[CharlesColeman]

> If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?

Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are often forced to accept minimally acceptable deals, as long as the capital-holders are able to maintain barriers to entry (like large investments in capital).

A new market entrant will likely be tempted (eventually, if not immediately) to implement DRM just like Deere has. And Deere can always drop DRM temporarily if it will let them fend off a competitive threat.

[jay_kyburz]

I wonder how many presales a company would need to collect to make it worthwhile spinning up a tractor manufacturing plant.

Deere would need to decide whether to drop DRM to prevent your presale campaign.

If they do the consumer wins, and the new company can refund the presales and walk away.

If they don't you get your tractor manufacturing setup build and are then in the game.

[AnimalMuppet]

> The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers).

The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.

[CharlesColeman]

> So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition".

But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it.

Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.