new, more permanent method, which is now also protected legislatively.
dggma 4y ago
The right to repair is one of those things that shouldn’t be controversial but somehow is.
- danuker 4y ago
  It's not controversial. Everyone knows the bill NY passed was a joke, from the voters to the legislature to the lobbyists.
  - ncphil 4y ago
    I think Louis Rossmann said they'd worked on that bill for over 7 years, desperately trying to keep it from being compromised into oblivion. Then, on the eve of passage, the legislature amended away everything that mattered in it by adding an exception big enough to drive a... John Deere tractor through, and the governor (who was part of the process) quickly signed it into law. https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k . Keywords from the video: "Nicholas Cage Lord of War Supply Chain", "malicious compliance".
    - danuker 4y ago
      Indeed. The game is rigged. The US became an oligarchy. Lobbyists get their way at the expense of everyone. I don't see much recourse, other than substantial and continued boycotts for all companies pushing this garbage. I am not buying mobile phones anymore, since my last one broke due to overheating, and in spite of the warranty terms not forbidding custom ROMs they did not honor it.
avidphantasm 4y ago
When I worked on a vegetable farm in Vermont one summer, it was instantly apparent that the farmer spent a lot of time (at least 25%?) maintaining and fixing tractors. It’s a shame that rampant financialization and rent seeking has yet again made farmers’ lives more difficult.
mattpallissard 4y ago
Unless it's red leave it in the shed.

by mulmen 4y ago

29athrowaway 4y ago

Another MBA'ed company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

rjzzleep 4y ago
Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon.
- throwaway20222 4y ago
  I sometimes wonder if companies should/could be forced to publish a “lifetime cost” of all of their products, much like we do energy ratings for appliances. Something that would show all of the expenses over the lifetime of the products, including estimated maintenance and lifespan before replacement so people have a better idea of the true cost of the purchase. I am confident the reporting would likely be captured by the manufacturers anyway and there would be a lot of arbitrary inputs into the reports, but something to fight the short term profit taking you describe.
  - ddulaney 4y ago
    Hard to imagine this working, even in a perfect world. Set aside regulatory capture and corruption and politicking and pretend that everybody does a genuine best-effort attempt to be honest. It's extremely hard to know ahead of time which products will ultimately be reliable and which will be flaky. Most flaky components weren't designed with that in mind -- there are some exceptions, but maintenance headaches are normally a mistake by the manufacturer. And even setting that aside, a big part of "cheap to maintain" is how many units you ship: part of why it's cheap to maintain a Civic or a Corolla is because they made millions of them, parts are everywhere, and every shop knows how to deal with them. But knowing up front if your product is going to be a hit or a flop is just not generally possible, even though that has a huge impact on maintenance costs. Even in a world of angels, I don't know that this idea would work in general. Maybe if it was specific to some industries where the costs are easier to estimate?
    - robin_reala 4y ago
      It’s already the case that you have to do this for certain groups of products in France under the AGEC laws. Take for example this dishwasher: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/p/diskad-lave-vaisselle-encastrable-ikea-700-40475416/ https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/p/diskad-lave-vaisselle-encastrab... . It has an “indice de répairabilité” of 7.4, generated from a bunch of different factors such as ease of disassembly, availability of spare parts and documentation, and the ability to factory-reset it. The data sheet listing those factors for this model is here: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/files/pdf/4f/fd/4ffd4fd2/indice-de-reparabilite-lave-vaisselle-diskad.pdf https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/files/pdf/4f/fd/4ffd4fd2/indice-d...
      - rand846633 4y ago
        Do you have any personal experience or opinion if this law/metric is helpful for consumers in praxis?
        robin_reala 4y ago
        No: it’s fairly recent (and in fact only a part of the wider set of AGEC requirements that include labelling for recyclability, recycled status, consumption of rare earths and precious metals, origin of textiles, etc.) And then there’s the EU-wide Digital Product Passport[1] coming in the next few years that’ll up the game again. We’ll see over the coming years what customer perception is like. [1] A report on this at https://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/files/cisl_digital_products_passport_report_v6.pdf https://www.corporateleadersgroup.com/files/cisl_digital_pro...
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  The damage is already done. MBAs had no long-term vision, so in each company they infested, they made poor strategic decisions such as moving manufacturing overseas, which then forced other companies to move their manufacturing overseas. The countries they chose have zero respect for intellectual property. So now what's left are zombie companies milking their cash cows dry as international competitors arise and take their market share.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    Solid argument. No chief executive with an MBA has ever contributed positively to the company they run. ::eyeroll::
    - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
      Well cant botch it that hard, the pals from ivy that are now in government, wont bail you out. So, guess we will never know the good from the bad >> eyescroll <<
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      well arguments like these are of course all about the statistical tendency because outliers are, by definition, not that important. But I notice you didn't actually give an example of an outlier MBA that did not behave this way and contributed positively to the company they ran?
      - listenallyall 4y ago
        I assumed in 2023 we're beyond simply applying negative stereotypes to people based on perceptions of a group, but apparently you aren't
        hutzlibu 4y ago
        Erm no, if there is a group of hooligans, than I will still assume that they are up for violence and if there is a bunch of MBAs taking over companies, I will assume that they are there for short term profit.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon. I can't see how, the same people pushing for WTO/NAFTA are those who profited immensely from outsourcing in the 80s-90s are now the same one who likely stand to benefit the most from either supply chain disruptions, and war. The truth is that JD is just another monopoly ([0] over 50% market share of tractors) that represents the underlying aspects of crony capitalism writ large. This is just another example how the mantra that 'tech should be in everything' needs to die, and how pervasive these horrible practices can become for the small sector of humans (less than 1% of the Human population feeds the other 99%) who grow the food everyone eats. MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: quick profits are the way to get fat bonuses and stock options in order to bail out when even the slightest hint of head-winds occur. This is just a symptom, not the cause and a reason why US manufacturing will likely take some time before it can get off it's addiction to the garbage made in China. 0: https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-john-deere-story/# https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/cheat-to-win-the-j...
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: Also reflected in what is most rewarded by consumers: lower prices. No business was ever going to thrive selling US manufactured goods at a significant price premium compared to non US manufactured goods.
    - i_am_proteus 4y ago
      Hoss, ask yer mechanic if his wrenches are Snap On or Harbor Freight.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        >a significant price premium Obviously paying the premium for Snap-On over harbor freight is worth it, for some people. Harbor Freight still makes the most sense for a huge portion of the market, reducing the market for US made tools. Whatever the result, it will be visible in what succeeds in the market over the long term.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  What's the flip side? VC's? You know, the people who won't even start a company unless there's a way to try to monopolize the position, buy up all supply with seed money, and then extract ALL the possible rent from the market segment? "Long-term" thinking with precisely the same anti-competitive, anti-consumer end result.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
etempleton 4y ago
First you have the product people. They make the product that people like and build a strong company off of a good product. After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer. Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever. Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave. The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago

