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Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

wsj.com

131–140 of 229 posts

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damage is already done. MBAs had no long-term vision, so in each company they infested, they made poor strategic decisions such as moving manufacturing overseas, which then forced other companies to move their manufacturing overseas. The countries they chose have zero respect for intellectual property. So now what's left are zombie companies milking their cash cows dry as international competitors arise and take…

The goal of any business is to make money, it's why they exist. Moving production overseas saves money. I don't see why this has anything to do with MBAs

The question is whether you want to make money in the short term or in the long term. You can do a lot of things that will increase profits for a few years but kill the company long term.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loads for me from multiple endpoints. Are you using Cloudflare DNS? If so, the site in question blocks DNS queries from CF. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cloudflare+archive.is

Websites can’t see a PC’s DNS configuration, so it can’t know what DNS resolvers a client is using except through some inference?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828702

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#133

Deere's competitors should go all-in on maintainability and documentation as a countermove. When it starts to eat into their marketshare they'll pay attention, until then they will just drag their heels as much as legally possible. Unfortunately Case IH, New Holland, Claas and Kubota all have a similar attitude towards their customers, which makes this an industry wide problem, not a John Deere problem. Legislators s…

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Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#135
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deere rose up to being one of the top equipment brands because they put extra effort into ensuring the equipment was repairable. There is a lot of equipment in the scrap heap from other brands that you can't get parts for. Theoretically you can repair them, but the cost to hire someone to recreate/design a one-off part can be extraordinarily expensive. Deere likes to boast that they have parts in stock for equipment…

But if the software is just a feature flag, I can write my own one of those and not pirate their software at all It sounds more like artificially inflating the price for hardware

If you wrote your own software the whole issue disappears.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#136
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my analysis of what's going to happen if this goes through. First, quote from the MOU [1]: > AFBF agrees to encourage state Farm Bureau organizations to recognize the commitments made in this MOU and refrain from introducing, promoting, or supporting federal or state "Right to Repair" legislation that imposes obligations beyond the commitments in this MOU. In the event any state or federal legislation or regul…

I only hope a very aggressive competitor emerges that disrupts Deere out of existence. Sometimes I wonder why groups such as farmers dont band together to form a collective which can protect them against such predatory companies.

They have - agricultural co-ops are popular and common for exactly those reasons. They haven't moved into ag equipment yet though (at least in a big way), I'm guessing since modern equipment is complicated and advanced enough that it makes sense to have a separate organisation that designs and builders them.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#137
post #13

Deere’s position on right to repair is heartbreaking to me. I paid for books (and beer) in college as a truck driver and mechanic for a custom harvest operation. We ran Deere 6602 combines from the 1970s, in the early 2000s. Deere’s tagline was “nothing runs like a Deere” but in my experience it was more like “nothing can be made to run like a Deere”. We spent a lot of time on maintenance but very little on repairs.…

Another MBA'ed company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

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Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of any business is to make money, it's why they exist. Moving production overseas saves money. I don't see why this has anything to do with MBAs

The question is whether you want to make money in the short term or in the long term. You can do a lot of things that will increase profits for a few years but kill the company long term.

Stock markets reward the short term. This, not MBAs, is the root issue. MBAs are just doing what the shareholders are demanding.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#139
post #68

I'm not a farmer but harvest time can be pretty intense. You might only have a narrow window to get certain crops in where the crops are ready and the weather has been right and your onward destination can accept them physically and contractually. So have all the other farms. And that crop represents your yearly income. So you have all this demand in this time window and you have equipment sitting there cause compute…

That is part of the reason why people buy Deere. They have superb logistics and the best dealer network in farm equipment.

Re: Deere to allow farmers to repair their own equipment

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoss, ask yer mechanic if his wrenches are Snap On or Harbor Freight.

>a significant price premium Obviously paying the premium for Snap-On over harbor freight is worth it, for some people. Harbor Freight still makes the most sense for a huge portion of the market, reducing the market for US made tools. Whatever the result, it will be visible in what succeeds in the market over the long term.

Yes, and Snap On is nonetheless thriving, selling US-manufactured goods at a significant price premium compared to cheap imports.
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