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Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? Is there no tractor manufacturer who could step up and advertise their lower TCO with their open re

Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? Is there no tractor manufacturer who could step up and advertise their lower TCO with their open repair policy? And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung up to compete on that basis?

scotty79 3y ago
> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? Is Contrary to popular belief markets don't solve everything. They are just price and exploit discovery mechanisms. Apparently taking away consumers ability to repair is something that can be exploited and giving them right to repair is something that almost cannot.
jacksnipe 3y ago
It’s hard to imagine a more mature industry than farming capital. It’s not exactly going to be easy to even compete on quality, let alone disrupt.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  This is how hard that industry is to disrupt: I needed a mid-sized utility tractor in the 40-60 hp range with a loader. I briefly visited the local Mahindra dealer, decided their offerings looked both expensive and flimsy, and then spent a month on FB marketplace until I found a 1974 Ford Industrial in good working order.
naikrovek 3y ago
there are reasons for government, and things like this are one of them. left alone, companies will always prioritize short-term goals over long-term goals. budgets in the short-term are negatively impacted by this decision for all/most tractor makers, which is why they resisted this change. no one can accurately predict market forces that far out, so short-term concerns, being much easier to predict, win out.
valine 3y ago
One of the main benefits of right to repair is to keep tractors in service for longer. Your solution is for farmers to throw away their tractors and buy new ones? What’s to stop the new manufacturer from implementing a similar policy once the farmers are locked in with an expensive purchase?
- mhb 3y ago
  A contract?
  - valine 3y ago
    How about a law? Then every farmer doesn’t have to negotiate repair terms.
    - mhb 3y ago
      The question being answered was "What’s to stop the new manufacturer from implementing a similar policy once the farmers are locked in with an expensive purchase?". You can tell that because the question was immediately above the reply. That is in the context of a business starting to sell farm equipment that can be repaired. Threads, go figure.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    So that every corporation can have "you have no rights and waive any rights you think you have" standard legal boilerplate in their documents? No thanks.
scottyah 3y ago
It probably would happen, it'd just take more time. The best minds of my generation are trying to become famous on tiktok, resting and vesting at Big Tech, or writing day trading algorithms. Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying to optimize.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying to optimize. That attitude is why John Deere and similar have the anticustomer policies that they do.
  - mcguire 3y ago
    That, as they say, is the purpose of any corporation. Their responsibility is to their shareholders.
    - wavefunction 3y ago
      The purpose of incorporation is to encourage business speculation by offering a mechanism to limit personal liability of the owners. That's the only purpose a corporation has and they definitely don't have responsibilities themselves as they are only a legal fiction. The employees of a corporation have responsibilities.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      No. This is a mischaracterization of both the purpose of corporations and the responsibility corporations have to their shareholders. The purpose of a corporation is not "profit above all else". Corporations are also supposed to operate in a manner that benefits society. We used to actually strip corporations of their charters when they failed their social responsibility. The responsibility to shareholders depends a lot on the charter, but in general, it's to run the company in a profitable and sustainable manner. Again, it's not "make the most money possible no matter what". If that were the case, then there would be no corporations engaging in anything but the highest-margin sorts of business. So there'd be no low-margin stuff like toilet paper.
  - 3y ago
neogodless 3y ago
The top comment on the thread 15 days ago prompted a lot of discussion of this point, so it may interest you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533738
astockwell 3y ago
Barrier to entry/market penetration meets the 10+ year amortization schedules of six/seven/eight figure machinery.
- scythe 3y ago
  I believe it could also be argued that some fraction of the value created by repairability is in fact an externality. Your standard rational pricing model uses exponential discounting. A farmer does not necessarily expect to be in business for the entire useful lifetime of a tractor. But the resold tractor provides potentially more value to the economy if it is easier to fix. I.e. the initial buyer's discount rate should be higher than the overall society's discount rate, because they get most of the value from using the tractor, not its resale, but society gets more value if the tractor can be used longer by other farmers. This mostly applies to tractors that, today, are too old to violate R2R. But someday, the tractors sold today will be that old.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  +1 For actually attempting to answer the poster's question. Seeing five replies to the effect of "it just can't" was frustrating.
SkyBelow 3y ago
Regulatory capture has distorted the market, making it harder for competitors to join. How much of the existing issue preventing sharing of information, tools, and technology to repair the current equipment is supported by government laws, be they IP, DRM, or anti-hacking, or other?
- adamc 3y ago
