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 to national security.
> 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 bankruptcy and laws set in place to avoid predatory techniques like this moving forward. I'm not hopeful though, and the stock market has certainly voted in favor of John Deere.
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.
Bailouts aren't regulation, they're what happens when people are allowed to make messes that they aren't responsible (either through lack of ability or purchased privilege) for cleaning up.
All regulation is ostensibly about the government stepping in and "cleaning up" private behavior that is detrimental to society. Bailouts fit that description too, so they're very similar if not in name.
The government stepped in and decided that it would not let a company fail as "the market decided" it should, but instead it should change that outcome and spend money to keep these failed companies running. This is certainly not a case of the market running itself.
Ignoring the massive regulations on banks and inter dependency between banking and fiscal and economic policy for a minute, you might say "oh but the market did run itself and these banks crashed and it would have been bad for society if that were to happen so the government had to step in". But that's how all regulation is justified.
I think that's where the other comments are coming from anyway. But I'm not sure it's entirely fair, because I think it's not unreasonable to say some amount of regulation makes sense to prevent problems that would require more invasive and costly regulation or intervention later.
In other words, heap big regulation bad not mean little regulation bad.
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.
it's all about the money, no matter the cost, that's why they mostly operate in grey zones/areas, always trying to circumvent the law somehow. "What do you mean we can't dump all the waste into the river? we actually have to dispose it properly and pay for it?"
and I get it they want to increase their profit. Even if a company wanted to dispose it properly he won't be able to offer competitive prices if nobody else does it
Exactly right, and that's why we have regulations. Even in a situation where _nobody_ wants to e.g. dump all their waste in the river, if you're allowed to do it, it's essentially mandatory to do it if you want to compete.
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.
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.
> 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 wish more people understood that markets include government regulation to ensure they operate in a competitive way. In a competitive market there must be so many buyers and sellers so that each has a negligible impact on the market price [1]. Obviously governments try to prevent monopolies to uphold this assumption. Regulation must also prevent market failures. Such failures occur with externalities. The most famous example being a factory that pollutes the environment thus producing negative health effects on people but incurring no cost for that damage without government intervention. Another example of a failure is information asymmetry (the doctor that recommends a procedure he knows you don't need but you trust him for his information) which is illegal.
My point is, markets do include government regulation. Academic debate is not centered on whether or not markets include government regulation by microeconomics definition. The debate is how much, where, when and how. If "free market" is defined as no government intervention, it is not an accepted practice and even conservative economists would not recommend it. I think there is a reason the term "free market" is not included in my microeconomics textbook. We look for a competitive market (described by the desired result), not a "free market" (described by the methods, not the result).
[1] Mankiw, Principle of Microeconomics 8th edition
You in no way responded to the content in my post.
"free speech" and "free markets" are completely separate topics which may or may not be mutually exclusive, both of which are studied well academically. I make no claims on free speech. I simply provided a basic academic background to markets in microeconomics.
Then you provide random sayings to try to discredit my post which have no logical connection to my content.
There is a lot of ignorance in economics. And while ignorance is okay, I am ignorant in a lot of fields, ignorance without recognizing what you do not know is dangerous. This is a well studied field and America's founders even agreed government should have some say in markets. Here is a well cited source for that, search for "free markets". Of note definitions are important and clearly the authors of the link below include government regulation in a "free market" which the definition I gave and the one you responded to do not.
Consider this:
a) literally zero government intervention.
b) some government intervention, to keep the market competitive, as described above.
c) total government control.
What do you, jlcoff, call a)? If I understood you correctly, it's "free market". What would you call b) and c) then?
There is no doubt that a) is strictly incompatible with any government regulation or intervention. Label those two concepts however you want, but I don't think anyone argumented against that.
A lot of people seem to use "Free Market" for b) instead of a) and that is confusing.
I agree with Diesel555's idea of calling b) a "competitive market" as it avoids a labeling confusion between a) and b).
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 cartels is seen in countries whose governments have either been effectively captured by industry or are otherwise incapable of intervening in the affairs of the market. Prior to antitrust legislation, cartels dominated industries at the dawn of the capitalist economy.
Merging with competition allows both players to charge more without providing greater value, which is always the best option for both players.
> 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 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.
Under this theory, monopolies form because of regulatory capture. The large incumbents don't want to compete in a commodity market, so they pay off the government to erect barriers to entry. Then once no one new can enter the market, they can buy each other or collude or use conscious parallelism without risk of new competitors.
It seems to me that it's kind of both. Without the second one, companies would rarely if ever get big enough that no one could compete with them. But once they are, somebody's got to break them up.
Most importantly, we need to fix the regulatory environment so that it facilitates rather than impairs competition, or it will just happen again.
Entering a market is not free. Suppose you want to start a chip business because the small handful of existing manufacturers have formed a cartel. To be competitive you need hundreds of billions in starting capital and you must be able to survive price dumping longer than the members of the cartel.
This is the purpose of the contract. You have to spend $200B, so you go to several large customers and sign contracts contingent on your ability to supply which will guarantee you $300B in future revenue. Now you can raise funding against the guaranteed revenue and the dumping can't change that because the contracts are already signed.
