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IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

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Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#321

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

chrisseaton wrote: post #271
nom wrote: post #256

I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…

It's the junk food of furniture. Produced at scale with poor materials, satisfies people's immediate need, locations are functional and service is fast. But don't you want something more substantial and created with more craft? You probably don't need more than one adult bed in a lifetime, for example. I've got furniture that's been in use hundreds of years.

Like every company, there is some good stuff and some trash. The materials tend to be the key to which is which.

Anything made of solid wood or laminated wood is great because it will take knocks and bumps and ast basically forever. Things like chairs and tables.

Lots of their all-metal stuff is good. One of their desk lamps with springs is a design classic, very cheap and amazing value.

Their non-stick kitchen pans are very good value as is most of their kitchen stuff, including glass, ceramics and some plastic stuff.

Anything made of MDF or manufactured wood is just pure trash.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#322

Post by jakupovic »

Ygg2 wrote: post #318
nom wrote: post #256

I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…

I bought an IKEA desk and tried to assemble it myself. Between the poor wood quality, bad paint job, hard to connect components and painful assembly process, I gave up and got a refund. I asked a friend of a friend that's a carpenter and he made way better desk for same amount of money.

I call BS, you can't even buy the material to build something at IKEA prices, let alone assemble it.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#323

Post by Broken_Hippo »

vianneychevalie wrote: post #205
FooBarWidget wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disposable? I've never had to throw away any IKEA furniture. These things can easily last 15 years.

15 years? My table is 90. My grandparents bought it used when they first moved together after their wedding. Hardwood and a bit of care once in a while (2-3 years, waxing) goes a long way.

Survivorship bias.

Most furniture from 30+ years ago is broken. The older it gets, the more likely it is to have been broken. For your grandparents (and the folks they passed it on to), it means: You were able to have space for the table all the years, and didn't move into a place where it didn't fit. It means it didn't have accidents. Do you have chairs that came with it - or did they break too (very common)? If you do have the chairs, are they sturdy enough for a child to climb on and wiggle in? (many aren't).

It means they didn't have a fire or break the table when moving it (if they moved over the years).

It means they could wax it and so could everyone else. It means they could do repairs when needed. It means that it didn't rot despite waxing.

It means that you (and/or other family members) also had a space for it: If you bought an old piece used, it meant that there was an avenue to sell it.

And a bunch of things like that. 90 year old furniture isn't the norm, and can hardly be used to verify that older things are made better (and besides, they had some cheap stuff too).

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#324

Post by Scarblac »

candu wrote: post #303
nom wrote: post #256

I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…

Personally, I dislike IKEA for registering as a non-profit, when they're very clearly not. To me, this belongs in the same bucket as any number of tax avoidance schemes that ensure wealthy individuals pay far lower tax rates than the average person, and that large corporations pay effectively nothing. If they're able to provide great customer service - well, good on them, but I'd much rather the public purse have the…

What I don't understand is how Inter Ikea Systems (the company that holds the rights to the Ikea concept, that is paid by the nonprofit) avoids having to pay taxes.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#325

Post by lotsofpulp »

hiq wrote: post #307
nom wrote: post #256

I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…

> I never understood why people hate IKEA. Did you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Criticisms ? There seems to be many reasons to dislike the company, even as a happy customer. One thing that stuck with me is this: "The IKEA group has a complex corporate structure, which members of the European Parliament have alleged was designed to avoid over €1 billion in tax payments over the 2009–2014 period." It seems e…

That’s a problem of unnecessarily complicated tax laws.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#326

Post by cko »

jakupovic wrote: post #322
Ygg2 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an IKEA desk and tried to assemble it myself. Between the poor wood quality, bad paint job, hard to connect components and painful assembly process, I gave up and got a refund. I asked a friend of a friend that's a carpenter and he made way better desk for same amount of money.

I call BS, you can't even buy the material to build something at IKEA prices, let alone assemble it.

Probably didn't account for cost of labor.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#327

Post by BurningFrog »

namdnay wrote: post #25
piokoch wrote: post #14

This smells like some really bold and really ridiculous PR attempt. "Ikea uses about one percent—yes, one percent—of the world's entire commercial wood supply. That amounts to about 17.8 million cubic yards of lumber last year. " [1] I guess they need this PR purchase to appease some eko organization. And this is equally ridiculous. Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. Why they have to explain them…

I guess the argument would go that we would be better off building small quantities of long-lasting re-usable furniture, rather than building and throwing away lots of new cheaper furniture The low prices at Ikea and others definitely encourage over-consumption - buying a new table instead of restoring an old one for example Personally I don't necessarily subscribe to this argument, I think that we can focus on bigge…

Buying two $100 tables vs one $200 table is not overconsumption. Both consume $200.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#328

Post by glenneroo »

jcims wrote: post #320
glenneroo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies I didn't mean to be derogatory. I was just a little bit surprised at the bravado-military mentality that surfaced on a tech forum. To clarify, there are so many issues here I don't even know where to begin, just some quickies off the top of my head: - the most obvious was mentioned already: forest fires, when missiles explode in a forest you are trying to protect, things tend to burn and fire tends to sprea…

It was mostly tongue in cheek but it would be interesting to see how the public reacts to such a declaration. If actually implemented I am fairly confident that countermeasures could be taken to avoid casualties and collateral damage, but historically those things get pretty slippery over time.

I suspect public reaction would depend on how media decides to spin it:

- poor starving people just trying to feed their families and in order to survive, will take any job and are being exploited to this end by

or

- dirty scumbags killing innocent animals and cutting down swathes of protected forest just to make a quick buck

or any other narrative that sells clicks, not to say all media is corrupt/greedy, but it sure seems like most public reactions are based on media narratives.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#329

Post by Broken_Hippo »

the_other wrote: post #97
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying new stuff in the west is now cheaper than repairing old items - this is a combination of outsourcing production, loosing skills, and deliberate efforts by compabies like Apple and Sonor to make their equipment unrepairable. https://youtu.be/Npd_xDuNi9k

Is it “cheaper” environmentally?

Possibly.

If you want to fix furniture, you need space and tools, so you need bigger houses (or the ability to move the furniture to a community spot) and tools. Tools will generally be made of metal, and needs factories to make these tools. Some of the parts are available freely: I'm guessing not all are.

Manufacturing will need to be different as well if your pieces aren't designed to be repaired in such a way: Who knows if this would be more environmentally friendly.

Not to mention that it is a skill, so a repair might not even repair it but break it further - but now we've made the tools and things on top of the furniture (that didn't even use up scraps of wood, but caused them).

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