  The suggestion needs evidence to be anything more than ideology.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    What evidence is lacking? Regulatory capture is a well-documented phenomenon, that it exists is not in question. Surely you're not proposing that industries are spending billions to drive this phenomenon for no reason?
  - SkyBelow 3y ago
    Why would there be a demand of evidence for my response when there isn't one for the previous question I was responding to? It appeared to me the question asked was ideological, given that it was an informal question of a few sentences and not giving plenty of evidence to the idea that another competitor would have solved the issue?
mindslight 3y ago
Because P != NP, as far as we know.
cft 3y ago
Probably because the industry consolidated due to regulatory capture to one manufacturer per continent (economic zone).
hanniabu 3y ago
True market competition doesn't exist in capitalism
- _zzaw 3y ago
  This can't be said enough. The "capitalism encourages healthy competition that works to the advantages of innovation and the consumer" only works when companies are prevented from cheating. And the natural inclination of anybody who wants money and power is to cheat.
  - esprehn 3y ago
    The usual way of putting this is that once a player emerges as a winner, that they turn towards regulatory capture. Or in the worst case players collude to prevent new players.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? There are a ton of problems that can't be solved through market competition.
- gnarbarian 3y ago
  tldr: read "shop craft is soul craft" in theory it could have been solved by a more competitive market. I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem from a lack of competition and then subsequent cartel style collusion for the few big players, high barriers to entry that are fortified through regulatory capture, and a tendency for lots of small players in tight competition to consolidate over time into fewer bigger players. (I think we need to disincentiveze consolidation in all but the most egregious cases of natural monopolies like most public utilities) this answers so many questions from "why is it so hard to work on my new car" to "why do my tennis shoes wear out so fast". there are also cultural factors. people using the tools aren't the same craftsmen who build, repair, and sell them. each of these disciplines is now siloed and few companies are putting real effort into considering this holistic lifecycle view of their products. then when these options do exist people may not be aware, or obtaining them is more immediately expensive or less convenient in the short term. or they simply don't care.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem from a lack of competition That set of problem is indeed enormous. I'm not arguing otherwise. But there is also an enormous set of problems that can't be solved by more competition, but people put forth "more competition" as a solution anyway. Increasing competition is valuable, but it's not a panacea. I'm far from convinced that this particular problem can be solved by more competition for a few reasons, but the primary one is this: the established players have shown that behaving this way will maximize profit. New players in the space have a greater economic pressure to do the same than to do differently.
    - bogwog 3y ago
      Can you give a good example of a market problem that can’t be solved through increased competition?
legohead 3y ago
Competition isn't enough for this issue, it needs to be written into law. And tractors/farm equipment isn't the only thing we need right to repair on. So count this as a small victory towards a much larger goal.
causi 3y ago
And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung up to compete on that basis? You don't have to prove the reason why to observe that it didn't happen. No company sprung up.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  But you can definitely ask why not. Asking questions helps our understanding, to help recognize where situations like this might also exist, or arise in the future. I wouldn't want HN to become a place where you can't ask questions!
toss1 3y ago
First, "free market competition" is NOT a cure-all for everything. The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. However, the "Free Market" is absolutely horrible at solving other problems, starting with the Commons Problem, and including the tendency towards monopolies, which are the problem here. It is a near-mathematical certainty in a 'free market' that the big get bigger, and weild that power to crush any upstarts. Even if there is massive demand for something new, the entrenched monopoly/near-monopoly/cartel players will crush it. This is the case here. Also, in regulated markets (i.e., all of them, see next paragraph), the large players will often succeed at regulatory capture, which further enables them. Also note that the "free market" is an absolute fiction. It does not exist. Every market has rules, spoken or tacit. The only question is what are the rules and how are they enforced. Wise governments will set rules that minimize the tendency towards monopoly, and protect their institutions and citizens from regulatory capture. This is a step in that direction. Another tack to answer your question is to observe what actually happens in these "free" markets. There has been enormous demand for this, with pressure provoking legislatures to attempt to act for decades, yet no competitor has arisen. Similarly, it took literally most of a century, and major legislation to get car companies to even start installing safety gear like collapsible steering columns (replacing the ones that impaled the drivers in small collisions), seat belts, airbags, etc. Plenty of demand, but a cartel-ish industry fails to meet it. Re-examine your libertarian tendencies more closely. I also used to find it an attractive concept, but it is full of glib answers that are not actually realizable in the real world (and often not even in toy models). Actually working through the consequences of many of the concepts shows that they are just a mirage, and sticking to those ideas simply enables monopolists and oligarchs to thrive.