To prevent this the incumbents could go in and undercut you before you actually build anything, but that's not much of a cartel anymore then. Anyone could "compete with them" just by threatening to raise funding.
> 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.
> 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 market to begin with.
The customer takes the risk because if you don't enter the market, they're paying $40 to the incumbents.
> If you have are an economist, please mention it - I'll take the argument more seriously on your say-so.
Professional economists have a reputation that compares disfavorably with psychics and astrologers. If an economist gives you your horoscope, make sure to get a second opinion. If the second opinion is from another economist, expect it to be different.
"The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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.
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.
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.
You can't click your fingers to produce a dozen new dating sites every year because of network effects. There can be at most one new successful dating site every year, which the 30B$ match group can buy out for 300M$.
> There can be at most one new successful dating site every year, which the 30B$ match group can buy out for 300M$.
Then why aren't they asking for more money? Match Group to maintain their $30B enterprise has to buy you out or you by being a non-ruined dating site will destroy their entire company by out-competing them. That should be worth substantially more than 1% of the company. (It also seems to be that it is; Tinder got $3B.)
Match Group owns more than 45 subsidiaries. Obviously the size of the network necessary to be viable would support more than one other challenger. But if there were 15 each of size similar to their own subsidiaries, they'd still have to buy all of them or whichever ones they didn't buy would continue to eat their market share by being non-ruined, and then have to be bought for a higher price later.
I am not really sure where you are going with this, but the reality speaks for itself.
Match makes shitty products optimized for revenue. Good dating products optimized for users have low revenue and valuation. Match acquires virtually all of them and keeps its monopoly alive and thriving.
The premise isn't that someone with a lot of money can't buy up all the existing participants in a given market. It's that if they do, new competitors will keep appearing. Which we see happening.
The question is, how does that turn out? The theory says people should keep creating dating products to make Match buy, because it costs less to do than they have to pay. That doesn't mean it happens instantaneously. It doesn't mean they can't buy some of them. But it's an evolutionary process. They buy the ones they can buy, until one shows up they can't. Maybe because there are too many of them. Maybe one gets too big too fast. Maybe the owners are some stubborn purists who refuse to sell. It hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't.
Apparently Facebook is getting into the dating game. They already have the network effect and Match doesn't have the money to buy them. Facebook sucks, but now where's your monopoly?
You are arguing using a hypothetical future which doesn't even remotely exist.
And what's to stop FB dating from sucking. So the final solution is to replace one monopoly with an even bigger one? That's just talking out of both sides of the mouth.
> 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.
> 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.
They had intended the cartel to last for thirty years (1925 to 1955). The cartel ceased operations in 1939 owing to the outbreak of World War II.
So they didn't actually last all that long.
Both organisations co-ordinated the trading of patents and market penetration.
Patents are a government-granted monopoly.
> Neither cartel relied on regulatory capture
This is not remotely true for Apple and Google. The laws are written to allow them to exclude competitors. Why doesn't Amazon buy a bunch of iPhones and modify the software to include the Amazon App Store and then sell them to customers? Laws prohibit this.
And then it's the same situation again -- copyright too is a government-granted monopoly. Finding that a monopoly exists where the government prohibits anyone from competing with them was the original theory. Let's have 14 year copyrights again and see how the monopoly holds up when Apple has to compete with a fork of the original iPhone which would be out of copyright by now.
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.
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.
I kinda agree, and kinda don't. Often regulation (sometimes unintended) creates situations where companies basically have a walled garden, without these regulations - they wouldn't be able to do what they do. Think electric companies in a lot of places, they put in regulation to protect these companies, presumably because its such a significant start up cost to get going. But somehow these utilities can continue fighting for 0 competition - from a legal standpoint.
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.
Black markets can be thought of as truly free markets that are free from antitrust action. These markets, if permitted to exist for an extended period of time, are dominated by cartels. "The Little Guy" doesn't get to be disruptive in black markets, because they are fully captured by cartels that will squash, subsume, or merge with any meaningful competition.
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.
An economic source that the black market is alive and healthy? I'm not sure what you're asking for to be honest - I don't think anyone contests the fact that the black market has been growing for a very long time.
People speculating on food prices/availablity (or even worse, hoarding it to influence price) is usually not taken very kindly by the population or goverment because of the results in massive social upheaval.
Food is actually subsidized to an extent, because not having your basic needs met usually results in massive undermining of the power of the state.
> 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 actual system (ie. bill does the exact opposite of its name)
>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.
> Deere & Co. is the largest farm equipment corporation in the world, selling twice as much machinery as its two next-largest competitors combined. Deere controls 53 percent of the U.S. market for large tractors and 60 percent of the U.S. market for farm combines. These sub-sectoral monopolies help explain Deere’s 18 percent share of the overall farming equipment market, the largest of any corporation in a market where the four largest operators control 45 percent of all sales.
> Deere has also bought up dominant producers of heavy machinery in other sectors. It purchased the largest road construction equipment maker in the world for $5 billion in 2017, and the world’s largest timber harvesting machinery company for an undisclosed sum in 2000.
