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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

> Milking your customers is not good for business, especially if you drive them into insolvency.

It clearly is good for business, even if it's bad for customers and society at large. Pretending it's bad for business just encourages complacency because it suggests that the natural discipline of the market will drive the milkers out of business and encourage good business practices. But that doesn't happen, and if we want that to change there needs to be some source of external regulations to prevent it from happening.

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I think what's being overlooked is "it's good for businesses in the short term" not necessarily good for them in the long term.

But it needs to be followed with observing that the market doesn't give two damns about long term, because anyone optimizing for long-term profitability eventually gets outcompeted by someone optimizing for shorter-term profitability.

what about amazon?

What about it? Amazon is in the process of burning down their e-commerce business.

Interesting, could you give more details on that?

Did it help Boeing?

Boeing optimizes for short-term. Long-term is already secured for them by US regulations.

These companies are losing customers. That is never good for business. Eventually, someone will take the matter into his own hand and start making 80s-like tractors, so these companies will lose even more customers. They could do the same, but at this point they lost the trust of their customers, so it will be very hard to gain them back.

Really? Which products are getting more repairable with time? Nobody is bringing back easily repairable washing machines or easily repairable automobiles.

Very true.

That's partly because there's so much older stock. Also, the "easily-repairable" products of the past were not nearly as cheap! The closest comparison today would be "heavy-duty", "pro" models, often built by niche manufacturers, which do advertise ease of servicing as part of the value.

Being suddenly in the market for a new washing machine myself, I might argue that a large portion of the value of a washing machine is in its aesthetics. Same (probably more so) for cars. I'd probably need to put more thought into that, but I am fairly certain that aesthetics don't count for much in a tractor on a farm. It's possible that classic-styled tractors might even be mark in their favor.

Either way, I suspect, apples to oranges.

It does make a big difference to have an air conditioner. And GPS guidance.

If I could buy a washing machine with a 10 year warranty I would not care at all what it looked like.

My washing machine is leaking at the moment. I have to decide whether or not its worth my time pulling it outside and apart to see if it can be fixed, or if I should just go buy a new one for $750

Quality of materials [1], workmanship, capacity, ease of loading, max spin speed, gentle spin option, energy rating, water consumption, quietness, quick wash function, drums that reduce creasing and so on. Good quality washing machines are more expensive but not because of aesthetics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGGhmKknKXo

Parts and service cost as much as a new unit. This happened after free trade and if we produced locally the repair business would be a growing field.

Really? I completely replaced every sensor, and a primary component in one of my appliances for $40, and about 30mins of my own labor

Cost to replace the unit with a new machine, $500

I don't know about cars, but I am typing this on a Thinkpad in which I can change the battery with no tools and can change most of the internal components without more than a screw-driver.

While true for my Thinkpad (T520), it no longer really holds for many of the latest models, with many of the T series having solderen on RAM or secondary batteries that are built-in a not easily servicable.

Lots of products are more repairable now, by the owner, primarily due to the internet (YouTube specifically), along with websites dedicated to providing schematics and parts lists/ordering (Appliance Parts Pros, etc.).

I've personally repaired a broken dishwasher (temperature sensor's solder busted), the hot-surface ignitor of a gas-fired water heater, the water-filter socket of my frig, and helped a friend repair the ignitor in his gas-fired dryer.

All thanks to Youtube videos with instructions/tutorials, and the availability of parts.

Prior to these, I would have had to call a repairman, and then he'd probably say "you need a whole control board" or "the unit's dead."

Your argument is wholly incorrect, though. Manufacturers aren't making things easier to repair. Those things you repaired? They were already easily repaired. In the case of your argument, the only thing that has changed is whether or not people know how to repair things. And these days most people don't and most aren't willing to try without step by step instructions on how to.

Maybe they are loosing a particular kind of customer they may want to loose anyway. Neither the number of acres to be farmed nor the number of mouths to feed decrease when a small farm goes under. The tractor has no long term concern of sitting idle and it may be giant non-corporeal people prefer doing business with their own kind.

lose... losing.

thanks up voted. I am terrible with fashion.

> These companies are losing customers.

Are they? John Deere has increased its revenue from $28B to $39B in the last 4 years....

Not really proof that they aren't losing customers as they could be overcompensating by increasing revenue-per-customer

>>Eventually, someone will take the matter into his own hand

I believe you. This is how Netflix got born. A customer was so embarrassed about how Blockbuster milked him with late fees that he decided to start his own business. We all know what happened to Blockbuster.

It would drive out bad actors in the long run if there was proper competition in the market. Unfortunately short term gimmicks can give you the necessary capital to simply buy your competition and then you can milk your customers because they have no other option but not to play.

It's great for business, in the short term. And that's all that really matters to shareholders.

in the short term... and in the long term often enough, because those short term gains can be used for all kinds of naughtiness later on. monopoly, regulatory capture, rent-seeking, and so on.

It's good for the business in the short run, but not in any other sense. Reputation matters quite a bit when it comes to this sort of costly, mission-critical equipment, and any John Deere competitor now has an easy way of grabbing some of that market share.

>>if we want that to change there needs to be some source of external regulations to prevent it from happening.

External Regulations is what created the problem in the first place

it is a Perversion of Copyright, Patent and trademark laws that allow these companies to lock down their hardware in the first place

A return to proper, very limited, copyright is the solution, not more business regulations

Or competition, or the farmers pushing back as they are. Regulation is only one of many tools for policing businesses.

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