- edmundsauto 3y ago
  > The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. I'm really curious if the IoT and AI age we're entering changes this. It doesn't seem like an immutable law of the universe - my guess is that people's self-interest and the challenges of scaling communication are the root cause. Objective analytics and AI systems to synthesize information might change the efficacy of central planning; also, the current free market implementation appears that it's being twisted as externalities become of larger focus (ie climate change)
Spooky23 3y ago
Tractors aren’t a pure commodity. It’s an ecosystem of machinery, service and accessories. Market forces work best with commodities and substitute products. The farther away you get, the weaker the effect.
Mistletoe 3y ago
I’ll tell you one reason and it is in lots of farmers’ minds John Deere is the best. It’s a status symbol. That’s what it is for my Dad. It’s a flashy Cadillac. Probably why their insane policies have continued.
thomasjb 3y ago
'Open repair policy' ~= No dealership support in your country. There's a number of lesser known brands of tractor which just bolt together parts from ZF, Perkins and the like, but they don't have dealer coverage, and there's low expected longevity of what dealers they do have. A Hattat or Basak tractor is a fairly straightforward machine which you could work on yourself just fine, but there's just no dealer coverage, which means there's no quick way to get parts
hedgehog 3y ago
In most industries there are scale and network effects that favor larger incumbents regardless of the wishes or long term interests of customers. That's why startups are nearly always started off the springboard of big social or technical changes, otherwise there's no room for them to get started. Incumbents work to tilt the field in their favor through expanded product features, lock-in via cross product integrations, exclusive distribution deals, heavy regulation, etc. Simple example: All current iPhones are much bigger than I want, but the switching cost of going to Android is very high due to lock in via Apple services and integration between devices so I don't leave. Paradoxically competitive markets require some regulation to fight customer lock-in.
WalterBright 3y ago
Part of this stems from intellectual property laws, which are more or less a legal fiction invented by the government, and are not an inherent property of a free market.
- robocat 3y ago
  I suggest you explain how you buy a tractor on your hypothetical free market, and explain how that hypothetical free market would solve the problem that this legislation solves. Off-topic: Most any market is a legal fiction invented by the government. Some markets are even designed by teams of economists to reduce overheads by designing the rules of the market - say electricity markets. The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones. You bring up "free market" all the time, yet it is an incredibly vague concept. Do you have a link that defines exactly what you mean by the term? Ideally a blogpost written by you. Generally I feel when you invoke the words "free market" you are just calling for a beneficient perfect god to fix whatever fault you have identified. I am all for reducing unnecessary regulations and unnecessary government overhead. However much regulation and government overhead provides necessary things that I can't buy/negotiate as an individual. (Edits & additions)
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > yet it is an incredibly vague concept Not really. A free market is one where people make trades based on negotiation rather that coercion. Property rights are enforced, contract agreements are enforced, and using force or fraud in the negotiations is not allowed. This is the usual definition of a free market. I understand that free markets are a chaotic system, which leaves a lot of people very uncomfortable. I also understand that free markets are not an easy thing to understand. > The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones. A war zone fits none of the definition I provided. So does slavery and selling poison to babies, other things people claim are "free market".
    - robocat 3y ago
      Intellectual property laws include trademarks. Trademarks reduce fraud and help prevent selling poison to babies. Q1: Where do trademarks fit into your definition of a free market? The topic is buying tractors that can be fixed without using the vendor's service agents. Q2: How does coercion apply in the situation of buying a tractor from John Deere? (I.e. what part of buying a John Deere tractor is not a free market negotiation in your definition). Copyright is a property right. All property rights are abstract definitions that don't exist outside our minds (e.g. I have one dollar in a bank account). Q3: Where does copyright fit into your definition of a free market? PS: I strongly disagree that there is any consensus about how a "free market" is defined. Maybe provide a link to a place that you agree with the definition, preferably defined in high detail.
forgetfreeman 3y ago
