For a boy who but for fate and my grandfather's untimely passing would have grown up a dairy farmer, and who drove a tractor as his first motor vehicle, this article hits hard.

Late stage capitalism indeed. When their are no new customers or markets to increase profits, then start openly ripping off your old customers.

The egregious crimes of John Deere committed on their own customers is something I've read articles about, but never one long damning list of crimes and bad practices. Yikes. Great research.

I remember when a story came out soon after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The story went that Russia stole millions of dollars of tractors, but that John Deere "bricked" them so they couldn't be used.

I can't search through my comments to find exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of, "Russia will just offer an award of say, $100k to anyone who can hack the code. It will be a massive return on investment for Russia, and be done in a short time." Looks like I was more right than I guessed.