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. We trusted those machines and they almost always did what we needed. Deere had good parts support locally but we did all the labor ourselves. For us and the farmers we served it would have been economically impossible to hire a Deere tech to do the work. Alienating these equipment operators is a disgrace for a once great brand.
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 regulation relating to issues covered by this MOU and/or "Right to Repair" is enacted, each of AFBF and Manufacturer reserve the right, upon fifteen (15) days written notice, to withdraw from this MOU.
It might play out like this:
1. Deere starts a half hearted parts process. They will provide some parts, there will be year long delays in roll out, it will be annoying to use, documentation will be made incomplete on purpose by leaving out random pages or drawings and there will be no way to get them to fix it.
2. Farmers are now locked into using this service for their existing deere equipment because anything else will bankrupt them. Those machines will remain in service for a good 10-20 years which is an important time frame, because
3. Deere will spin off a subsidiary or buy a competitor which will sell what used to be Deere branded technology, "under license". This "new company" will keep all the anti-repair technology in place. New products will primarily come from this company going forward, and the products will be priced so that actual Deere-branded products are not competitive any more, especially second-hand ones.
4. It is now 2028. The MOU cannot be broken because farmers still need parts for their "old" Deere products. Deere anti right to repair lives on in the artificial competitor, which now retains 90% market ownership. Farmers cannot argue for right to repair any more. They've been sold out. Everything has gone back to normal for at least the next 25 years, as far as Deere is concerned.
Alternatively Deere will lobby to get the EPA or some other bureaucracy to add an Oxford comma somewhere there wasn't one before necessitating expensive major revision to everything you make and you will be bankrupt long before the courts rule that no they didn't really have the authority to make that rule change.
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.
Deere already has plenty of competitors. CNH taken as a whole is approximately the same size if you look at the global market. Farmers are not prisoners of Deere. They can just buy another brand.
It's almost certainly what is going to happen. They're just buying time (a LOT OF time) in order to regroup and come back in force and once again take away our right to repair or own our things, this time in a new, more permanent method, which is now also protected legislatively.
Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon.
I sometimes wonder if companies should/could be forced to publish a “lifetime cost” of all of their products, much like we do energy ratings for appliances. Something that would show all of the expenses over the lifetime of the products, including estimated maintenance and lifespan before replacement so people have a better idea of the true cost of the purchase.
I am confident the reporting would likely be captured by the manufacturers anyway and there would be a lot of arbitrary inputs into the reports, but something to fight the short term profit taking you describe.
Hard to imagine this working, even in a perfect world. Set aside regulatory capture and corruption and politicking and pretend that everybody does a genuine best-effort attempt to be honest.
It's extremely hard to know ahead of time which products will ultimately be reliable and which will be flaky. Most flaky components weren't designed with that in mind -- there are some exceptions, but maintenance headaches are normally a mistake by the manufacturer. And even setting that aside, a big part of "cheap to maintain" is how many units you ship: part of why it's cheap to maintain a Civic or a Corolla is because they made millions of them, parts are everywhere, and every shop knows how to deal with them. But knowing up front if your product is going to be a hit or a flop is just not generally possible, even though that has a huge impact on maintenance costs.
Even in a world of angels, I don't know that this idea would work in general. Maybe if it was specific to some industries where the costs are easier to estimate?
It’s already the case that you have to do this for certain groups of products in France under the AGEC laws. Take for example this dishwasher: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/p/diskad-lave-vaisselle-encastrab... . It has an “indice de répairabilité” of 7.4, generated from a bunch of different factors such as ease of disassembly, availability of spare parts and documentation, and the ability to factory-reset it. The data sheet listing those factors for this model is here: https://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/files/pdf/4f/fd/4ffd4fd2/indice-d...
I don't know what, if any, regulations are involved but here in Norway several of the big electrical retailers have started publishing the expected lifetime of products together with statement of how long spares will be available.
For example the Ankarsrum food mixer (successor to the classic Electrolux Assistent) entry at Elkjop.no states that the expected lifetime is 30 years and that spares will be available for 12 years.
I like that a lot. Judging from the criteria (in my extremely limited French) it’s a measure of effort rather than outcome, but honestly effort is all we can really ask for.
No: it’s fairly recent (and in fact only a part of the wider set of AGEC requirements that include labelling for recyclability, recycled status, consumption of rare earths and precious metals, origin of textiles, etc.) And then there’s the EU-wide Digital Product Passport[1] coming in the next few years that’ll up the game again. We’ll see over the coming years what customer perception is like.
Total cost of ownership is a pretty standard estimate in the auto world, but yes, it really needs to be done by a 3rd party, and of course the tractor market is pretty niche in comparison.
Even if they only did this with the maintenance schedule costs, with breakouts for major possible maintenance incidents, in present dollars. That would be extremely useful.
Companies like consumer reports should do this sort of thing.
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 their market share.
>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 economic basis for that appeared way before the first MBA got a job.
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.
If I were to make a product, I would hope that I'm making money because it's a quality product people like and want to buy because it's good, and not because I'm delivering the minimum possible value not considered fraud to extract maximum value from the customer.
Erm no, if there is a group of hooligans, than I will still assume that they are up for violence and if there is a bunch of MBAs taking over companies, I will assume that they are there for short term profit.
Well cant botch it that hard, the pals from ivy that are now in government, wont bail you out. So, guess we will never know the good from the bad >> eyescroll <<
People can hate Elon all they want. The guy is extravagant and controversial, and maybe not the best role model for your kids.