You're a smallholding farmer. The last couple of years crops have done well enough you've managed to pay down enough of your debt to the ag supply corp that you've got enough financial wiggle room to finance a new equipment purchase. Are you going to go with the incumbent player with four generations of history in the industry and a network of dealerships across the planet or Bay Area BushelMaster's new offering that's been on the market for 18 months, is advertised largely in Facebook Groups, who's sole dealership is a job trailer behind a carwash in Fresno? Hell, Mahindra makes more tractors than any other manufacturer on the planet and they're just now starting to make inroads into the 20 acre hobby farm, homestead, and landscaping market niches (hearafter referred to as the Bullshit Tractor Market or BTM for short). It'll be another 20 years before you start seeing fleets of Mahindra combines cruising the seas of wheat in the midwest, if ever that day comes.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Is the personal vehicle market much different? Tesla seemed to upset all the incumbents, against what look to me to be similar issues.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    These two markets are so different that the only properties they share is both items cost money and are made out of roughly the same raw materials (steel, plastic, wiring, etc). Tesla managed to claw their way into the industry through a brilliant marketing campaign that nailed the subset of the (entirely suburban) market that believe an expensive car is a status symbol and new always means better. This line absolutely does not scan in the context of agricultural equipment, where the defining ethic is one of hard work and rugged dependability, both of which have to be proven in action. All the hyper-macho cargo-pants-and-a-tactical-vest advertising in the world isn't going to make a dent in an industry where the only two considerations are price and proven durability. So you've got a chicken-and-the-egg problem. To prove durability and workability you have to have product in the field, but nobody's buying unproven equipment. Put another way: the ag industry doesn't have a cohort of suburbanites with loose cash and a taste for novely to tap into.
bogwog 3y ago
You’re getting downvoted, but I think this is a really good question. Why didn’t market competition solve this issue? I don’t know enough about this to be able to answer. Maybe John Deer was guilty of anti-competitive behavior that suppressed competition in the market? Or there are some other challenges that make it difficult to start a farm equipment company?
- i_am_proteus 3y ago
  That other challenge is called "John Deere's moat: market entrenchment via dealership/service center network." Agriculture is very time-of-year dependent. Waiting a few weeks for spare parts can be devastating to annual revenue.
- mcguire 3y ago
  Because, as you suggest, suppressing competition is a winning strategy, especially when there are barriers to entry? Because the free market prefers monopolies?
  - Etrnl_President 3y ago
    [dead]
- ikiris 3y ago
  If you don't want to go compete with John Deere in this space even though you see this as a lack of competition, that's a basic answer to your question.
biftek 3y ago
ag machinery has generational life spans, they aren't laptops or even lawn mowers. would you buy the from the start up who pinky promises to always let you repair it, or the incumbent who is annoying to work with but has existed your entire life and will after you die?
eitland 3y ago
As we have seen it didn't work, at least not right now. Even if this is just a band aid while we wait for competition to pop up (I'm not that optimistic about the market) it would still be valuable and I see no problems with it.
crazygringo 3y ago
I just want to say that it's a shame you're being severely downvoted. Because this is a serious question whose answer is extremely non-obvious. Is this a market failure or not? If so, what kind? Is this a very unique market failure that needs specific legislation to address in farm equipment specifically, or is it generalizable to certain conditions that future legislation might target to benefit more people? If so, what are those conditions? I think we can defend right-to-repair, and at the same time ask the serious questions about why we need legislation around it at all, why it hasn't happened on its own?
autoexec 3y ago
> Is there no tractor manufacturer who could step up and advertise their lower TCO with their open repair policy? And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung up to compete on that basis? Sometimes companies will always make more money by not giving consumers what they want. As long as all companies care about is making as much money as possible, they will exploit consumers whenever doing so makes them the most profit no matter how consumers feel about it. A company could come up and meet the demand for tractors that consumers can repair, but that company would lose more money by not screwing over their own customers than they could ever hope to gain by enticing them with a repairable product. A company that let's customers repair their own tractor gets a one time purchase and nothing else. A company that forces their customers to pay for highly overpriced repairs and parts gets that same one time purchase but also secures an endless revenue stream that stuffs their pockets with cash over and over again for the entire lifetime of the tractor and then it starts all over again when that same company claims they can't (or wont) repair it anymore and the customer has to make another new purchase. The market (and shareholders) will not tolerate leaving huge stacks of cash on the table just to give consumers what they want.
- Daz1 3y ago
  >Sometimes companies will always make more money by not giving consumers what they want. This statement needs more qualification
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? It hasn't been, so something's gone wrong. This is often the result of regulatory capture. For example, the DMCA makes it illegal for third parties to break the tractor company's DRM. Independent repair shops don't want to get arrested or sued, so there aren't as many willing to go into business repairing tractors. You can't solve a problem with competition when you don't have a competitive market. If you have the political power to repeal Section 1201 of the DMCA or any of the other laws preventing market competition, please do so. But it was passed in 1998 and the problems it would lead to were already understood in 1998 and it's still on the books. State legislatures can't repeal the DMCA and many other competition-destroying regulations because they're federal. They can pass right to repair legislation. If you don't like right to repair legislation, direct your efforts to repealing the federal regulations that generate the demand for it.

