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Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

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Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#101

Post by mkoubaa »

chrisbolt wrote: post #92
rafale wrote: post #45

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 t…

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

There are global competitors but not much in north america

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#102

Post by heavyset_go »

chrisbolt wrote: post #92
rafale wrote: post #45

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 t…

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

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-j...

[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#103

Post by toolz »

heavyset_go wrote: post #97
rafale wrote: post #45

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 t…

> 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.

These claims, while they might have some or even a lot of merit are demonstrably false (as they are made seemingly without exception or nuance). There is a very healthy and active black market, for example among plenty of other examples.

It seems rather disingenuous to make such fantastically bold claims as statements of understood fact. I can't imagine what sort of dialog you were hoping to encourage.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#104

Post by badRNG »

toolz wrote: post #103
heavyset_go wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

These claims, while they might have some or even a lot of merit are demonstrably false (as they are made seemingly without exception or nuance). There is a very healthy and active black market, for example among plenty of other examples. It seems rather disingenuous to make such fantastically bold claims as statements of understood fact. I can't imagine what sort of dialog you were hoping to encourage.

Black markets can be thought of as truly free markets that are free from antitrust action. These markets, if permitted to exist for an extended period of time, are dominated by cartels. "The Little Guy" doesn't get to be disruptive in black markets, because they are fully captured by cartels that will squash, subsume, or merge with any meaningful competition.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#105

Post by Diesel555 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #97
rafale wrote: post #45

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 t…

> 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.

I wish more people understood that markets include government regulation to ensure they operate in a competitive way. In a competitive market there must be so many buyers and sellers so that each has a negligible impact on the market price [1]. Obviously governments try to prevent monopolies to uphold this assumption. Regulation must also prevent market failures. Such failures occur with externalities. The most famous example being a factory that pollutes the environment thus producing negative health effects on people but incurring no cost for that damage without government intervention. Another example of a failure is information asymmetry (the doctor that recommends a procedure he knows you don't need but you trust him for his information) which is illegal.

My point is, markets do include government regulation. Academic debate is not centered on whether or not markets include government regulation by microeconomics definition. The debate is how much, where, when and how. If "free market" is defined as no government intervention, it is not an accepted practice and even conservative economists would not recommend it. I think there is a reason the term "free market" is not included in my microeconomics textbook. We look for a competitive market (described by the desired result), not a "free market" (described by the methods, not the result).

[1] Mankiw, Principle of Microeconomics 8th edition

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#106

Post by rkagerer »

verisimi wrote: post #33
jbkiv wrote: post #28

This has become a general problem. There seems to be more money in "software services" than in building tractors and motors. John Deere is not unique. All common rail engines require a visit from a "certified engineer" who has access to the software. This is terrible in the marine industry where you can't get one in the middle of the ocean and you can't repair yourself either. What do you do? Do you sail to a harbor?…

I get what you are saying.... that we can use the law to gain the right to repair. But step back - how is any of that morally right? Why should people have to fight corporation in court to get a basic right to repair the thing they bought? Its insane! Surely, if there was any sense to this, the presumption would be in favour of the purchaser by default! Regardless of any service contract or other legal agreement. Tha…

Part of the problem is consumers bought this increasingly cloud-based junk back when they had a choice.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#107

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #83
Gustomaximus wrote: post #55

I dont understand why people keep buying JD tractors. They have a reputation for reliability, so do many other brands. Kubota, Deutz, Fent, Massy, Case, New Holland... a bunch more. It's amazing the brand loyalty hold JD have on farmers.

Dealer proximity and local parts availability play a pretty big role.

Both of those things are worth zero when Deere can't supply enough technicians in the planting and harvest seasons to keep those tractors running.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#108

Post by AnthonyMouse »

badRNG wrote: post #100
heavyset_go wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 car…

> 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.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#109

Post by cplusplusfellow »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #83
Gustomaximus wrote: post #55

I dont understand why people keep buying JD tractors. They have a reputation for reliability, so do many other brands. Kubota, Deutz, Fent, Massy, Case, New Holland... a bunch more. It's amazing the brand loyalty hold JD have on farmers.

Dealer proximity and local parts availability play a pretty big role.

Also an established line of credit basically with the farm makes buying them easier than competitive offerings by other manufacturers. There’s still enormous cultural inertia with Deere.

Re: Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’

#110

Post by Diesel555 »

chrisbolt wrote: post #92
rafale wrote: post #45

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 t…

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

> 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.

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