I don't like the idea that we have to pass laws to force companies to make a better product. Why can't a company take the initiative and grab all the customers who value this?
You make it sounds so easy to start a tractor company.
Just two words, capital costs, suffice to throw that entire line of thought to the ground.
If you go through the long list of farming equipment companies, they're all gone now. Defunct, or conglomeration.
Caterpillar? In agriculture? Do you mean Challenger (AGCO) or CLAAS, both of whom have used Caterpillar branding at points in the past? Although neither of them have recently.
Curiously, you're the second person to have mentioned Caterpillar being involved in agriculture in this discussion. Which surprises me. They are not a player at all, outside of some overlap use of their industrial products (skidsteers, payloaders, etc.)
Agriculture is a broad market, not limited to plows and combines which are more specific and that's where JD is at. Like I said, not much overlap.
"Car company" and "rocket company" are interesting examples, since the "smart, passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs" in those areas needed billions in government subsidies to get off the ground []. And "computer company" includes the software side, with its low capital costs, and the hardware side, where the competitors are firmly entrenched (what's the last laptop/desktop upstart to hit it big?).
[] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
That is patently incorrect. There are many examples of market failures that produce incorrect, poor quality, or even predatory results. A recent example is the total disregard for security in many (most?) "IoT" products, and the market for lemons[1] is the canonical example of a market that specifically selects for bad results ("lemons"). Note that the latter example of markets not producing "better products" was worth a Nobel Prize.
In a truly free market, the product that is most efficient for the market wins. This is often (but not always) the most profitable product. Sometimes it may also be the "best" product, depending on your point of view, because profit (or price) is not the only metric that is used in determining which product is "best".
Economics isn't a great description of reality. Its a just so story that is made to make sense after the fact because it lacks the predictive power that defines science.
Messy, stupid, corrupt, emotional, irrational complicated is the rule as opposed to the exception in real life.
For instance no such animal as the free market you describe exists. Just because hard/impossible to repair tractors is a bad thing doesn't mean that anyone is inspired to fix this, that such a company would succeed in the fact of competition ethical and not so ethical.
The extremely probable failure of such an effort doesn't imply that the world wouldn't be a better place if this was so and so if this is important it falls on us as citizens to outline to the players what is acceptable and not via regulation.
Your comment reads like someone who believes there is a free market. I don't think most Americans realize lobbyist are the opposition and their sole purpose is to ensure a free market does not exist in their respective industry.
But yeah, many people that believe in this, thinks it's simple.
One example is my buddy who thinks automation is good and don't account the people who are displaced by it. When press for what he would do for these people. It took 20 minute for him to say: 1. charity 2. community 3. family to help those people. He also counter that because there's less worker due to automation their wages would rise. Articles have shown that their wages would do the opposite actually. But notice there is no government safety net for these people.
It's quite interesting.
If you want this free market, you want your country labor force to run at maximum. So in my opinion, free market people, should at least support some social safety net to transition these people into a new labor sector.
In general this free market thing isn't some law that came about from nature. It's a human invention... so the fear of having more laws or laws being abuse is crazy.
I am incline to believe these people are arm chair economists, just like myself, but with more faith in this mystical concept of free market.
They are, that's why companies like Kubota are expanding their US-based manufacturing capacity like crazy. Capital equipment like a Harvester or practically anything above credit card expense level industrial equipment is purchased on a "make or break" level of decision making. Brand inertia can only carry a company like John Deere so long before the competition eats their lunch. Remember, this is a recent (past ~5 years) development in a market where equipment is expected to last ~10 years or longer. The next time these farmers decide to buy a piece of capital equipment, I guarantee they buy the unrestricted option.
Agriculture is a very technical industry, so most of these people are quite well-educated, but that education doesn't usually include software. As soon as someone in this field wraps their head around DRM and its consequences, they are likely to fight it hard, but getting to that point takes a little more explanation than it does for you or me.
In the grand scheme of things, at least in the short term, advertising "no DRM" isn't likely to make a dent in John Deere's market share.
Then you must not know very many farmers or ranchers because Case IH(formerly International) vs. Deere is a very big thing in those circles. It is very much a rivalry with typically no overlap much like the Ford/Chevy/Dodge rivalries.
Around Iowa I see these brands as well, but I don't see Kubota and New Holland as being as massive and innovative as Deere and Cat are/can be. John Deere has been notorious in the legal system in its pursuit of these locks on software. They have very good autonomy software which gets better every season, and distinguishes them from Kubota and New Holland. Their autonomy seems to be up-and-coming, but isn't in primetime just yet.
What area of the country are you in? I wonder if it is more of a geographic difference in brand choice, or if John Deere doesn't handle the local crops in your area as well.
That's a good point that autonomy could be a big deal for some consumers, and I bet larger plot size is a factor in that.
I've heard of John Deere being able to stay within about an inch of the previously traveled path on subsequent passes through the field. "Guaranteeing" you won't drive over previously planted crops and being able to customize the spraying, doing most driving autonomously,and collect yield per acre in real-time during harvesting, etc. make it a compelling solution out here.
Users of software developed by unlicensed programmers should also be held liable if their machines should be compromised and used in a botnet or other malicious activity. That means no Linux or, in your case, BSD.