scotty79 3y ago

> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? Is Contrary to popular belief markets don't solve everything. They are just price and exploit discovery mechanisms. Apparently taking away consumers ability to repair is something that can be exploited and giving them right to repair is something that almost cannot.

jacksnipe 3y ago

It’s hard to imagine a more mature industry than farming capital. It’s not exactly going to be easy to even compete on quality, let alone disrupt.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
This is how hard that industry is to disrupt: I needed a mid-sized utility tractor in the 40-60 hp range with a loader. I briefly visited the local Mahindra dealer, decided their offerings looked both expensive and flimsy, and then spent a month on FB marketplace until I found a 1974 Ford Industrial in good working order.

naikrovek 3y ago

there are reasons for government, and things like this are one of them. left alone, companies will always prioritize short-term goals over long-term goals. budgets in the short-term are negatively impacted by this decision for all/most tractor makers, which is why they resisted this change. no one can accurately predict market forces that far out, so short-term concerns, being much easier to predict, win out.

valine 3y ago

One of the main benefits of right to repair is to keep tractors in service for longer. Your solution is for farmers to throw away their tractors and buy new ones? What’s to stop the new manufacturer from implementing a similar policy once the farmers are locked in with an expensive purchase?

mhb 3y ago
A contract?
- valine 3y ago
  How about a law? Then every farmer doesn’t have to negotiate repair terms.
  - mhb 3y ago
    The question being answered was "What’s to stop the new manufacturer from implementing a similar policy once the farmers are locked in with an expensive purchase?". You can tell that because the question was immediately above the reply. That is in the context of a business starting to sell farm equipment that can be repaired. Threads, go figure.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  So that every corporation can have "you have no rights and waive any rights you think you have" standard legal boilerplate in their documents? No thanks.

scottyah 3y ago

It probably would happen, it'd just take more time. The best minds of my generation are trying to become famous on tiktok, resting and vesting at Big Tech, or writing day trading algorithms. Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying to optimize.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Minimal work to max profit is what we're all trying to optimize. That attitude is why John Deere and similar have the anticustomer policies that they do.
- mcguire 3y ago
  That, as they say, is the purpose of any corporation. Their responsibility is to their shareholders.
  - wavefunction 3y ago
    The purpose of incorporation is to encourage business speculation by offering a mechanism to limit personal liability of the owners. That's the only purpose a corporation has and they definitely don't have responsibilities themselves as they are only a legal fiction. The employees of a corporation have responsibilities.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    No. This is a mischaracterization of both the purpose of corporations and the responsibility corporations have to their shareholders. The purpose of a corporation is not "profit above all else". Corporations are also supposed to operate in a manner that benefits society. We used to actually strip corporations of their charters when they failed their social responsibility. The responsibility to shareholders depends a lot on the charter, but in general, it's to run the company in a profitable and sustainable manner. Again, it's not "make the most money possible no matter what". If that were the case, then there would be no corporations engaging in anything but the highest-margin sorts of business. So there'd be no low-margin stuff like toilet paper.
- 3y ago

neogodless 3y ago

The top comment on the thread 15 days ago prompted a lot of discussion of this point, so it may interest you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35533738

astockwell 3y ago

Barrier to entry/market penetration meets the 10+ year amortization schedules of six/seven/eight figure machinery.

scythe 3y ago
I believe it could also be argued that some fraction of the value created by repairability is in fact an externality. Your standard rational pricing model uses exponential discounting. A farmer does not necessarily expect to be in business for the entire useful lifetime of a tractor. But the resold tractor provides potentially more value to the economy if it is easier to fix. I.e. the initial buyer's discount rate should be higher than the overall society's discount rate, because they get most of the value from using the tractor, not its resale, but society gets more value if the tractor can be used longer by other farmers. This mostly applies to tractors that, today, are too old to violate R2R. But someday, the tractors sold today will be that old.
jollyllama 3y ago
+1 For actually attempting to answer the poster's question. Seeing five replies to the effect of "it just can't" was frustrating.