> Deere did not come by this control honestly. It bought market share, used public resources to capture private profit, and engineered elaborate financial shell games to hide its profits from U.S. tax authorities.
> Having negated meaningful competitive pressures, Deere does what monopolists everywhere do: It abuses its size advantage to bully competitors, customers, and workers, prioritizing shareholder interests over all others.
In the US, they have a monopoly in certain markets. Note that anti-trust regulators don't use the layman definition of monopoly, either. The definition they use is a company with significant and durable market power, such as having the ability to raise prices or exclude competition[2].
> alleging the company’s proprietary tractor software is creating a monopoly that’s unfair to small farmers. (from the article)
The monopoly is in repairing their own goods, not on the tractor market. Usually the debate for right to repair includes the argument that repairing a good should be a competitive market on its own. The definition of the market is key (is it the tractor market or the repair of John Deer tractors market). If it's the first, debatable on the monopoly. If it's the second, clearly a monopoly.
I do recognize you were responding to the OP's claim that John Deer is a monopoly, not to the article's description of it. But I wanted to mention the article's description as related to right to repair.
> If the government intervenes, it would undermine the free market
If "custom contracts that give access and custody but have constraints" are the sort of thing the free market enables, it should be undermined. People are supposed to own things. This "you own nothing" bullshit needs to end.
Government can do the other thing. It can "stop interfering" and refuse to protect those monopolists. Make it so that once they fail co conduct business in fair (however that defined) manner deny them rights to chase others in court.
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 NEVER go back (even if they course correct some years later). From that point on I'm a vocal detractor of the brand. If no quality alternative exists it's even worse because you know the company is screwing you knowing you have no good alternatives.
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.
The part that seems strange is the "growing percentage" part of your cynicism. While a large number of companies do this, it seems like number has always been pretty high.
It may be that companies are becoming more capable of doing so in these grand ways as software eats everything and they can use copyright law to continue to exert ownership over part of what they sold you.
This isn't anything new to be fair. Marketing books from the early 1900s talk about the strategy of attracting your flock of customers with a product but then cutting costs by offering a substandard product after you've created a reputation with the initial quality product.
It's like the Lord of the Rings.... the power of the ring (greed in the system) is too powerful for most (companies) to bare. The world needs more Frodos.
Also an established line of credit basically with the farm makes buying them easier than competitive offerings by other manufacturers. There’s still enormous cultural inertia with Deere.
Instead of a special right to repair law, it may be more prudent to expand anti-competition law to include the practice of precluding competition via impeding repair.
This has become a general problem. There seems to be more money in "software services" than in building tractors and motors.
John Deere is not unique. All common rail engines require a visit from a "certified engineer" who has access to the software. This is terrible in the marine industry where you can't get one in the middle of the ocean and you can't repair yourself either. What do you do? Do you sail to a harbor? You can't unless you have a sailboat. Get a tow to the nearest Volvo/Yanmar dealer? You must be kidding, thousand of miles away?
So yes, that lawsuit makes sense.
As for a class action lawsuit some of the comments in the thread misunderstand how it works:
1. Secure one or two plaintiffs. Two or three is better. Make sure they represent owners well: no conflicts, not paid to sue, good/clean plaintiffs.
2. Find the right location for the lawsuit. Location is very important in the US. Not only the state but the county. This is VERY important. Good plaintiff lawyers know where to sue.
3. Get your judge to certify the class action. "this lawsuit is on behalf of all users of John Deere tractors, etc". This is ALSO very important. John Deere will fight that. They will claim that those two plaintiffs do not represent the class, blabla.
4. Fight in court. Other plaintiffs have nothing to do. If the class action lawsuit wins on behalf of thousands of owners this represents a lot of money. It costs nothing to plaintiffs. Lawyers typically get 30%, sometimes less. If they are too greedy (they all are) the judge may object and cut down the fees.
5. Users can “opt out” of the payment if John Deere loses in court after appeals. Most plaintiffs do not opt out because they can’t afford to fight big corporations.
Unfortunately corporations are not always fair. We have seen many, many cases when poor farmer John just could not pay the exorbitant costs imposed by John Deere. Understand that these people have learned to be self-sufficient. They weld their broken massive tools in the field. They call the mobile repair shop to fix and tune their engines. Now they can't do anything. That massive, expensive John Deer is like a beached whale. Nothing you can do about it.
Hence class action lawsuits in the US. Some of them are abusive (i.e.recent att phone bills, 100M customers collect $1, lawyers collect $30M), but sometimes there are no other ways (asbestos, workplace injuries, brain damage near chemical waste from mining). Folks outside the US struggle to understand the system.
It is why today you can enjoy Non-Apple store repairs to your phone, non OEM parts for your car or non branded cartridges for your printer.
I wish that such a lawsuit will force John Deere to change its practices, like it forced other companies to do so.
I get what you are saying.... that we can use the law to gain the right to repair.
But step back - how is any of that morally right? Why should people have to fight corporation in court to get a basic right to repair the thing they bought? Its insane!
