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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’

#151

Post by siruncledrew »

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…

Pretty soon there will only be some kind of Equipment as a Service subscription model.

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

#152

Post by foepys »

asdff wrote: post #134
cplusplusfellow wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this equipment weighs 150,000 pounds. The dealership lets you demo the machine for a certain number of hours and then you get used to it. It’s hard for an area to support more than a few dealerships because this equipment isn’t rotated out very often (10-20 years?). It’s hard to unseat an entrenched player, but loss of right to repair is a big step towards an upstart moving in.

They should do what lab supply companies do who have similar constraints (hard to support dealerships for niche microscopes and such, expensive to ship and time consuming to set up sensitive microscopes and such): Salespeople. Have them make the rounds to the customers like these farmers. If there is interest among the farmers in a given area, you could then organize a demo day, email your clients about it, and inter…

It's not only about demoing. As a farmer you have very few days to get your seeds out and very few days to get your harvest in. If you machine breaks down for too long, you might lose a lot of money. So you only get machines from somebody with mechanics and a full inventory of parts nearby. You cannot wait a day for something to arrive when you are on the field, you need to get it fixed NOW.

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

#153

Post by random314 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #150
random314 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Match.com investors are very clever and rational. Match.com business model is clear. Milk users for money with market segmentation. Building a good product will not make them any money. It will financially ruin them.

The core functionality of these apps is very cheap to build, ideally these apps should be near free.

What match.com does is capture the network. When a new cheap and better network appears, they offer the founders the kind of cash that simply cannot be earned by running their original network. For eg, okcupid was free. There was no way to make money from it. And then as per their plan - they ruin it.

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

#154

Post by siruncledrew »

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 highly doubt the government's core stance is "Heavens no, we can't intervene in the free market!" when the market is not even a literal "free market" to begin with. That's more a theoretical concept than a practical implementation.

To the government: i) they get a ton of John Deere lobbying dollars, ii) John Deere can always loom the potential of lost jobs over politicians' heads, iii) Farmers are not happy yet still begrudgingly using the system so things are not totally falling apart.... and, of course, iv) this matter doesn't really effect politicians personally.

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

#155

Post by AnthonyMouse »

random314 wrote: post #153
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Match.com investors are very clever and rational. Match.com business model is clear. Milk users for money with market segmentation. Building a good product will not make them any money. It will financially ruin them. The core functionality of these apps is very cheap to build, ideally these apps should be near free. What match.com does is capture the network. When a new cheap and better network appears, they offer th…

So why are VCs not lining up to create a dozen new dating sites and take all of Match Group's buyout money?

1) Make a non-ruined dating product.

2) Get users. Should be easy because the incumbents are intentionally ruined and turnover is high.

3) Profit. (Match Group buyout)

Worst case they run out of money and you have a successful dating product which continues to siphon their users because it's the non-ruined one.

Not sure why it's so hard to make money from something like that. Sell flowers and chocolate and movie tickets to a captive audience. Do promotions for entertainment venues. Be Groupon for dating stuff.

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

#156

Post by midasuni »

rendall wrote: post #115
fn-mote wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This argument seems tenuous. I see the customer's risk. Where is your risk? A source with details of this argument would also help. If you have are an economist, please mention it - I'll take the argument more seriously on your say-so.

What's the risk to the customer? They get a $25 thing tomorrow or they pay the normal price.

They go bust as the cartel drops to $20, so the company locked into $25 is paying over the odds compared to competitors

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

#157

Post by HWR_14 »

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.

It's clearly nonsaterical, and based on the studies that show the crash of 2008 was directly attributable to the removal of regulations in the late '90s on.

It's not a statement that some people don't argue with, but it doesn't seem to be a question that without Glass-Stegal removal, the 2008 crisis would have not spread as far as it did.

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

#158

Post by HWR_14 »

aeternum wrote: post #143
heavyset_go wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's nonsense. You can start a bond rating agency tomorrow. It just won't mean anything because no one will trust it and you won't be in a position to demand access to company internals to inform your ratings. And the SEC won't recognize your ratings (it has recognized additional firms in the past, but it's nontrivial) which means for a lot of regulator purposes your ratings have no effect.

If they got rid of regulations tomorrow, the first barriers to entry would keep you from starting a ratings agency anyway.

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

#159

Post by heavyset_go »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108
badRNG wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> 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.

The Phoebus cartel[1] existed for quite some time, and its operation contradicts this argument. They captured the world-wide light bulb market with agreements between manufacturers. It took WWII to put a dent in it.

Today, you can look at the price fixing that happens in the mobile app store and payments markets. 99% of each market is dominated by a two company duopoly. Prices in those markets have remained steady for over a decade, and any changes to pricing and terms are adopted in lockstep between Google and Apple. They've effectively captured 15% to 30% of all revenue collected in mobile apps.

Neither cartel relied on regulatory capture, but both cartels recognized that without collusion, it would be a race to the bottom if they compete on price, so they became complicit in ensuring that doesn't happen. It only costs so much to make a light bulb, download an app or process payments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

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

#160

Post by HWR_14 »

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.

I'm pretty sure there isn't a free black market. I'm fairly sure drug dealing is very regulated by armed forces in any geographic region and historically most major criminal enterprises are similarly regulated.
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