SkyBelow 3y ago

Regulatory capture has distorted the market, making it harder for competitors to join. How much of the existing issue preventing sharing of information, tools, and technology to repair the current equipment is supported by government laws, be they IP, DRM, or anti-hacking, or other?

adamc 3y ago
The suggestion needs evidence to be anything more than ideology.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  What evidence is lacking? Regulatory capture is a well-documented phenomenon, that it exists is not in question. Surely you're not proposing that industries are spending billions to drive this phenomenon for no reason?
- SkyBelow 3y ago
  Why would there be a demand of evidence for my response when there isn't one for the previous question I was responding to? It appeared to me the question asked was ideological, given that it was an informal question of a few sentences and not giving plenty of evidence to the idea that another competitor would have solved the issue?

mindslight 3y ago

Because P != NP, as far as we know.

cft 3y ago

Probably because the industry consolidated due to regulatory capture to one manufacturer per continent (economic zone).

hanniabu 3y ago

True market competition doesn't exist in capitalism

_zzaw 3y ago
This can't be said enough. The "capitalism encourages healthy competition that works to the advantages of innovation and the consumer" only works when companies are prevented from cheating. And the natural inclination of anybody who wants money and power is to cheat.
- esprehn 3y ago
  The usual way of putting this is that once a player emerges as a winner, that they turn towards regulatory capture. Or in the worst case players collude to prevent new players.

JohnFen 3y ago

> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? There are a ton of problems that can't be solved through market competition.

gnarbarian 3y ago
tldr: read "shop craft is soul craft" in theory it could have been solved by a more competitive market. I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem from a lack of competition and then subsequent cartel style collusion for the few big players, high barriers to entry that are fortified through regulatory capture, and a tendency for lots of small players in tight competition to consolidate over time into fewer bigger players. (I think we need to disincentiveze consolidation in all but the most egregious cases of natural monopolies like most public utilities) this answers so many questions from "why is it so hard to work on my new car" to "why do my tennis shoes wear out so fast". there are also cultural factors. people using the tools aren't the same craftsmen who build, repair, and sell them. each of these disciplines is now siloed and few companies are putting real effort into considering this holistic lifecycle view of their products. then when these options do exist people may not be aware, or obtaining them is more immediately expensive or less convenient in the short term. or they simply don't care.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem from a lack of competition That set of problem is indeed enormous. I'm not arguing otherwise. But there is also an enormous set of problems that can't be solved by more competition, but people put forth "more competition" as a solution anyway. Increasing competition is valuable, but it's not a panacea. I'm far from convinced that this particular problem can be solved by more competition for a few reasons, but the primary one is this: the established players have shown that behaving this way will maximize profit. New players in the space have a greater economic pressure to do the same than to do differently.
  - bogwog 3y ago
    Can you give a good example of a market problem that can’t be solved through increased competition?

legohead 3y ago

Competition isn't enough for this issue, it needs to be written into law. And tractors/farm equipment isn't the only thing we need right to repair on. So count this as a small victory towards a much larger goal.

causi 3y ago

And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung up to compete on that basis? You don't have to prove the reason why to observe that it didn't happen. No company sprung up.

crazygringo 3y ago
But you can definitely ask why not. Asking questions helps our understanding, to help recognize where situations like this might also exist, or arise in the future. I wouldn't want HN to become a place where you can't ask questions!

toss1 3y ago

First, "free market competition" is NOT a cure-all for everything. The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. However, the "Free Market" is absolutely horrible at solving other problems, starting with the Commons Problem, and including the tendency towards monopolies, which are the problem here. It is a near-mathematical certainty in a 'free market' that the big get bigger, and weild that power to crush any upstarts. Even if there is massive demand for something new, the entrenched monopoly/near-monopoly/cartel players will crush it. This is the case here. Also, in regulated markets (i.e., all of them, see next paragraph), the large players will often succeed at regulatory capture, which further enables them. Also note that the "free market" is an absolute fiction. It does not exist. Every market has rules, spoken or tacit. The only question is what are the rules and how are they enforced. Wise governments will set rules that minimize the tendency towards monopoly, and protect their institutions and citizens from regulatory capture. This is a step in that direction. Another tack to answer your question is to observe what actually happens in these "free" markets. There has been enormous demand for this, with pressure provoking legislatures to attempt to act for decades, yet no competitor has arisen. Similarly, it took literally most of a century, and major legislation to get car companies to even start installing safety gear like collapsible steering columns (replacing the ones that impaled the drivers in small collisions), seat belts, airbags, etc. Plenty of demand, but a cartel-ish industry fails to meet it. Re-examine your libertarian tendencies more closely. I also used to find it an attractive concept, but it is full of glib answers that are not actually realizable in the real world (and often not even in toy models). Actually working through the consequences of many of the concepts shows that they are just a mirage, and sticking to those ideas simply enables monopolists and oligarchs to thrive.

edmundsauto 3y ago
> The "Free Market" does do a far better job of rapidly and semi-accurately allocating resources and labor than central planning. I'm really curious if the IoT and AI age we're entering changes this. It doesn't seem like an immutable law of the universe - my guess is that people's self-interest and the challenges of scaling communication are the root cause. Objective analytics and AI systems to synthesize information might change the efficacy of central planning; also, the current free market implementation appears that it's being twisted as externalities become of larger focus (ie climate change)

Spooky23 3y ago

Tractors aren’t a pure commodity. It’s an ecosystem of machinery, service and accessories. Market forces work best with commodities and substitute products. The farther away you get, the weaker the effect.

