3 ms·

Their business is booming. That significantly overwhelms the concern you're raising. They have gone from $4.3b in operating income to $14.5b in three years, wh

Their business is booming. That significantly overwhelms the concern you're raising. They have gone from $4.3b in operating income to $14.5b in three years, while their sales nearly doubled. That's an old industrial company boom the likes of which is almost never seen by those types of companies. By comparison what you're calling catastrophic is entirely trivial. It's not even in the room as a consideration compared to the soaring profits. Nobody is removing a whole board with that kind of profit growth.

worik 2y ago
> Their business is booming. That significantly overwhelms the concern you're raising. Yes their profit is up, no it is unrelated to the concerns The company is acting in a way that luts the whole food system at risk They should be disbanded, by force. I recommend replacement with a farmer cooperative
- SideQuark 2y ago
  Countries that act so ignorantly of consequences or little regard for private property never end well. If Deere is so bad buy from competitors, of which there are many.
  - phil21 2y ago
    > If Deere is so bad buy from competitors, of which there are many. I somewhat agree with your earlier comment, but this bit is ignoring the systemic issues involved. Deere is a leader in much of the efficiency technology that allows large-scale farming operations to reach the economy of scale needed to farm the huge multi-thousand (tens of thousands of acres in many cases) grain operations that are slowly but surely taking over food production in the US. This trend, unabated, is a weird form of monopoly power for lack of a better word. If one manufacturer is more or less the sole-source for the largest corporate farms, and those farming operations are putting smaller ones out of business due to cost pressure - eventually - and likely sooner than later it becomes a too big to fail situation and a systemic national security risk. This is starting to get into the realm of arms manufacturing. If these trends continue for another decade or three, and then Deere has say a massive IT failure, planting and harvesting operations literally grind to a halt for the top-end equipment entirely reliant on the automation and data harvesting these machines require to operate. People will be at risk for starvation in the event of an extended outage. Farming as a Service has a hidden cost to it many are not seeing in these comments. I don't agree with disbanding Deere and nationalizing it - however this really needs to be looked at much more than a simple competition issue. It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market, which is subsequently running the smaller operations out of business and putting the US food supply at a systemic risk if nothing is done. Of course a competitor could somehow battle through the patent forest and capital requirements, but I wouldn't bet our lives on that.
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      > This trend, unabated, is a weird form of monopoly power for lack of a better word. Deere controls around 40% of the North American agricultural machinery market [1]. This is so far from anything near any kind of monopoly it's ludicrous to call it so. No court has ever ruled anything anywhere near this low as any kind of monopoly. Everything you wrote predicated on this FUD is invalid. > This is starting to get into the realm of arms manufacturing. And this takes the hyperbole into crazy land. > It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market Nope. The competition for making such machines is rapidly increasing as it's becoming easier, not harder to make ag equipment. Pressure from a huge host of countries whose economies are becoming first world is adding many other worthy candidates. CNH, Agco, Kubota, Case, New Holland, and many others are already making inroads. EU is the biggest ag market, and Deere has far less market share there than here, where the competitors have already made major inroads, and they're now moving imports and even production into the US. > It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market Do you look at market data from investment firms or even at SEC filings from the major players? These statements are not based in any fact. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/plowing-ahead:-john-deeres-crop-of-success-in-turbulent-markets https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/plowing-ahead:-john-deeres-c...
  - Teever 2y ago
    Why do you seem so opposed to regulating away this kind of behaviour? Like what's bad about fixing this growing issue with regulation?
    - devvvvvvv 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      Because it pretty much never works, and consumers pay the price. It's also going to be near impossible to define well - unless you're just going to target John Deere specifically, which also has historically been a bad idea. If the goal is some vague "easy to repair" mantra, then tons of things in an advanced economy are going to be hard to repair since technology gets more and more complex. Limiting future inventions to also include "easy to repair," under some complex definition, will limit some innovation. Car engines were once easy to repair, then we added all sorts of emissions control, making them harder, and then as computerized control systems turned out to provide massive benefits (lower gas use, more engine life, better control of timine, fuel injection, and ahost of other things), it again got harder to repair. And engines are simple. Should your internet browser or smart phone allow any neanderthal to consider it easy to repair? Or does an increasingly advanced and complex technological environment reasonably make things harder to repair, even while providing advances that are providing benefits to consumers? The role of govt is to make an environment where companies compete, and given that JD owns < 40% of the North American Ag Machinery market, it seems there are ample other choices. Economically, and historically, legislation effectively putting price floors or ceilings on goods (in this case price not as $, but as tech requirements and cutting into company ability to sell goods) pretty much every time comes back to bite consumers. This is econ 101.
  - eschneider 2y ago
    I work for a direct JD competitor (the, um, orange one...) and I'm happy to say that JD's behavior does drive a lot of customers our way. :) And the Deer example is sorta nice in that I don't have to explain to management why that sorta DRM is a horrible idea. They already know.