But he is right in the sense that a company leader needs to occasionally leave the meeting room and get in the factory floor, get direct exposure to customers and see things firsthand.
We would be already in Mars if we had not stopped doing that.
What's the flip side? VC's? You know, the people who won't even start a company unless there's a way to try to monopolize the position, buy up all supply with seed money, and then extract ALL the possible rent from the market segment? "Long-term" thinking with precisely the same anti-competitive, anti-consumer end result.
> Short term profit at the expense of everything else. At some point there will be a reckoning on all the damage this cult has done to society, but I don't expect it to happen any time soon.
I can't see how, the same people pushing for WTO/NAFTA are those who profited immensely from outsourcing in the 80s-90s are now the same one who likely stand to benefit the most from either supply chain disruptions, and war.
The truth is that JD is just another monopoly ([0] over 50% market share of tractors) that represents the underlying aspects of crony capitalism writ large. This is just another example how the mantra that 'tech should be in everything' needs to die, and how pervasive these horrible practices can become for the small sector of humans (less than 1% of the Human population feeds the other 99%) who grow the food everyone eats.
MBAs making supply chains inherently fragile and over who valued BS things like JIT are just reflecting what is most rewarded in the corpo culture: quick profits are the way to get fat bonuses and stock options in order to bail out when even the slightest hint of head-winds occur. This is just a symptom, not the cause and a reason why US manufacturing will likely take some time before it can get off it's addiction to the garbage made in China.
I dunno I'm currently trying to boycott Chinese made goods, regardless the cost. I'm in the position to be able to do that but so are many others.
It's like they're targeting the lowest common denominator.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy right? If the manufacturing was internal to the US say, theres more jobs hence better economy hence people are able too afford those locally prepared goods.
That probably requires a united front against outsourcing though. It's almost as if globalism breeds poverty, and is just a way for megacorps to milk us of our cash. Totally removed from any kind of social responsibility.
They sure love to change their logos to a rainbow and call that social responsibility though. Like Nike shipping you a keychain of all the micro plastics produced during the manufacturing of those shoes you just bought as if making you deal with their waste is environmental responsibility.
>It's almost as if globalism breeds poverty, and is just a way for megacorps to milk us of our cash.
Or it is arbitraging labor prices across different markets and lifting up others. Or it is also arbitraging environmental regulations and taking advantage of more corrupt/inept societies. Or it is also arbitraging better efficiencies in a more appropriately regulated economy, rather than an under or over regulated economy.
I think the "wherever possible" is implied. Where does this kind of cheap-shot snark end? Shall we next post the We Should Improve Society Somewhat comic?
...besides, maybe they're posting from one of those Raspberry Pi Model Bs that were fabbed in the UK.
> maybe they're posting from one of those Raspberry Pi Model Bs that were fabbed in the UK.
That is connected to a router made in China. And the keyboard and display, where were they made? My point is that it is pretty much unachievable and your "wherever possible" is just a get out of jail free card. Also it isn't a particularly laudable aim if we scale it up to the whole of society. We need the various countries in the world to be interdependent, we need China to need to sell to us.
I just bought an oven made in Turkey. I bought various 4WD mods manufactured in Australia. Keyboard was made by me using parts from USA and Germany. Another keyboard made in Taiwan.
China (aka East Taiwan) makes cheap shit. If you have money you can afford the better manufactured stuff from non tofu-dreg countries.
We need to divulge from China a much as possible and many companies are. It is not ethical to do business with a country that has concentration camps. Hopefully one day the ROC will reclaim power over China and clean all that up.
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.
First you have the product people. They make the product that people like and build a strong company off of a good product.
After the product people you have the marketing people come in. They don’t really know how to evolve the product, but they know how to sell it and generally they know not to mess with a good product and the company makes a lot of money and grow to the logical maximum of whatever product or services they offer.
Eventually the marketing people reach the limit and then the finance people come in. And this is when a company fully gets gutted. To the bean counters every thing is a bean. They look at the good successful product and think, “how can we make this cost less to make.” So they cut every corner they can to make numbers go up on a spreadsheet. At first this is okay, because it is just a few changes that aren’t that big of a deal, but 30 change later and customers notice and are irate and swear off the company forever.
Not satisfied they will usually cut internal costs too and all of the good employee will leave.
The company then sometimes brings back in a product person and rebounds or sells off to private equity.
I think Louis Rossmann said they'd worked on that bill for over 7 years, desperately trying to keep it from being compromised into oblivion. Then, on the eve of passage, the legislature amended away everything that mattered in it by adding an exception big enough to drive a... John Deere tractor through, and the governor (who was part of the process) quickly signed it into law. https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k . Keywords from the video: "Nicholas Cage Lord of War Supply Chain", "malicious compliance".
Indeed. The game is rigged. The US became an oligarchy. Lobbyists get their way at the expense of everyone.
I don't see much recourse, other than substantial and continued boycotts for all companies pushing this garbage.
I am not buying mobile phones anymore, since my last one broke due to overheating, and in spite of the warranty terms not forbidding custom ROMs they did not honor it.
When I worked on a vegetable farm in Vermont one summer, it was instantly apparent that the farmer spent a lot of time (at least 25%?) maintaining and fixing tractors. It’s a shame that rampant financialization and rent seeking has yet again made farmers’ lives more difficult.