Mistletoe 3y ago

I’ll tell you one reason and it is in lots of farmers’ minds John Deere is the best. It’s a status symbol. That’s what it is for my Dad. It’s a flashy Cadillac. Probably why their insane policies have continued.

thomasjb 3y ago

'Open repair policy' ~= No dealership support in your country. There's a number of lesser known brands of tractor which just bolt together parts from ZF, Perkins and the like, but they don't have dealer coverage, and there's low expected longevity of what dealers they do have. A Hattat or Basak tractor is a fairly straightforward machine which you could work on yourself just fine, but there's just no dealer coverage, which means there's no quick way to get parts

hedgehog 3y ago

In most industries there are scale and network effects that favor larger incumbents regardless of the wishes or long term interests of customers. That's why startups are nearly always started off the springboard of big social or technical changes, otherwise there's no room for them to get started. Incumbents work to tilt the field in their favor through expanded product features, lock-in via cross product integrations, exclusive distribution deals, heavy regulation, etc. Simple example: All current iPhones are much bigger than I want, but the switching cost of going to Android is very high due to lock in via Apple services and integration between devices so I don't leave. Paradoxically competitive markets require some regulation to fight customer lock-in.

WalterBright 3y ago

Part of this stems from intellectual property laws, which are more or less a legal fiction invented by the government, and are not an inherent property of a free market.

robocat 3y ago
I suggest you explain how you buy a tractor on your hypothetical free market, and explain how that hypothetical free market would solve the problem that this legislation solves. Off-topic: Most any market is a legal fiction invented by the government. Some markets are even designed by teams of economists to reduce overheads by designing the rules of the market - say electricity markets. The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones. You bring up "free market" all the time, yet it is an incredibly vague concept. Do you have a link that defines exactly what you mean by the term? Ideally a blogpost written by you. Generally I feel when you invoke the words "free market" you are just calling for a beneficient perfect god to fix whatever fault you have identified. I am all for reducing unnecessary regulations and unnecessary government overhead. However much regulation and government overhead provides necessary things that I can't buy/negotiate as an individual. (Edits & additions)
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > yet it is an incredibly vague concept Not really. A free market is one where people make trades based on negotiation rather that coercion. Property rights are enforced, contract agreements are enforced, and using force or fraud in the negotiations is not allowed. This is the usual definition of a free market. I understand that free markets are a chaotic system, which leaves a lot of people very uncomfortable. I also understand that free markets are not an easy thing to understand. > The closest we have to free markets in the world are probably war zones. A war zone fits none of the definition I provided. So does slavery and selling poison to babies, other things people claim are "free market".
  - robocat 3y ago
    Intellectual property laws include trademarks. Trademarks reduce fraud and help prevent selling poison to babies. Q1: Where do trademarks fit into your definition of a free market? The topic is buying tractors that can be fixed without using the vendor's service agents. Q2: How does coercion apply in the situation of buying a tractor from John Deere? (I.e. what part of buying a John Deere tractor is not a free market negotiation in your definition). Copyright is a property right. All property rights are abstract definitions that don't exist outside our minds (e.g. I have one dollar in a bank account). Q3: Where does copyright fit into your definition of a free market? PS: I strongly disagree that there is any consensus about how a "free market" is defined. Maybe provide a link to a place that you agree with the definition, preferably defined in high detail.

forgetfreeman 3y ago

You're a smallholding farmer. The last couple of years crops have done well enough you've managed to pay down enough of your debt to the ag supply corp that you've got enough financial wiggle room to finance a new equipment purchase. Are you going to go with the incumbent player with four generations of history in the industry and a network of dealerships across the planet or Bay Area BushelMaster's new offering that's been on the market for 18 months, is advertised largely in Facebook Groups, who's sole dealership is a job trailer behind a carwash in Fresno? Hell, Mahindra makes more tractors than any other manufacturer on the planet and they're just now starting to make inroads into the 20 acre hobby farm, homestead, and landscaping market niches (hearafter referred to as the Bullshit Tractor Market or BTM for short). It'll be another 20 years before you start seeing fleets of Mahindra combines cruising the seas of wheat in the midwest, if ever that day comes.

