Pleasse stop rehashing free market platitudes without any thinking.

Look at the actual manufacturers, realise that noone is producing simple tractors any more, where are they going to come from?

Belarus produces simple and cheap tractors since forever, they are popular in Russia and other CIS countries. Just import them.

I dont think "just import them" covers the difficulties a lone farmer would have in transport, customs, language barrier and maintenance of a fairly random piece of equipment across an ocean that is also critical for their primary source of income.

And imagine you have a warranty dispute or similar

Belarus are already imported into the US, as I recall.

Oh, i didnt realise that

An old Belarus 420A is a simple tractor. Even a modern 742 or 1220 isn't that complex. But it's simply not as capable as a Fastrac 4 or 8 series, or a Valtra N or C series, or a Deere 6, 7 or 8 series for example. They're just not in the same league in terms of what they can do with tool management, fitness for specific tasks or tool interop.

As a single example, there's nothing that Belarus make that I'd want to use for buckraking a heap of any real size. They don't have a JCB 435S equivalent, or a heavier Fendt or Claas.

They're great tools, but you're not going to get the hectares per hour of sowing or harvest or the movement of tonnage of the modern competitors.

But isn't this self-defeating reasoning? on one side you say things need to be simpler to repair, on the other you say simple technology doesn't cover your needs. A lot of these advanced features are so complex and so intertwined to each other that you really want only a qualified person to be able to "try to fix it"

The whole complexity narrative is false pretenses.

The new tractors contain computers and need tools. Manufacturers refuse to sell tools and placed equivalent of DRM on computers to stop you repairing your tractor on purpose. They make their supplirs sign contracts where the supplier is not allowed to sell parts to anyone else. None of these issues are due to complexity, all of them about you loose property rights over your possessions and turning physical goods into a subscribtion model

Should there not be the option to break whatever you own however you want to? People who know they can fix X should be allowed to fix X

You surely are allowed to break it if you want at the cost of loosing the waranty. If you mean you want to be able to break it and still have the waranty then no.

Please stop attribute anything confronting your believes to lack of thinking. And if you are not aware of something that does not mean it does not exist (look for Belarus tractor references it the thread below). Even if they did not exist there is nothing (or should be nothing) stopping one from being created.

So farmers would buy in mass simple tractors, making the manufacturer that does it alone rich amasing a huge segment of the market.

But no manufacturer wants to do it. And no venture capital wants to finance such thing. Because.. I guess.. these evil capitalists just don't want to make more money.

Is that the argument? That capitalists don't want to make more money?

From another comment: "Deere is the worst in this, but the rest of the industry isn't anywhere near as good as it should be."

So no, the argument isn't that they don't want to make money. The argument is that they do, and realize that tacitly colluding will make them more money than undercutting each-other.

Most of the time it's not possible to produce new equipment without patent licenses even if everything else came into places. Assuming a new honest player that won't collude...

It should, but will it? The magically all-mighty market does not fix all problems without intervention

It probably won't. But that does not dismiss that it should :).

This is an oversimplification that overlooks at automotive engineering history (if not history in general). Are there 2T engines or Wankel engines available for people to choose?

Heavy regulation of the automotive industry is why I can't buy a new Dodge Coronet.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't live in a farming community...

Can you expand on how this would come to be, in practice?

Well, it's not that hard to imagine, is it? Someone founds a company that produces tractors but they are simpler, cheaper and can be repaired. If that's what customers want, they _will_ gain market share. If not, then the demand isn't there.

Then the next argument would be that John Deere is destroying competition by artificially selling their tractors below cost, making it impossible to compete with them.

Because yeah, that's what you do when you recoup the rest of the cost in the subscription/maintenance.

It's the same model that game consoles use to keep the hardware costs low. They make it up in the game and peripheral licensing fees.

If JD dropped the subscriptions, but instead charged full price for the tractors, people would just scream about the prices instead.

I actually agree that farmers should legally be able to repair their own tractors, or have anyone else do it. But gaining that "right" back wouldn't actually fix their complaints, just shift them.

...and of course, there will be zero patents infringed that would cause no injunction.