Surely, if there was any sense to this, the presumption would be in favour of the purchaser by default! Regardless of any service contract or other legal agreement. That it should be for the corporation to argue in court that there are some special circumstances that mean that default ruling does not apply, even though you bought (not rented) their product.
The fact it is this way round tells you all you need to know. At best, the consumer can waste time (10 years?) and money (lots) to hopefully (but perhaps not) prove the obvious case. OTOH, there is no incentive for the corporation not to try the dirtiest most unfriendly tactics they think they can get away with. Esp. if they have a near monopoly in their domain (eg John Deere).
For this reason and others, I see governance and law as captured entities - they are captured by corporations and we the consumers are there to have our wealth extracted from while retaining very few rights. Frankly, it is neo-feudalism. Or fascism (corporate+government together).
Stallman and FSF predicted this decades ago, but they failed to foresee not many people really care about being able to control their computers as much as big expensive hardware purchases like vehicles. DRM and general lack of free-software rights is the root-cause.
I agree with you say verisimi. Pretty sad.
As much as I hate trial lawyers, as of today we would not be better off without them. Bad corporations will squeeze money out of you as much as they can.
Can't John Deere just have customers sign away their right to sue or be party to a class action? They could make that a requirement for new customers or customers seeking repairs.
They can. Up to a point. If you push too much one day you will face a jury composed of normal people.
We have experienced that in some states with non compete agreements. It got to the point that you could no longer work anywhere else. Sometimes the company would make you sign documents saying that they owned the IP you were creating AFTER your departure.
Don't push too hard because at one point you will that jury of normal people. And they will make their mind very quickly.
In EU, NZ/AU and probably many more places Tailpipe gas emissions test is routine. There are even mobile units with portable Emissions measurement systems. Meanwhile even California doesnt mandate tailpipe tests :o
I didn't say anything about testing. I've never heard of anyone doing emissions testing on tractors after it leaves the factory. I said that the EPA will get mad if someone changes the emissions. The EPA has already hinted that making it possible for random people to violate emissions by changes the software will be a bad thing. Not sure how this will turn out in court and laws, but it is a factor.
When I press people on what parts of their tractors they can't do now it generally comes down to something that would make the tractor not pass emissions if it was tested. Parts and computer test equipment is readily available.
This is precisely my point. Rest of the world tests, they test actual exhaust emissions, and there are regulations and penalties.
US on the other hand legislated computer DRM "for engines" because its cheaper/faster, anything beyond is a super special case. My favorite is actual tailpipe test commercial trucks must pass in NY - they test opacity of gas aka "is the smoke visible?" :o and look for physical presence of all mandated emission hardware for that model/year/exemption status. All of that theater instead of using proper exhaust gas analyzers.
>Parts and computer test equipment is readily available.
Can you download standalone John Deere service software? or did you mean signing up for their paid SAAS package?
While this is great news; I unfortunately have to wonder how effective this is going to be. We need likely a much, much larger subset of farmers joining such a class action lawsuit - ideally from as many states as possible - to get this to change.
Out of their greed; John Deere will fight this with all they have.
I still think the best solution to this is still a startup that can create tractors that don’t require repairs by a first party. I understand the difficulties behind such an operation, but I’m unfortunately not sure how successful such a lawsuit will be in America without the hell of a lot more ‘ooomph’ behind it.
> I still think the best solution to this is still a startup that can create tractors that don’t require repairs by a first party.
You're still going up against massively entrenched and influential opposition that could likely undercut a startup's prices and then raise them again once the competition dies.
We saw it with the rideshare companies. Their business models are flexible enough to take losses when necessary in order to beat out alternatives and then programmatically raise the prices again once they've captured the market again.
The issue is they are operating in the printer ink model where the initial price is discounted based on expected future revenue. That’s a hard nut to crack because any open competition is fighting from a seeming price disadvantage.
Is it possible to invest in this lawsuit? Considering how Peter Theil invested in the Hogan lawsuit, perhaps there should be a legal investment concept.
I would like to see a much broader decision, something
* applying to all products, not just ag
* allowing my choice of parts
* allow me or my choice of shop to work on it
* no cryptographic DRM'ed parts
* access to schematics, shop manuals, and admin/interface software
I've been hearing about farmers trying to organize for at least the past 5 years to tackle this. I'm not going to hold my breath for much progress, sadly.
An "open tractor" from a new company is also going to be hard to justify with how thin margins are with farming.
Maybe some techies can get together to make repair easier. New electronic control boards, diagrams of how to machine their own replacement parts, etc. for the most popular tractors people own.
It's a tough problem to solve, but one worth fighting any way we can.
No entity can legally own more than 10% of John Deere's stock. I forget why that rule is. Something they are in, perhaps finance? If farmers are acting as a group they probably would be in trouble for individual purchases that collectively violate the rules.
JD may effectively have a monopoly where the farmer lives. You're quite dependent on getting parts, help , knowledge, service, etc. locally with equipment like this.
disclosure: im a diesel mechanic by trade and Mahindra's are a real treat!!