dotancohen 3y ago
Is the personal vehicle market much different? Tesla seemed to upset all the incumbents, against what look to me to be similar issues.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  These two markets are so different that the only properties they share is both items cost money and are made out of roughly the same raw materials (steel, plastic, wiring, etc). Tesla managed to claw their way into the industry through a brilliant marketing campaign that nailed the subset of the (entirely suburban) market that believe an expensive car is a status symbol and new always means better. This line absolutely does not scan in the context of agricultural equipment, where the defining ethic is one of hard work and rugged dependability, both of which have to be proven in action. All the hyper-macho cargo-pants-and-a-tactical-vest advertising in the world isn't going to make a dent in an industry where the only two considerations are price and proven durability. So you've got a chicken-and-the-egg problem. To prove durability and workability you have to have product in the field, but nobody's buying unproven equipment. Put another way: the ag industry doesn't have a cohort of suburbanites with loose cash and a taste for novely to tap into.

bogwog 3y ago

You’re getting downvoted, but I think this is a really good question. Why didn’t market competition solve this issue? I don’t know enough about this to be able to answer. Maybe John Deer was guilty of anti-competitive behavior that suppressed competition in the market? Or there are some other challenges that make it difficult to start a farm equipment company?

i_am_proteus 3y ago
That other challenge is called "John Deere's moat: market entrenchment via dealership/service center network." Agriculture is very time-of-year dependent. Waiting a few weeks for spare parts can be devastating to annual revenue.
mcguire 3y ago
Because, as you suggest, suppressing competition is a winning strategy, especially when there are barriers to entry? Because the free market prefers monopolies?
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
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ikiris 3y ago
If you don't want to go compete with John Deere in this space even though you see this as a lack of competition, that's a basic answer to your question.

biftek 3y ago

ag machinery has generational life spans, they aren't laptops or even lawn mowers. would you buy the from the start up who pinky promises to always let you repair it, or the incumbent who is annoying to work with but has existed your entire life and will after you die?

eitland 3y ago

As we have seen it didn't work, at least not right now. Even if this is just a band aid while we wait for competition to pop up (I'm not that optimistic about the market) it would still be valuable and I see no problems with it.

crazygringo 3y ago

I just want to say that it's a shame you're being severely downvoted. Because this is a serious question whose answer is extremely non-obvious. Is this a market failure or not? If so, what kind? Is this a very unique market failure that needs specific legislation to address in farm equipment specifically, or is it generalizable to certain conditions that future legislation might target to benefit more people? If so, what are those conditions? I think we can defend right-to-repair, and at the same time ask the serious questions about why we need legislation around it at all, why it hasn't happened on its own?

autoexec 3y ago

> Is there no tractor manufacturer who could step up and advertise their lower TCO with their open repair policy? And if not, and if the demand was so strong, why wouldn't a new company have sprung up to compete on that basis? Sometimes companies will always make more money by not giving consumers what they want. As long as all companies care about is making as much money as possible, they will exploit consumers whenever doing so makes them the most profit no matter how consumers feel about it. A company could come up and meet the demand for tractors that consumers can repair, but that company would lose more money by not screwing over their own customers than they could ever hope to gain by enticing them with a repairable product. A company that let's customers repair their own tractor gets a one time purchase and nothing else. A company that forces their customers to pay for highly overpriced repairs and parts gets that same one time purchase but also secures an endless revenue stream that stuffs their pockets with cash over and over again for the entire lifetime of the tractor and then it starts all over again when that same company claims they can't (or wont) repair it anymore and the customer has to make another new purchase. The market (and shareholders) will not tolerate leaving huge stacks of cash on the table just to give consumers what they want.

Daz1 3y ago
>Sometimes companies will always make more money by not giving consumers what they want. This statement needs more qualification

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition? It hasn't been, so something's gone wrong. This is often the result of regulatory capture. For example, the DMCA makes it illegal for third parties to break the tractor company's DRM. Independent repair shops don't want to get arrested or sued, so there aren't as many willing to go into business repairing tractors. You can't solve a problem with competition when you don't have a competitive market. If you have the political power to repeal Section 1201 of the DMCA or any of the other laws preventing market competition, please do so. But it was passed in 1998 and the problems it would lead to were already understood in 1998 and it's still on the books. State legislatures can't repeal the DMCA and many other competition-destroying regulations because they're federal. They can pass right to repair legislation. If you don't like right to repair legislation, direct your efforts to repealing the federal regulations that generate the demand for it.