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Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#101

Post by coldtea »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #55
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think it would have been prudent to touch on what caused him to shift his perspective. Going with the tide? I doubt if the Nazis had won there would have been any shifts in perspective.

Wouldn’t that be true of most people? Being a rebel, even against an overtly oppressive regime, is not a light undertaking.

It would. That's why genuine cases of people who did resist should be celebrated over mock "turnarounds" after the fact.

(That said, after some time, things should be forgiven anyway. No much reason to punish a 90 year old today for when he did when he was a Nazi as 18-20 years old -- as sometimes happens).

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#102

Post by philjohn »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
5_minutes wrote: post #3

Nice trivia: he actually started with delivering self-made furniture on his bike in his local town.

I'll bet that was the highest quality stuff Ikea ever produced. I was in a store for recycled stuff a week ago or so looking for a typewriter and some old comic books for my kids and it struck me that none of the furniture they was made by Ikea. That translates into there being a direct path to the landfill from Ikea.

You say that, but in two previous homes I've purchased, assembled and fitted IKEA kitchens - they were far better quality than other options in the same price range, and even held a candle to ones costing 2x as much. Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts, good quality hinges and handles - the cabinets themselves were just laminated chipboard, but unless you're spending £££ that's the same for most kitchen suppliers.

Recently had a look at property listings, and both homes have been on the market recently, and both still have the kitchen I fitted 10 and 15 years ago, both still looking excellent.

As with most brands, they sell cheap throwaway things as well as more expensive, but that means that people who need furniture but would otherwise not be able to afford anything (unless they got everything 2nd hand) can furnish a home.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#103

Post by kalleboo »

loceng wrote: post #76
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet that was the highest quality stuff Ikea ever produced. I was in a store for recycled stuff a week ago or so looking for a typewriter and some old comic books for my kids and it struck me that none of the furniture they was made by Ikea. That translates into there being a direct path to the landfill from Ikea.

Eventually once we build the post-usefulness processing costs into products, we'll process/recycle everything fully as it should be instead of going to landfill; it's one of those Genuine Progress Index vs. GPD measurement things.

I think landfilling is pretty rare in developed countries. Mostly only the US has enough cheap free space to do it. Most countries incinerate their garbage. Countries that used to mostly landfill like the UK are now moving more and more to incineration.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#104

Post by Slartie »

antirez wrote: post #87
WisNorCan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third richest man in the world, Armancio Ortega, is from Spain. The tenth richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault, is from France. Ingvar Kamprad was at one point the eighth. And there are many others. Lack of philanthropic giving in Europe is not due to a lack of wealth, but due to a desire for dynasty.

As I said as you accumulate wealth in Europe it's very likely that you gave a very large share of it back to the government just in the process of accumulating it. That is one thing but for sure there is also a matter of cultural POV because here is counter intuitive that is single persons that should try to fix things like poverty but more things like universal health care, decent schools for free and so forth.

> As I said as you accumulate wealth in Europe it's very likely that you gave a very large share of it back to the government just in the process of accumulating it.

This may be true for small- to mid-sized fortunes, but not for the really large ones. Ikea in particular is a counter-example for this. They operate a super-tight network of companies, funds and trusts in multiple countries apart from Sweden like the Netherlands and some off-shore tax paradises and perform any possible trick, including the usual fake self-licensing tactics, to reduce their tax burden to next-to-nothing.

The difference to Amazon and Co. is mostly that Ikea is privately-owned, thus you can't simply invest some money in them to at least reap some of the profits of these tactics for yourself. The profits all pile up in private vaults of the owner, which is basically the Kamprad family (with exact ownership stakes being unknown of course, another difference from the publicity requirements that public companies are required to meet).

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#105

Post by dietr1ch »

loceng wrote: post #73
reimertz wrote: post #32

I worked at Ikea for some time and it's quite amazing the possibilities you had as an employee pursuing a career within the company. Rather than them basing your performance on past studies and grades, you definitely had the possibility to pursue any role within the company as long as you had the "right" mentality and really wanted it. Just like any early-stage startup I've work with. I was a lazy university student…

Do you know of any good books that talk about the culture like this at Ikea? I'd love to read it.