I absolutely endorse Mahindra but if youre outside TN theyre kinda hard to come by. the tractors are less reliable than more modern western designs but faster and easier to repair by far. new head seals rocker arms valve guide seals and an oil change was 6 hours of labor and i actually started to enjoy it. bolts are over-built for what you need in some cases. the gyrovator has some of the beefiest engine mounts ive come across in a long time (looking at you Western Star)
im sure every one comes with a free "you dont want that" from the usual scumbags at the dealer but if you have an engine lift you can service your own Jivo very easily from tip to tail. the only reason our shop saw one was because the owner couldnt safely work on the engine (gyrovator series) as he was 71 years old.
less reliable than more modern western designs but faster and easier to repair by far
This sounds similar to the contrast between older and newer cars too; the older ones were designed to last with periodic scheduled maintenance, whereas newer ones are designed to have no maintenance for their "design life", after which it's difficult to repair.
kubota parts were faster for us to order since theyre used in construction all over the US and theyre a little more interchangeable, but you make that difference up with mahindra because you can fix more of it in the field to begin with.
I lived in a area where there were a lot of small and fairly poor farmers. I also had a machine shop. You can see where this is going: come harvest time tons of stuff that had been sitting for a year suddenly had to work 16 hours per day and predictably quite a bit of it would break in the field, usually simple stuff, bearings, shafts, welds. So once word got around that I was an ok welder with a machine shop every year a couple of farmers would find their way to my door with broken balers, older harvesters and s on. Fixing those would keep us in produce and meat for months. But I never ran into a Mahindra, though they were in use.
Tightening emissions rules are having an effect on this, at least here in the US. My small late-model Kubota has a diesel particulate filter and a fair bit of electronics to manage it. I've been told that if you don't follow the emissions instructions, the system will shut down and a Kubota official will have to come out to "unlock" your tractor.
Having owned both CUT without any emissions control(1981) and a Kubota w/ DPF, I'll take the DPF every day. It's quieter, cleaner and the emissions controls are even more straightforward than other modern diesels. If you have a full DPF, you just regen it for 10-15(usually while you're working) and you're good to go.
Aftermarket support. JD and Kubota are almost guaranteed to have attachments, enhancements, etc made specifically for them.
My Massey Ferguson has some offerings, but not nearly as many as those two. It’s similar for the other also-rans: New Holland, Kioti, Mahindra, RK, Bronson, and so on.
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 interested parties would make time for it, especially if you are offering them a potential out from John Deere's yoke.
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.
You assume the customer has the information needed to make that decision before the purchase. In reality, most people don't have a reliable way to compare the repairability of products/brands before making a purchase. Even if they did, if the majority of the market doesn't valie repair, that can easily ruin it for those who do. It especially punishes those who are behind economically and can't afford replacements or "authorized" repair options (assuming they are even available).
Farmers are equipment nerds. It comes with the territory. They aren't an ignorant consumer market, which is why we're seeing a big push for right to repair from that industry - hopefully they carry the torch for ignorant consumers in computers and cars and other markets.
From what I’ve seen, maintenance is an afterthought, and even then only until something breaks. That’s where the right to repair comes in. Had they done the preventative maintenance, it likely wouldn’t have broken, alas…
The example is of course egregious ($600 for a software update for a wire that got wet, basically). I fully support being able to repair your own stuff but I have no idea how you regulate this so companies don't gouge "owners" for aftermarket services.
Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive). I really wish rechargeable batteries had interchangeable form factors like normal batteries. I can't help but feel that if AA batteries were invented today there's no way there'd be a standard form factor.
But this issue is complicated. As much as first-party parts and accessories cost too much, there can be deadly consequences with shoddy third party products [1]:
> In July, a Chinese woman died after being electrocuted from a charging iPhone 5. Later that week, another man in China suffered a similar injury from a charging iPhone 4, leaving him comatose. In both cases, the victims were using an unofficial third-party adapter to charge their device.
So how do you guarantee something third-party will do what it claims to? If you use bad RAM chips in a Macbook, the consumer is going to blame Apple not whoever supplied cheap, shoddy parts (for the record, I hate soldered in RAM).
As an aside, I was unsurprised to see in this article this is a small farm. The harsh truth is that family farms and small farms in general are a dying way of life and just aren't competitive with industrial-scale agriculture. You can't fight the incoming tide forever.
> I really wish rechargeable batteries had interchangeable form factors like normal batteries.
They largely do. For example, the famous 18650 which powers all kinds of devices from power banks to laptops to cars.
If what you’re referring to is their common inclusion into proprietary battery packs, there are some technical reasons for that difference, like cell balancing, safety protections, etc. While it could be possible to engineer some (but not all) of these concerns out of the equation, you’d end up with a more expensive larger and heavier product.
> how you regulate this so companies don't gouge "owners" for aftermarket services.
For starters, it's not aftermarket! since the tractor belongs to JD, and it is licensed to the customer, and it failed to work because a wire got wet (shitty design), and only JD can determine and repair it ... that should be JD's cost, not the owner's.
