[GuB-42]

Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours.

The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".

If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.

It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).

Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.

[ggoo]

If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.

[sothatsit]

It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.

But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require companies to follow, the costs of those regulations should be considered.

For routine repairs it seems very beneficial for farmers to be able to repair things themselves. But there’s a very long tail of problems where at some point the cost will become meaningful, and the benefits might not be that great.

[AnthonyMouse]

There is an obvious way to do this that doesn't impose high regulatory costs. A simple rule: The customer (and their independent mechanic) has access to anything the company has access to. Now you're not forcing them to write new service documentation, only to not restrict documentation they wrote anyway to their own dealers. You're not forcing them to support third party replacement parts, only preventing them from inhibiting it through software locks etc.

You don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to not prevent others from doing certain things. Which is easy, because it's preventing documentation from being copied around or preventing independent third parties from making compatible replacement parts which requires active effort.

[sothatsit]

This sounds like a reasonable approach.

[ggoo]

> It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.

It's actually so simple you answered it right here! It's John Deere's problem to comply with the regulations we as society require of them - that is the cost of doing business.

[sothatsit]

That part is easy. How much we require John Deere to do to support people repairing their tractors is not.

[jryan49]

A tractor is not exactly bleeding edge technology...

[sothatsit]

Modern tractors can be pretty complicated machines. You could argue they should be simpler, but just like cars they’ve gotten a lot more complex in the last couple decades.

[AnthonyMouse]

> If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.

It isn't possible for that to happen without one of your other concerns also being true, because the profits from preventing repairs come from the customers. So it's at best zero sum and in practice it's negative sum, because the manufacturer isn't always the most efficient party to do the repair, e.g. because the farmer who is already on site and does it themselves can get the equipment back in service faster than waiting for the company's mechanic to arrive.

Meanwhile in cases where the manufacturer is the most efficient party to do the repair, the customer could still use them even if nothing forced them to. So the fact of it happening is by itself proof of this:

> It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies)

Moreover, notice that this keeps happening with tech products. Since customers don't like it, you would expect a competitor to show up and make the exact same product but without the locks, so why don't we see that? The answer, of course, is copyright, a government-granted monopoly. The law prohibits a competitor from copying their design/code. So there's your monopoly.

But copyright is only meant to prevent the competitor from making a direct copy of their software and competing with them in the market for the original product. They're only supposed to have that monopoly. Leveraging that to monopolize the separate market for repairs is monopoly abuse, and applies equally to every company selling a product covered by a patent or copyright monopoly.

[BrenBarn]

> The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".

That is exactly right. That is why the punishment for not giving customers the right to repair needs to be in the billions, so that the value of giving customers that right is huge.

[ajkjk]

It is the right question to ask. The idea that moral questions should have a market value is itself a moral failing, so assuming you want moral principles to rule over the design of your economy (which.. you'd better; otherwise slavery is permissible), you should not allow such things to be up for debate.

Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.

[mghackerlady]

"What is the value (in dollars) of the minimum wage", "What is the value (in dollars) of emancipation", "What is the value (in dollars) of owning your things"