Book? Oh no, they might give you some paper and a pen.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#106

Post by IntronExon »

bjourne wrote: post #77
5_minutes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively, what IBM did, in helping the nazis, and was collaborating with them, for many years into the war - even when the US was getting involved —, was much worse then what this guy was doing. There’s also Porsche, Volkswagen (basically, Hitler’s own brand) and any other brands that were involved, and basically the catholic church was preaching in many EU countries for their sons to join the German army...

In which countries were the Catholic Church preaching that? All I've read claims the opposite, that the church was against Nazism: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206 http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/march-10th-2017/the-e... At the time the Catholic Church was the largest organization in the world, so some clergy is bound to have supported the Nazis, but the majority did not.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_after...

I for one am not about to forgive or forget. Mind you, the Church wasn’t the only group helping the rats escape a noose.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#107

Post by Retric »

matt4077 wrote: post #99
Retric wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to realize mistakes 10+ million people make are far from character defining. All governments do good and bad things and it's important to judge them in that context. What separated the Italian fascists from the German fascists was not necessarily obvious at the time. Further, while history reasonably judges German connections harsher, that's filtered through both bias and information people sim…

No. I’m sorry, but the Nazis were, objectively, „the baddies“ in every moral system but their own. And Germans of the time knew enough to come to that conclusions. It’s possibly right that there is not much use in blaming the opportunists of the time, mostly because there were to many to punish them all. But there also were a significant number who risked or lost their lives in opposition, and this “history is writte…

I am not making that argument. It's not about who won, it's a question of who had what information when.

So, yes the Nazi party line had some frightening implications, but at the time you could easily assume some basic human decency would prevent what actually happened.

To use a recent example many people assume Trump is saying things he does not actually mean. A friend said "Wait he actually wants to build a wall, but that's stupid."

So, my argument is people are willing to overlook implications when they agree with other things you are saying. We often look for the worst of our enemies and ignore what our allies are doing.

Further, this has real word implications and we need to be more careful than simply assume we will know if we are placed in a similar situation.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#108

Post by ryukafalz »

geezerjay wrote: post #93
5_minutes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on this is that they make some real crappy stuff, like in: if you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away. And then they also have some decent, quality stuff, like some of their couches. The problem is that as a consumer, it’s sometimes a bit unclear which category you’re buying into. Price is not a good indicator when it comes to ikea stuff: they have cheap stuff that’s great and expensive stuff…

> you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away. I'm sure virtually no other piece of hone furniture was ever designed to be taken apart. Iikea's stuff is designed to be easily shipped and put together by unskilled people, but not to be taken apart. I'm sure that you won't rate your cellphone or laptop by how well it handles being disassembled.

>I'm sure that you won't rate your cellphone or laptop by how well it handles being disassembled.

I do, personally - that's a pretty good proxy for how repairable/upgradeable it is.

(But yes, it's much less often that I need to repair or upgrade my furniture. :P)

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#109

Post by carussell »

fermienrico wrote: post #83
tjoff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea design is generally excellent and the quality per dollar is in a league of its own. That said, a $10 piece of furniture is not going to have $100 worth of materials... But ikea makes more expensive pieces as well. I don't think I've thrown away anything from ikea because it was end of life. (Part from <$1 kitchen peripherals).

The topic at hand is recyclability. You may have not throw things away but it is widely accepted and frankly utterly obvious - IKEA furniture has a short lifespan and it ends up being thrown away more according to the GP of this thread. You’re circling around the argument.

The original anecdote is that there were very few IKEA items in a store for recycled goods. The point you seem to be ignoring is tjoff's comment that IKEA products are so good that you can resell them and don't have to resort to donating them.

Here's my anecdata:

My desk is made by IKEA. It's sitting in front of me right now, having been disassembled, moved, and reassembled 5 times.

I had an IKEA bed that I got rid of a couple years ago. I ended up doing that by putting it on Craigslist and selling it for cash. I don't remember exactly how long it took, but the turnaround time for the whole thing was super fast.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#110

Post by jwdunne »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
erikrothoff wrote: post #4

I read the news in an IKEA sofa wrapped in an IKEA blanket resting my head on an IKEA cushion watching TV on an IKEA bench. He truly built a startup that changed the world.

"Those were not just sticks of furniture, that was me!"

This made me chuckle. I had the pan of the condo in mind whilst reading it too.
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