They were an absolute dream to work on. Everything was straightforward and consistent. The assembly was well thought out to enable in the field repairs. In my mind at the time John Deere was a brand that understood the needs of farmers.
I can't reconcile their current position on right to repair with my experience. Something clearly changed between the 1970s and today.
They are all farmers, do the farmers' thing. And the latter is more efficient. It makes sense (and IMO is better) for a tractor company to cater for the latter.
It's not conspiratorial in the mustache twirling sense, but it is 100% an unambiguously desired outcome of how our tax laws and accounting principles are currently structured.
A system is perfectly tuned to generate the outcomes it does. If you don't like those outcomes, you have to change the system.
Those days are long gone. Fewer small family farms, fewer friendly and trusting people, fewer simple things for mechanically minded handy men to fix.
There's a lot of good things progress brings us, though it is often interesting to ponder on what we have lost.
I honestly blame film/TV and other modern media for implanting anxieties in people via a combination of sensationalist news reports on gruesome crimes and the horror genre which seem to form a feedback loop of mistrust. Before that people had to go out of their way to hear of such grizzly tales in books or newspapers (if they could even read) so most lived in ignorant bliss, unaware of the potential violence lurking in every corner of humanity. Maybe I'm wrong but I'd just like to know when ans why it was we lost out innocence as a society.
Nowadays, people tend to have more worth stealing - including your identity if you happen to have documents in an easily accessible area of your home. Back then, though, there wouldn't have been much worth taking from a small family farm- no TV, cell phones, electronics other than a radio and light fixtures for the most part (this would have been in the 1930's or 40's, I forget which).
One last stay thought: hospitality and community in general were much more central to people's way of life in rural farming communities then- farmers would help each other out with planting and harvesting, share equipment, every person in the community went to the same or one of two churches, etc. People had to rely on each other just to survive.
MBAs took over American companies. They're the ones who cook up these exploitative ideas so that no money is ever left on the table.
Tractors on the cloud.
Castles in the sky.
