We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership • Hacker News Board

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#121

Post by mcguire » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

cbd1984 wrote: post #42

briantakita wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perennial polyculture food forests reduces the advantage of high tech equipment. Nature does the work of growing. Replanting is rare. Harvesting is more of a manual process.

What are the yields like? What would doing that for all food do to the price of food?

This[1] RAND paper indicates perennial polyculture farming could increase yields for poor, third-world, subsistence farmers. Which is a very good thing.

But it seems unlikely to approach the yields of annual monoculture farming. (One quote: "The biggest difference, however, comes from considering perennial cereals. Most of the cereals that people eat (such as wheat, rice, oats, and corn/maize) are grown in annual plantings and often in monocultures. Since cereals account for at least half of dietary energy world-wide, converting that production to perennial polycultures with mixed intercropping would be a significant change in worldwide agriculture.") That's a bad thing; I'd like to see more use of these techniques, for all of the primary benefits mentioned in the paper. (The yield thing for subsistence farmers is a secondary benefit.)

[1] And it would help if I added the link: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/... [PDF]

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#122

Post by allannienhuis » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

dto-games wrote: post #21

The way to end this nonsense is to write and distribute a worm that bricks every single iDevice on Earth.

No, the way to end it is to build an alternative that is better in the eyes of the people willing to pay money for the devices. Spend your energy on building something rather than tearing down.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#123

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

hharnisch wrote: post #117

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…

Which town? I'd imagine this is pretty common in places near Des Moines/Cedar Rapids suburb type towns. My observations come from living in Blakesburg, IA -- town of 400 people.

Southern Johnson County, south of Iowa City. Nothing suburban about it.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#124

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #112

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…

Why do they want to be a corn farmer? (Just curious. I don't know anything about the business of outdoor farming in Iowa.) It seems like you could make the mortgage if you can grow specialty crops - http://www.profitableplantsdigest.com/10-most-profitable-spe... Also, indoor growing is said to make certain crops grow 5x faster with 5x less resources. Here's one company that seems to be growing (they're opening a larg…

Specialty crops depend on the availability of somebody to buy them. My brother tried that last, before he gave up.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#125

Post by ghshephard » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

toufka wrote: post #86

jimmytucson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't the market handle this? If John Deere is only willing to sell lifetime licenses to operate their vehicles, thus putting the farmer at risk in ways like you described, why do farmers still buy these "licenses"? Naively, they must represent some advantage (despite their shortcomings), otherwise John Deere wouldn't be able to sell these things.

John Deere was the Apple of tractors, 20 years before Apple was Apple. It's killed off all the competition [1] for their tractors' ability to "just work" - even at a premium. Deere coupled high quality hardware with high quality service, whereas most other tractors tried to compete on cost by dropping one. Apple vs HP; Deere vs Case. It served them well in the long run, if made things dicy early on. There is no compe…

One hopes that if farmers really care about this, then JD's competition (http://seekingalpha.com/article/2523975-john-deere-versus-th...), will dive in and start providing an alternative, at a profit.

We'll see if farmers really care about this though, or whether it turns out to be something like "Replaceable Batteries" or "SD Flash slots" on smart phones.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#126

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #85

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…

"Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all." We still have family farms in North Dakota, so I guess it might be a regional thing. Also, for those counting incorporations (like a couple of newspapers), you have to be stupid not to incorporate.

Sure, every farmer left is incorporated. My Dad led that movement in the 60's. I count a family farm as one that a family lives on, owns and works.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#127

Post by protomyth » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #126

protomyth wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all." We still have family farms in North Dakota, so I guess it might be a regional thing. Also, for those counting incorporations (like a couple of newspapers), you have to be stupid not to incorporate.

Sure, every farmer left is incorporated. My Dad led that movement in the 60's. I count a family farm as one that a family lives on, owns and works.

That part of the comment was directed at some newspapers that seem to not get the fact that family farms understand liability, taxes, etc. to incorporate. I've seen some really dumb statistics on the subject.

kudos to your Dad

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#128

Post by mcguire » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

briantakita wrote: post #61

cbd1984 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the yields like? What would doing that for all food do to the price of food?

Yields are pretty high. Though there are many products. So you won't necessarily have high yielding corn, but you will overall have more food & materials. The fruits tend to be more of a mixed bag that is best distributed & consumed locally. > What would doing that for all food do to the price of food? Note that conventional petrol agriculture is heavily subsidized. Removing the subsidy will increase the price of foo…

"The fruits tend to be more of a mixed bag that is best distributed & consumed locally."

Humorously, I grew up in the Texas panhandle, an area with significant agricultural production due to modern irrigation techniques. There aren't a whole lot of fruits grown there, though. The irrigation requirements would be truly ridiculous.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#129

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

acveilleux wrote: post #111

Qworg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As that many acres is difficult to understand, that's a little over 2.6 square miles.

And John Deere makes combines as wide as 30 ft. So a 30ft. combine would have to drive 457.6 miles to harvest that farm. And that's not done at highway speed!

[deleted]

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#130

Post by belorn » Tue, Apr 21, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

I don't understand how the concept of EULA's and licenses bundled with physical products you buy can cooperate with the legal concept of fit-for-purpose. If I go to the store, see advertisement or get a sale description of a thing and then buy it, shouldn't the thing then be usable without having to go through a second agreement at some late date?

From a consumer protection side, it sound obvious that whatever the deal is between buyer and seller, it should be made clear at the point of purchase. If you can't use the machine, the car, the ithingy without being limited by a untold second contract, then its not fit for purpose and should not be sold.

Worse, from a market perspective, tricking customer in this way makes for broken competition and horrible incentives. Any companies that do not use DRM and licenses to limit unofficial repair parts and similar consumables goods will loose to those who permits its. The more you can trick the consumer, the more you can earn money on products after sale, money which the competition has to earn by making a more expensive competitive product.