>harsh truth
A harsher one: JD has a monopoly and is using it to strangle its own small business customers. Feels good to see it get run past Sherman - better to see it get run over.
Manufacturer warranty is limited, mostly in time. Even when some components are poorly designed. The Renault / Nissan CVT is a famous example of this: known problematic transmission that typically dies out of warranty. I could give you literally tens of examples off the top of my head in the consumer automotive industry alone.
I modded my car and it didn't void the warranty. I can goto the dealership, 3rd party, or repair it myself. I can swap out nearly everything for non OEM parts.
Cars aren't industrial equipment. A different set of laws and warranty repair laws are applied to each.
If tractors were able to be classified as cars for warranty and such - such that the people who make modifications to them are liable for damages caused by the device (rather than the manufacturer), there wouldn't be as much of an issue.
As it is, if you are able to modify the emissions controls for a tractor and the manufacturer doesn't try to make it impossible to do that, the EPA goes after the manufacturer instead of the owner or operator.
In the mean time, see if you can legally make any changes to your car's catalytic converter and replace it with a pipe.
Legally, cars are not industrial equipment. One of the key distinctions appears to be that a hobbyist can modify a car whereas a hobbyist isn't supposed to be modifying cranes, tractors, trains, or the like.
Exactly - the government doesn't go after Subaru when people remove their catalytic converter because the car isn't industrial equipment. The EPA does go after tractor manufacturers and distributors when it is possible to modify a tractor to remove its diesel particulate filters and similar.
> The illegal vehicles had adjustable carburetors that were not described in their application for certification, were produced by a different manufacturer than the one specified in the application, were manufactured prior to the date of the certificate of conformity, had model names that were not identified on the certificate of conformity, or were significantly more powerful than described. The illegal engines were incorrectly certified as non-road engines rather than as recreational vehicles and some were significantly more powerful than described in the allegedly applicable certificate of conformity. The EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice also alleged that the emission control information labels on certain vehicles did not comply with federal regulations, and that Tractor Supply Company provided an incomplete and inaccurate response to EPA’s information request.
> According to the charges, the company's engine software
controls the timing of fuel injection into the combustion
chamber, causing the engine to emit excessive amounts of NOx
while the truck is running on the open road. However, the
company's engine software is designed in such a way so that these
emission levels do not show up on the federal test.
What do any of these have to do with end users modifying their equipment?
In the USA we have Underwriters Laboratories to certify for you if your electronic widget is up to safety standards. Look on some of your widgets and you will see a UL logo in a circle. There is also a way to check the authenticity. The federal government for example won't purchase various types of widgets unless they meet recognized standards.
So how do you guarantee something third-party will do what it claims to?
You don't. There's something called freedom and personal responsibility. Unfortunately the corporations and governments seem quite determined to take them away from us.
This is my concern too, but, I think way more broadly than you.
I love the idea of right to repair. I agree on a fundamental level, this is your device, you bought it, you own it, you should be able to do with it as you please.
What I don't agree with is creating additional regulatory or legislative burdens on companies. I have a number of concerns with doing so, but, philosophically I don't see it as the government's right to unduly interfere in apple (or samsung, or john deere's) right to sell me a product I want to buy.
More directly, I am worried about right to repair stifling innovation and competition. I could easily see a regulatory body require all phone's have user-replaceable batteries and that is not something which I fundamentally want in a phone. It has tradeoffs which I don't want to make.
That said, I think companies like Apple refusing to sell genuine replacement parts at any price is egregious.
However, I also think the government forcing private companies to disclose things like engineering or repair manuals which contain secret/trade information is equally egregious.
All of this is a long way around to saying that while I love the concept of right to repair, the devil is in the details and I haven't seen anyone really enumerate the details of what they'd actually like to put into law.
Am I wrong and is there anyone with actual proposed legislation?
> Earlier today there was a thread about e-bike battery prices (tl'dr they're ridiculous expensive)
Small rant about those since I missed the earlier thread today: It's even worse. They are stupidly expensive yes, but even if you source them yourself they will cost you another 100 dollar/euro/pound to "enable". It's DRM for batteries and serves no real purpose except price gouging. If you rip out the 18650 cells (which are in almost all detachable models which is the majority) and replace them you have to re-enable the device. If the battery somehow drains "completely" and you are able to get it out of safe mode, which is quite possible since the battery isn't actually dead, you have to go to a dealer and pay the surcharge as well. There are plenty of good second hand models available which are useless due to the battery DRM since the price of the battery will be about 3-5 times the bike.
> So how do you guarantee something third-party will do what it claims to? If you use bad RAM chips in a Macbook, the consumer is going to blame Apple not whoever supplied cheap, shoddy parts (for the record, I hate soldered in RAM).
Just like when your car goes to a garage and doesn't work afterwards: the person who 'fixed' it. I can't get it in my head why people think this will be different for other things than cars.
Apple can make the customer whole and then go sue the 3rd party manufacturer. Apple has far more resources and clout to hold manufacturers accountable than any one customer. “Don’t make crappy parts or Apple will send a team of lawyers to bankrupt you” would be a credible threat.
