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A comment on We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership. Parent comment

Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by toufka on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @11:49AM (#9414861)
John Deere was the Apple of tractors, 20 years before Apple was Apple. It's killed off all the competition [1] for their tractors' ability to "just work" - even at a premium. Deere coupled high quality hardware with high quality service, whereas most other tractors tried to compete on cost by dropping one. Apple vs HP; Deere vs Case. It served them well in the long run, if made things dicy early on. There is no competition any more. And the development lead and capital required to compete with their machines, and their repair/distribution network is immense.

[1] http://www.tennesseetractor.com/assets/Uploads/jd-timeline.j...

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Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by zzalpha on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @11:58AM (#9414935)
Put slightly more technically: there are natural barriers of entry to the marketplace that make it tough for a disruptor to displace a incumbent monopolist (or in this case oligopolist... Deere basically splits the market with a few other competitors, all of whom collude on this issue).
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Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by wmeredith on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @02:42PM (#9416068)
Would this be considered cartel behavior?
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Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by metasean on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @01:12PM (#9415483)
If John Deere is the Apple of tractors, then Open Ecology is the Linux of tractors.

- http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski

- http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/LifeTrac

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Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by ghshephard on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @12:11PM (#9415030)
One hopes that if farmers really care about this, then JD's competition (http://seekingalpha.com/article/2523975-john-deere-versus-th...), will dive in and start providing an alternative, at a profit.

We'll see if farmers really care about this though, or whether it turns out to be something like "Replaceable Batteries" or "SD Flash slots" on smart phones.

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Re:We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership by jessaustin on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @03:05PM (#9416255)
John Deere is better than crappy old "American" brands like Case IH, but it is in the process of being disrupted from below by imports like Kubota. And from above by Cat. The picture might not be as rosy a decade from now.
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