worik 2y ago

> Their business is booming. That significantly overwhelms the concern you're raising. Yes their profit is up, no it is unrelated to the concerns The company is acting in a way that luts the whole food system at risk They should be disbanded, by force. I recommend replacement with a farmer cooperative

SideQuark 2y ago
Countries that act so ignorantly of consequences or little regard for private property never end well. If Deere is so bad buy from competitors, of which there are many.
- phil21 2y ago
  > If Deere is so bad buy from competitors, of which there are many. I somewhat agree with your earlier comment, but this bit is ignoring the systemic issues involved. Deere is a leader in much of the efficiency technology that allows large-scale farming operations to reach the economy of scale needed to farm the huge multi-thousand (tens of thousands of acres in many cases) grain operations that are slowly but surely taking over food production in the US. This trend, unabated, is a weird form of monopoly power for lack of a better word. If one manufacturer is more or less the sole-source for the largest corporate farms, and those farming operations are putting smaller ones out of business due to cost pressure - eventually - and likely sooner than later it becomes a too big to fail situation and a systemic national security risk. This is starting to get into the realm of arms manufacturing. If these trends continue for another decade or three, and then Deere has say a massive IT failure, planting and harvesting operations literally grind to a halt for the top-end equipment entirely reliant on the automation and data harvesting these machines require to operate. People will be at risk for starvation in the event of an extended outage. Farming as a Service has a hidden cost to it many are not seeing in these comments. I don't agree with disbanding Deere and nationalizing it - however this really needs to be looked at much more than a simple competition issue. It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market, which is subsequently running the smaller operations out of business and putting the US food supply at a systemic risk if nothing is done. Of course a competitor could somehow battle through the patent forest and capital requirements, but I wouldn't bet our lives on that.
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    > This trend, unabated, is a weird form of monopoly power for lack of a better word. Deere controls around 40% of the North American agricultural machinery market [1]. This is so far from anything near any kind of monopoly it's ludicrous to call it so. No court has ever ruled anything anywhere near this low as any kind of monopoly. Everything you wrote predicated on this FUD is invalid. > This is starting to get into the realm of arms manufacturing. And this takes the hyperbole into crazy land. > It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market Nope. The competition for making such machines is rapidly increasing as it's becoming easier, not harder to make ag equipment. Pressure from a huge host of countries whose economies are becoming first world is adding many other worthy candidates. CNH, Agco, Kubota, Case, New Holland, and many others are already making inroads. EU is the biggest ag market, and Deere has far less market share there than here, where the competitors have already made major inroads, and they're now moving imports and even production into the US. > It's rapidly becoming a winner-takes-all market Do you look at market data from investment firms or even at SEC filings from the major players? These statements are not based in any fact. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/plowing-ahead:-john-deeres-crop-of-success-in-turbulent-markets https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/plowing-ahead:-john-deeres-c...
- Teever 2y ago
  Why do you seem so opposed to regulating away this kind of behaviour? Like what's bad about fixing this growing issue with regulation?
  - devvvvvvv 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    Because it pretty much never works, and consumers pay the price. It's also going to be near impossible to define well - unless you're just going to target John Deere specifically, which also has historically been a bad idea. If the goal is some vague "easy to repair" mantra, then tons of things in an advanced economy are going to be hard to repair since technology gets more and more complex. Limiting future inventions to also include "easy to repair," under some complex definition, will limit some innovation. Car engines were once easy to repair, then we added all sorts of emissions control, making them harder, and then as computerized control systems turned out to provide massive benefits (lower gas use, more engine life, better control of timine, fuel injection, and ahost of other things), it again got harder to repair. And engines are simple. Should your internet browser or smart phone allow any neanderthal to consider it easy to repair? Or does an increasingly advanced and complex technological environment reasonably make things harder to repair, even while providing advances that are providing benefits to consumers? The role of govt is to make an environment where companies compete, and given that JD owns < 40% of the North American Ag Machinery market, it seems there are ample other choices. Economically, and historically, legislation effectively putting price floors or ceilings on goods (in this case price not as $, but as tech requirements and cutting into company ability to sell goods) pretty much every time comes back to bite consumers. This is econ 101.
- eschneider 2y ago
  I work for a direct JD competitor (the, um, orange one...) and I'm happy to say that JD's behavior does drive a lot of customers our way. :) And the Deer example is sorta nice in that I don't have to explain to management why that sorta DRM is a horrible idea. They already know.