I don't see it working out well for Apple to become the USB charger and cord enforcer for the world.
If this is a counterfeit Apple charger, then yes. If this is a charger that was purchased from Apple as the distributor, then yes.
However, if this was a 3rd party charger purchased from a street vendor or online merchant (that has difficulties with counterfeit products) that could be used for anything from the cat water fountain pump to an Apple iPhone - then no.
Would "right to repair" also apply to software companies that lock up their customers' data in password-protected databases, which is only known to the company?
I have software that creates a database in a special format, from the data I have entered. I cannot access the data from third-party tools to do custom reporting.
Hopefully people are directly lobbying Biden on this right now. Anti-monopoly action has been his only significant priority (and only deviation from the status quo.) IMO that's why he's being continually slammed in the media on easily predictable legislative failures on "progressive" legislation in this particular Congress. I'd suspect if polled on each component of his anti-monopoly orders, the public would give them 90%+ support, but those the papers ignore (allowing them to be quietly rolled back under the next POTUS, unnoticed.)
For industrial equipment (such as a tractor), who is liable for injuries if the equipment is repaired or modified by a 3rd party and it goes to court later?
> The [misuse/ [or] modification] was so highly extraordinary that it was not reasonably foreseeable to [name of defendant], and therefore should be considered as the sole cause of [name of plaintiff]’s harm.
So, if it was foreseeable that a 3rd party may modify some equipment in some way, the manufacturer must specifically warn the purchaser about "don't do that."
With software, this becomes a much more difficult challenge.
> [Name of defendant] claims that [he/she/nonbinary pronoun/it] is notresponsible for any harm to [name of plaintiff] based on a failure to warn because [name of plaintiff] is a sophisticated user of the [product]. To succeed on this defense, [name of defendant] must prove that, at the time of the injury, [name of plaintiff], because of [his/her/nonbinary pronoun]particular position, training, experience, knowledge, or skill, knew or should have known of the [product]’s risk, harm, or danger.
So with software, either the user is a sophisticated user and aware of the implications of installing their own patches on the system and what that could do (over fertilize a field because of an incorrect setting on the gps calibration)... or they aren't. If they aren't a sophisticated user of the system, then it should be locked down sufficiently to prevent those changes.
> “The sophisticated user defense concerns warnings. Sophisticated users ‘arecharged with knowing the particular product’s dangers.’ ‘The rationale supporting the defense is that “the failure to provide warnings about risks already known to a sophisticated purchaser usually is not a proximate cause of harm resulting from those risks suffered by the buyer’s employees or downstream purchasers.”
So are we expecting farmers to be software engineers too?
Any idiot who tinkers with cars can flash custom firmware on their car's ECU without a problem, and cars can very easily maim or kill users and the people around them. I don't buy this argument.
> A hobbyist who does his or her own customization work often assumes the risk that some part of the work wasn’t completed correctly. Making changes to a car in a way that renders the car unsafe could expose the hobbyist to liability for any resulting injuries. Absent insurance that specifically covers it, the hobbyist could be left bearing all of the cost of the ensuing litigation and compensation to injured parties.
It is the hobbyist that has the liability. So if you change your car's ECU its you that are liable when it gets in a wreck, not the car company for having a faulty product.
For industrial equipment, that doesn't exist. If you can make a change to the industrial equipment and the equipment manufacturer doesn't try to stop you, the equipment manufacturer is likely liable for damages.
There's a powerpoint (awkward to read in a web browser - "Product Liability Law in the Farm Equipment Industry" from agrability.org also as part of a recorded webinar at https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY ). 11:33 talks about Strict Liability and 19:24 talks about farm equipment being "reasonably safe". The case studies are also interesting - pay attention at 42:23 where it points out who is paying for the injury.
> For industrial equipment, that doesn't exist. If you can make a change to the industrial equipment and the equipment manufacturer doesn't try to stop you, the equipment manufacturer is likely liable for damages.
So put it into the agreement? I don't see how this is an onerous barrier; if companies can force arbitration based on the sales agreement, they should be able to (within reason) dodge liability for the effects of modifications they didn't approve.
> Liability insurance premiums remain a tremendous burden for businesses in many industries. Legislation aimed at limiting liability, enacted just last year, has been declared unconstitutional. Moreover, some U.S. courts are moving toward standards that will actually increase liability, even for businesses not at fault under the traditional legal doctrines.
Secondly, consider who is bound by this agreement? The person who purchased it? or the person who is operating it? Watch the video that I linked - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY . The case study begins at 21:43 with a Massey tractor and a Brush Hog mower. Pay close attention to the design in the guarding claims at 33:48 and the lessons at 43:17.
Product liability for industrial equipment can't just be signed away by the person purchasing it.
Don't get me wrong - I am for right to repair. It has impacts across many areas including national security, food security, and hobbyist interest. But I believe that we need to revisit product liability for industrial equipment when that comes into place... and when self driving cars come out and if you are allowed to load your own software on the car who do you think will be liable for a crash under current law? Who is responsible for showing that the (destroyed) vehicle had software modifications that went beyond the legally allowed changes (emissions, top speed, acceleration, etc...)?
