Alabama farmer sues John Deere for ‘right to repair’ • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by mannykannot » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

athrun wrote: post #120

heavyset_go wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government didn't force anyone to give AAA ratings to junk financial assets.

Forced no, but that's the issue with complex regulations, they all interact in subtle ways and no one can fully predict the side effects. One can argue that public agencies created bad incentives with regulations that mandated ratings agencies' assessments, and then shielded various parties from any accountability by bailing them out, thus removing the main feedback loop of the system (ie: you mess up, you fail).

One problem is, "you mess up, you fail", is not a sufficiently effective feedback mechanism - at least since the debtors' prisons were closed, but even they were not effective, either. One problem is that, even under this doctrine, the risk to the individual instigator is not commensurate with the totality of the damage done. Another is that the feedback comes too late, and delayed feedback results in instability.

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

#142

Post by StanislavPetrov » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:07 AM UTC

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

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

#143

Post by aeternum » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #98

dahfizz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The government didn't force anyone to give AAA ratings to junk financial assets.

The government does however have hundreds of regulations around bond/debt ratings. This regulatory capture ensures that only a few rating companies can legally provide ratings.

It's interesting to consider whether the ratings do more harm than good at this point. Would a better rating system emerge if we got rid of all the legislation around bond/debt rating?

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

#144

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:20 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #69

thelittleone wrote: post #63

Am I being overly cynical in concluding that a growing % of companies will screw over their customers for their own gain. Doesn't this myopic "screw the customer" mentality damage brand reputation? Sure does for me. The growing discontent amongst a companies customer base is creating a new market opportunity for a competitor. When I feel screwed by a company like this, I find a good alternative, then jump ship and NE…

The monopolist can just buy the competition that you jumped ship to. Now your choice is between A) the services that are too terrible to be bought out, or B) services that are not taking the buyout because they are irrational. Incompetence or insanity.

There is always C - services that won't be bought out because Buyer is incompatible with values.

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

#145

Post by ashtonkem » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #78

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market. Good. Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money, workers would be paid below minimum wage, child labor would be rampant, and so on. The government is supposed to represent the people, although clearly money is the real voting power today. I'd like to see John Deere get sued into…

> Sometimes we need regulation, otherwise bankers would crash the economy while getting bailouts with taxpayer money... I honestly can't tell if this is meant to be satire.

Why would you? That is hardly a fringe position for someone to take. "Regulate the bankers rather than bailing them out every X years" was probably the majority position around 2010 or so, depending on how you phrase the question.

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

#146

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #144

pessimizer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monopolist can just buy the competition that you jumped ship to. Now your choice is between A) the services that are too terrible to be bought out, or B) services that are not taking the buyout because they are irrational. Incompetence or insanity.

There is always C - services that won't be bought out because Buyer is incompatible with values.

I'm pretty sure B was written to include those.

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

#147

Post by ashtonkem » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:36 AM UTC

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.

Also, the idea that government intervention damages the "free market" implicitly relies on the idea that the market and the government are two distinct and potentially antagonistic entities. Personally I'd argue that they're symbiotic at best; you generally don't get country wide markets without governments either purposefully creating them, or accidentally creating them in the process of trying to do something else.

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

#148

Post by weq » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

jlcoff wrote: post #127

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. There is no free market in the US. The US economy is cronyism where all the elites play golf together / marry among themselves, trying to only pass the minimum regalation to perpetuate the system / silence the People and where laws is actually to maximize their own interest. I'm 100% sure a federal Right-to-repair bill will actually strengthen the ac…

THIS

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

#149

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

jquery wrote: post #140

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This argument seems tenuous. I see the customer's risk. Where is your risk? The purpose of the contract is to reduce your risk. The original problem was that if you built the factory intending to sell for $25, the incumbents could reduce the price to $20 or $15, i.e. below your cost. Then you could never recover your initial investment and the high probability of that happening would deter you from entering the mar…

Companies hire economists and pay them handsomely. They do no such thing with psychics or astrologers. So the market sees value in economists.

The sector employing the largest number of economists is universities. The second largest is banks. Banks are the things that keep blowing up the economy.

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

#150

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

random314 wrote: post #122

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fo…

Match.com continued success while actively ruining products it acquires is a stark counter example

They keep buying them but people keep making more of them.

Where this serves as an instance of irrationality is that the investors in Match keep allowing them to spend money acquiring more products to ruin, as if This Time Things Will Be Different. What they ought to do is spin off what they already own with the hopes that someone less incompetent could potentially un-ruin some of them.