It's a pity that people are content to just quietly hate from home. If we had the gumption to get off our asses and sabotage our enemies I think the world would be a better place.

I think the stereotypical Hacker News response would be to encourage people to disrupt Deere with a startup farm equipment company.

Maybe that could rectify this ridiculousness in about 5 - 15 years (if successful).

Starting a company is the heroic way to solve this problem. I mean head over to the dealership with an angle grinder and just start breaking things.

If the company is truly a threat to your community, and if the damage is targeted and restrained enough to be considered an act of protest and not chaos for the sake of it, then a jury of your peers ought not convict.

What do you mean?

In the US we're taught to believe that the market will handle this kind of thing. But it won't. Relatively few of us are in the market for a tractor. We can't all "vote with our dollars" and go buy a tractor from a less shady vendor.

But as a human who likes food, my desire to make sure that nobody has a "press here to make the people hungry"-button is legitimate.

If it turns out that the existing political machinery is ineffective at preventing the creation of this button, US norms provide no recourse. If the government makes you mad enough, you overthrow the government (ideally peacefully).

But what do you do when a private company becomes a significant threat? Send them a strongly worded letter? Companies don't speak english, they're just sensitive to their bottom line. If you want to communicate with them, you have to influence their bottom line.

So I mean that I think we'd all be better off if we considered periodic slashing (drilling, maybe?) of for-sale tractor tires, and other forms of nonviolent sabotage, to be legitimate political speech. If certain lines were crossed, we ought to encourage each other to get off the couch and go practice that speech.

My great uncle hated John Deere (for what reason, I'm not sure). His grandson runs the farm now and there is still not a John Deere in sight. If more people hated John Deere, they would be out of business. You can't survive if nobody buys your product.

I own some John Deere equipment on my farm, alongside equipment from all of the major brands. I find no measurable difference in experience across dealing with those brands, and they are all great compared to other products in my life. Repairability in everyday life is actually quite horrendous compared to farm equipment. My broom broke the other day and I have no idea where to even begin looking for parts to fix it. I'm going to have to buy a new broom to replace it.

When my farm equipment breaks, the parts department at the local dealer will bend over backwards to find what I need.

abuse of broader society (current and future generations) by narrow interests is now the norm. it is very seldom that there is something in the news that is uplifting and illustrative of a system that is actually working to increase broad-based welfare as opposed to opportunistically benefiting the shrewdest or most ruthless operators.

the way things have been organized economically and politically (especially under US late-state capitalism) once a business does well financially it can basically capture its political/regulatory context and control its own destiny by influencing all decisions that affect it. it is no longer a Milton Friedman style rule taker, it is a rule maker.

there are many channels that enable this, both on the incentive side that create the desires to act in such ways and the response side (regulation, laws) that define the corporate interface with society (e.g lack of liability for any externalities created, oligopoly status ("there is no alternative") or revolving door arrangements with regulators and politicians (people shamelessly cashing-in on relations and knowledge)

nothing intrinsically difficult to solve to get to a better place. it does not take a "revolution" to fix democratic, market based, economies. it "only" requires having a moral compass and the transparency and awareness that helps navigating according to its prescriptions. the rest would take care of itself. exorbitant profits, environmental destruction, astronomical wealth inequality etc. are not required for the system to work. they are the result of system that is degenerating in the hands of a particular set of people

That's all social media companies, basically.

Honestly, the only people who hate social media are tech journalists who have an article deadline coming up fast, politicians during election years, and of course HN users.

That's what happens when you're a monopoly.

... and watchdogs are sleeping.

John Deere is a monopoly?

I believe they have something like 30% in the tractor market in the US but when it comes to specific types of tractors (especially the larger variants) it is much much higher.

Additionally the negative effects of a monopoly can also show in a duopoly or the like. It doesn't even need cartel like collusion.

I thought they were?