Here's my analysis of what's going to happen if this goes through. First, quote from the MOU [1]: > AFBF agrees to encourage state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize the commitments made in this MOU and refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state "Right to Repair" legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this MOU. In the event any state or federal legislation or regulation relating to issues covered by this MOU and/or "Right to Repair" is enacted, each of AFBF and Manufacturer reserve the right, upon fifteen (15) days written notice, to withdraw from this MOU. It might play out like this: 1. Deere starts a half hearted parts process. They will provide some parts, there will be year long delays in roll out, it will be annoying to use, documentation will be made incomplete on purpose by leaving out random pages or drawings and there will be no way to get them to fix it. 2. Farmers are now locked into using this service for their existing deere equipment because anything else will bankrupt them. Those machines will remain in service for a good 10-20 years which is an important time frame, because 3. Deere will spin off a subsidiary or buy a competitor which will sell what used to be Deere branded technology, "under license". This "new company" will keep all the anti-repair technology in place. New products will primarily come from this company going forward, and the products will be priced so that actual Deere-branded products are not competitive any more, especially second-hand ones. 4. It is now 2028. The MOU cannot be broken because farmers still need parts for their "old" Deere products. Deere anti right to repair lives on in the artificial competitor, which now retains 90% market ownership. Farmers cannot argue for right to repair any more. They've been sold out. Everything has gone back to normal for at least the next 25 years, as far as Deere is concerned. [1] https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf

BuckyBeaver 4y ago
Wow, this just heaps more disgrace on Deere. Despicable.
- boltzmann-brain 4y ago
  It's almost certainly what is going to happen. They're just buying time (a LOT OF time) in order to regroup and come back in force and once again take away our right to repair or own our things, this time in a new, more permanent method, which is now also protected legislatively.

dggma 4y ago

The right to repair is one of those things that shouldn’t be controversial but somehow is.

danuker 4y ago
It's not controversial. Everyone knows the bill NY passed was a joke, from the voters to the legislature to the lobbyists.
- ncphil 4y ago
  I think Louis Rossmann said they'd worked on that bill for over 7 years, desperately trying to keep it from being compromised into oblivion. Then, on the eve of passage, the legislature amended away everything that mattered in it by adding an exception big enough to drive a... John Deere tractor through, and the governor (who was part of the process) quickly signed it into law. https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k . Keywords from the video: "Nicholas Cage Lord of War Supply Chain", "malicious compliance".
  - danuker 4y ago
    Indeed. The game is rigged. The US became an oligarchy. Lobbyists get their way at the expense of everyone. I don't see much recourse, other than substantial and continued boycotts for all companies pushing this garbage. I am not buying mobile phones anymore, since my last one broke due to overheating, and in spite of the warranty terms not forbidding custom ROMs they did not honor it.

avidphantasm 4y ago

When I worked on a vegetable farm in Vermont one summer, it was instantly apparent that the farmer spent a lot of time (at least 25%?) maintaining and fixing tractors. It’s a shame that rampant financialization and rent seeking has yet again made farmers’ lives more difficult.

mattpallissard 4y ago

Unless it's red leave it in the shed.