Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair • Hacker News Board

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#101

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:34 PM UTC

baremetal wrote: post #93

thomasjb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that tractor manufacturing was down to bolting together bought in components at this point, such as the various Turkish Perkins engine + ZF gearbox + Carrero front axle + random cab companies cab, with a bit of fabrication to make parts to hold it together. A coop building a highly repairable tractor could make this their value proposition by publishing the diagrams for the fabricated parts…

> There's little reason that a fairly normal fabrication shop couldn't be making tractors, and making them competitively with mainline manufacturers Economies of scale. We don't live in a fantasy land where things work a certain way just because it would be nice if they did.

To add to that: if I'm purchasing a hugely expensive piece of capital equipment that my business depends on, it's nice that I can repair it myself when I have downtime, but if I need it up and running tomorrow, it's probably worth it to bring in the repair tech who does it day in, day out and can get it done a lot faster than me.

That local fab shop would now have to provide 24-hour on-call service, which is a completely different business.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#102

Post by zamnos » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

lb1lf wrote: post #74

zamnos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only saved you $4,750 if your time is worth $0/hr. Assume it was two eight-hour days, times two people, or 32 hours of labor. If you make $149/hr, it's cheaper for you to pay the quoted cost. If you don't, it's cheaper for you to do it. Which it sounds like it was. But thinking you just "saved" $4,750 doing it yourself isn't the right way to look at it.

I considered bringing up that point, but figured it was implied by the post - believe me, no small-time farmer makes anywhere near $149/hour, I doubt it would even be $14.90/hr - so effectively, you can assume your work to be worth $0/hr as a first-order approximation. Hence I do engineering instead. The farm is just an expensive hobby. :)

$150/hr is $300k TC, and the vast majority of people don't make that. (I don't.) Let's say the average farmer makes $45k/yr or $22.50/hr. $22.50*32-hours of labor = $720. So $250 for the part and $720 for the labor = $920 vs $5,000. Still up by $4,080, but then we also have to add in the increase in knowledge and skills that came from performing the work yourself. Let's say automotive school costs $1,000, and that the hands-on work was instructive and counts for a quarter of that, so that's $250 from doing it yourself so that works out to be $4,330. Which is a pretty good deal!

Homesteading is a dream of mine, but I may be too rooted in the comforts of working in tech for it. Maybe if I win the startup lottery.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#103

Post by zamnos » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #83

zamnos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only saved you $4,750 if your time is worth $0/hr. Assume it was two eight-hour days, times two people, or 32 hours of labor. If you make $149/hr, it's cheaper for you to pay the quoted cost. If you don't, it's cheaper for you to do it. Which it sounds like it was. But thinking you just "saved" $4,750 doing it yourself isn't the right way to look at it.

> If you make $149/hr, it's cheaper for you to pay the quoted cost. If you're salaried at Google for 40 hours/week with no paid overtime and no side gigs allowed, the median value of your time is $149/hr but the marginal price is $0/hr because working an extra hour doesn't make you any extra money. I suspect farming is similar - it's not like you can take that free hour, add 4 square feet to your field and produce $1…

If you're salaried at Google, but the extra hour of work gets you closer to promo, which results in a pay bump, is it really worth $0 though?

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#104

Post by baremetal » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #101

baremetal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's little reason that a fairly normal fabrication shop couldn't be making tractors, and making them competitively with mainline manufacturers Economies of scale. We don't live in a fantasy land where things work a certain way just because it would be nice if they did.

To add to that: if I'm purchasing a hugely expensive piece of capital equipment that my business depends on, it's nice that I can repair it myself when I have downtime, but if I need it up and running tomorrow, it's probably worth it to bring in the repair tech who does it day in, day out and can get it done a lot faster than me. That local fab shop would now have to provide 24-hour on-call service, which is a comple…

> it's probably worth it to bring in the repair tech who does it day in, day out and can get it done a lot faster than me.

Indeed, and that is cheaper than keeping a guy on staff that can fix your equipment.

The biggest farmers I know keep someone on staff. The next tier down use outside repair services. And the smallest guys (I am a small time farmer, emphasis on small) repair their own stuff.

So in the context of myself and my own needs right to repair is crucial. But I can argue for the right to repair in general as well: Flexibility is key, in light of creaky supply chains.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#105

Post by elsjaako » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #20

voakbasda wrote: post #10

I suspect that John Deere and friends will find a way to challenge this in court and -- if they eventually lose -- find a way to maliciously comply with the law. Their behavior has been actively hostile to their customers for years, and they have zero incentive to change. Like Apple's repair kits mentioned in another comment, I suspect their strategy will involve providing tools that cost nearly as much to rent as it…

Apple's repair kits are a weird comparison here. The rental is $49, and that's probably at cost or close to it given the shipping costs both ways for a 79-pound box. There's nothing malicious compliance about it... it's just a pain in the ass to repair modern ultra-light and ultra-efficient phones the "right" way.

What the phone repair companies want is to be able to buy parts (without all the weird rules that apple has for licensed companies now).

The repair shops can figure out how to glue a screen to a housing on their own. The problem is they can't buy new parts, and they can't swap used parts because of software locks.