I am for right to repair - I am concerned that the approaches that right to repair is using now ignores existing law and liabilities and will result in a much higher legal costs for manufacturers for repairs that they are forced to allow until the corresponding laws catch up to place the liability for changes to equipment back on the people who make and install those after market changes. And that in turn will cause a limiting of innovation and advancement in those areas and rolling back of other advancements to the point where the manufacturer can reasonably assume liability for changes that the purchaser may make.
According to existing product liability law (if I'm reading this correctly, I am not a lawyer), if John Deer allows a farmer to insert an SD card with different firmware or settings or whatever, John Deer is still liable for the tractor even if it was changes that were made by the developer.
If that 3rd party firmware overapplied fertilizer - JD would be liable. If the auto driving feature was modified and ran out into the road and killed someone, JD would be liable.
Product liability for industrial equipment falls in different category than other product liabilities and all industrial equipment (including tractors) are classified as "unreasonably dangerous" and it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to prevent 3rd party modifications that may result in damages that could have been foreseen with the existing setup.
If John Deer allows someone to change the software, then it is foreseeable that anything that is software controlled may be changed and behave in a way that is unintended... and John Deer is liable unless they prevent that software change.
> all industrial equipment (including tractors) are classified as "unreasonably dangerous" and it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to prevent 3rd party modifications that may result in damages that could have been foreseen with the existing setup.
This is not necessary. We can choose to not do this. Also "could have been foreseen" carries a lot of water here. These products shouldn't be unsafe to make minor repairs on any more than they should be unsafe to operate.
The Brush Hog case that I mentioned elsewhere had a protective plate removed (it was apparently commonly removed by farmers) and attached to an older tractor. When the operator (not the owner who made the change) was mutilated from the mower, Brush Hog was liable because it wasn't harder to remove that safety plate.
If folks actually value "right to repair" support companies that offer right to repair.
If no tractor company exists that offer the type of open setup you want and you think this is critical - start a company up and take out Deere and others.
Deere's views on software changes by users in the field is pretty darn clear.
My own view - having watched individuals and dealers etc "tune" trucks etc (with all the endless problems involved) - is that for something like a 10,000 part count + heavy piece of equipment - Deere is going to want to keep stuff locked up tight to preserve brand value. Apple has done this with iphones, and the resale value after 5 years on an iphone is incredible compared to players pushing out android phones.
It was easier to pass an automotive right to repair passed in Massachusetts in 2012 than it was to start a successful auto company that could have anywhere near the same impact.
The car companies, threatened by having to comply with different laws in different states, came to an agreement that the car companies would follow the Massachusetts law across the US.
You can watch individuals and dealers etc "tune" trucks now as a direct consequence of that 10 year old law passing.
There's no obligation for the law to preserve brand value when considering an anti-monopoly case. Standard Oil wasn't broken apart because of gung-ho oil companies.
Unfortunately 'regulation' is entirely in Deere's favor, thanks to the USPTO and their habit of allowing companies to claim underlying ideas rather than specific implementations.
A method for operating a mobile robot, the method
comprising:
- Collecting range data of one or more objects in an environment around the robot;
- Identifying uniquely identifiable ones of the objects as
navigation landmarks:
- Storing a reference map of the navigation landmarks based
on the collected range data;
- Establishing a list or sequence of way points for the robot to visit, each way point defined with reference to one or more landmarks;
- Reading a message on a tag posted at or near one or more
way points; and
- Managing a task based on the read message.
When this claim was granted by the USPTO, John Deere was given exclusive rights to the general concept of robot navigation between waypoiints with the addition of "reading a message on a tag" and acting accordingly. To the layman this language sounds specific enough, but those skilled in the art (or in possession of an HN user name) will recognize it as Turing equivalence. Indeed, the next few claims make it clear that ownership of the idea of conditional execution of tasks at waypoints is exactly the goal of the patent.
So, good luck building a competing farm implement that actually does anything useful. The "innovators" at Deere have made sure that you can do no such thing for the next 12 years.
That's not how patents work. Each claim is not a patented thing. A chain of claims forms the patented thing. There's at least 9 dependent claims hanging on that first one.
Right. It’s best to think of the claims in a patent as a set of DAGs (a single patent can contain multiple “inventions”). To infringe, you have to go from a starting node to a connected ending node and implement/match all nodes along the path.
Have to admit I've never heard this in my life. If this is the case, then TIL, thanks!
I will say that my point largely stands, though: the leaf nodes of this particular DAG are places where you will almost inevitably end up if you want to implement robotic farm machinery. Deere averages a couple hundred patents a year, so if you don't step on this specific land mine, another one will get you.
The dependency chain flows upward, not downward. Later claims depend on the earlier ones that they reference ("2. The method of claim 1..."), but the presence of claim 2 does not alter the meaning or enforcability of claim 1.
(I should point out that IANAL, so if there are instances in which this isn't strictly correct, it'd be interesting to learn about them. Downvoting without comment doesn't enlighten anyone.)
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 to national security.