Apple very much found a way to allow repairs while preventing it from being profitable, and it's likely John Deere will (try to) do the same.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#106

Post by elsjaako » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #64

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #7

But will John Deere do what Apple did? Here’s one example: “Apple shipped me a 79-pound iPhone repair kit to fix a 1.1-ounce battery” https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi... “I’m starting to think Apple doesn’t want us to repair them”

That article is bunk. Louis Rossmann and others in the right to repair community have praised Apple for providing these repair kits. They let you do factory-quality repairs. What the author of that article doesn’t realize is that all of Apple’s modern phones are waterproof. To achieve that factory seal against liquid ingress requires fancy adhesives. You can’t open these things with a jeweller’s screwdriver. It takes…

AFAIK Louis Rossmann has criticized Apple for creating a really unpractical program, calling it "virtually worthless":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwgpTDluufY

Or is there a more recent video where he changes his mind?

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#107

Post by lb1lf » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

zamnos wrote: post #102

lb1lf wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered bringing up that point, but figured it was implied by the post - believe me, no small-time farmer makes anywhere near $149/hour, I doubt it would even be $14.90/hr - so effectively, you can assume your work to be worth $0/hr as a first-order approximation. Hence I do engineering instead. The farm is just an expensive hobby. :)

$150/hr is $300k TC, and the vast majority of people don't make that. (I don't.) Let's say the average farmer makes $45k/yr or $22.50/hr. $22.50*32-hours of labor = $720. So $250 for the part and $720 for the labor = $920 vs $5,000. Still up by $4,080, but then we also have to add in the increase in knowledge and skills that came from performing the work yourself. Let's say automotive school costs $1,000, and that th…

>> Homesteading is a dream of mine, but I may be too rooted in the comforts of working in tech for it. Maybe if I win the startup lottery.

-I guess that depends on how you define homesteading; I quite enjoy myself living on a farm with no animals larger than a cat (And I could do without the cat, thankyouverymuch!), having a day job in engineering and spending some - well, a lot of - my sparetime picking up useful skills, like how to fix a tractor on the cheap, forestry, digging trenches, building sheds, maintaining said sheds, filling them with firewood, repaving roads...

I have the good fortune of having my in-laws living next door, though; they've been running the farm since forever and I pick up all sorts of useful things, not to mention they still put in a ton of work. I wouldn't even be able to keep the land from degrading unless we had them to help us out; so homesteading, even by a quite loose definition of the term, means you'll have a hard time doing it part-time.

Hence winning the startup lottery first probably is a good idea; then you can (with any luck) outsource some of the back-breaking stuff, too.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#108

Post by mistrial9 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #86

rgmerk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, Dad ran a photocopier dealership. He had a team of highly-paid salesmen (and they were pretty much all men) driving around the countryside convincing school principals and the like that they needed new photocopiers. The profit margin on the machines was basically zero. But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every…

> But the salespeople earned their keep, because every large photocopier sold also had a service contract that charged a fee for every copy made. And without the service contracts, schools are fucked when the printer breaks down. Like, here in Germany, a single copier can run through entire crates worth of paper in a day. It's absolutely ridiculous how fossilized our education system has become. We should be using la…

no - laptops and tablets with e-books break the attention span of students from minutes into only seconds.. Humans are able to see things that change constantly, but there is a cost. Secondly, abundance past a certain level creates apathy and overwhelm. Third, there is a realization that giving any screens to children below a certain age is just basically harmful to regular brain development.

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#109

Post by KevinBasto » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #31

Gustomaximus wrote: post #23

What I don't understand is why a couple of the higher quality tractor companies have not started pushing hard to brand "we support repair" and having available online manuals and software to support this. This seems a perfect marketing/product platform for an underdog that also believes this. Massey, Fendt or similar could really differentiate themself and take market share on the back of this I suspect. Especially w…

> What I don't understand is why a couple of the higher quality tractor companies have not started pushing hard to brand "we support repair" and having available online manuals and software to support this. This seems a perfect marketing/product platform for an underdog that also believes this. My understanding is basically all high-capital machinery makes a _lot_ of money from support contracts and repairs. I think…

well, certainly a customer that feels screwed will hate to bring you money, so even if you can force someone to get customer support from you will hate you, and eventually when they can get out, they will, no company is exempted from this reality, people like to feel companies care about them and their product or service makes their lifes easier, else they fly away, but i think those who push this shitty ideas are more likely directives born in rich environments, they don't understand the customer and try to optimize to cut corners instead of trying to be relevant on the market, or shall we say, they rest on their laurels

Re: Colorado passes agricultural Right to Repair

#110

Post by voakbasda » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

conradev wrote: post #28

voakbasda wrote: post #10

I suspect that John Deere and friends will find a way to challenge this in court and -- if they eventually lose -- find a way to maliciously comply with the law. Their behavior has been actively hostile to their customers for years, and they have zero incentive to change. Like Apple's repair kits mentioned in another comment, I suspect their strategy will involve providing tools that cost nearly as much to rent as it…

John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding in January: https://www.fb.org/news-release/afbf-signs-right-to-repair-m...

As a farmer, I was extremely angry to hear that the Farm Bureau negotiated with these terrorists. Their MOUs were not worth the paper they were written on, and I am glad to see some legislators saw through their machinations (as mentioned in a sibling comment here).

The Farm Bureau should be ashamed for its part in this, and this caused them to lose my own trust that they will represent farmers in other important matters. It actually makes me embarrassed to be a member.