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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

#441

Post by thehappypm »

oblio wrote: post #70
Varriount wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say most pieces of furniture sold these days are made of engineered wood [0], if that's what you mean by "composite materials". Aside from easier sourcing, I presume that a big driver of it's use is the fact that it is easier to shape and produce - no having to figure out how it will be assembled using the various sizes of timber available. The actual solid-wood furniture I have seen is either quite expensive…

> The actual solid-wood furniture I have seen is either quite expensive, or (somewhat ironically) unfinished. It's also super heavy, which I personally hate. Annoying to move in, move out, move around.

This is so true. I've inherited lots of stuff from grandparents that's amazingly high quality wood -- but it's so heavy I can't even get it into my apartment! My parents once spent a few thousand dollars to ship some furniture from Europe to the USA..

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

#442

Post by thehappypm »

adrianN wrote: post #196
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

How much would buying all the Brazilian rain forest cost the world, or even renting it from Brazil? We would need it to be slightly more than cattle farming to work... but I’d happily pay towards this.

The most cost effective way is probably dropping a few hundred million anti personnel mines in the forest. They're very cheap to produce, very expensive to remove, and reliably keep people out of the area.

This is a joke, right?

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

#443

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #329
the_other wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What 'Tools' are needed to repair a chair or a wardrobe? A screwdriver, a saw, a drill?

They last decades, and can be used to repair tens of thousands of items.

To suggest that their environmental impact is higher than that of equivalent favtory equipment needed to produce furniture is delusional.

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

#444

Post by Jochim »

johnp314 wrote: post #408
ashtonkem wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA also has a will to abuse them to a degree that their peers don’t, and we should judge them as less ethical for it.

'abuse' is a subjective word, you could have left off the 'ab' and you sentence would still be correct, arguably more correct. Also, why not consider that by using the complex web of tax laws to their advantage allows them to sell products at a lower price. This allows folks with lower incomes to enjoy similar products to those who can afford getting their stuff from more posh places. One could judge Ikea to be more…

This is the same kind of mental gymnastics that gave us trickle down economics.

The societal ethics, morality and the spirit of the law should all be taken into account when judging behaviour. Exploiting tax structures in order to conceal income is absolutely immoral and shouldn't be tolerated.

This is especially egregious when the tax loopholes are effectively gated behind behing a multi-national corporation. It leads to even greater concentrations of wealth in the hands of these companies which damages the health of the local markets they operate in.

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

#445

Post by Kalium »

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. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized.

It's mass production without the opportunity to posture about your means. It's also often a complicated and confusing experience to put together if you don't heed the instruction booklet carefully.

Personally, I think IKEA's instructions are dramatically better than the norm. An exploded engine diagram is a common approach from other vendors.

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

#446

Post by Kalium »

titzer wrote: post #423
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…

A close friend of mine filled his house entirely with furniture, including couches, from the 1800s. Antique grandfather clocks, pianos, tables, armoires, etc. Not surprisingly, this person is highly skilled with wood and works at a small furniture shop that makes high-quality tables and chairs. Things made out of wood can last centuries. There's no need to further accelerate our throwaway culture with throwaway furni…

An interesting proposition!

In 2008, I was on my own for the first time. I had to furnish my first apartment into livability. A family friend gave me a $300 gift card to IKEA. That gift got me a fully functional one-bedroom apartment that I could never have afforded at the time.

Now, as a well-paid adult advanced in my career, I can afford to buy high-quality things. I do this knowing full well that I'm buying status symbols. I'm a little skeptical that a highly skilled woodworker's output would have been available to 2008 me, or the modern equivalent, but I would love to be wrong.

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

#447

Post by jmalicki »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #420
netrus wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy example: Some entities are exempt from taxes, because they are not there to enrich individuals, but to profit a higher cause. Like Amnesty International. I think it is great that we exempt AI from paying taxes. Now it might be very difficult to write legislation that precisely encodes the difference between AI and McDonalds. After all, McDonalds funds children hospitals! If McDonalds tries to avoid taxes by tryi…

>the only solution for the legislator might be to make AI pay taxes as well. What taxes would AI pay? They're not selling items for profit. The only change that would need to happen is removing the ability to deduct charitable contributions from taxable income. I don't see any problem with that. People can still donate to AI with after tax income.

> They're not selling items for profit.

https://shop.amnestyusa.org/

Not-for-profit firms make profits all of the time, and while I'm not familiar with UK tax codes, at least in the US the only fuzzy line is that pursuit of profits not be the end goal... quite a few "non-profits", such as hospitals, sell a large number of services for a profit!

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

#448

Post by Fezzik »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #416
rychco wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, the first definition I found for the word evade is “escape or avoid, especially by cleverness or trickery.”

"Tax evasion" refers to illegal actions to indeed evade tax lawfully due. "Tax avoidance" is the perfectly legal practice of (more or less aggressively) minimising the amount of tax lawfully due. Everyone engages in tax avoidance at least to a degree.

People don’t like thinking this way... it’s difficult for a lot of people to grasp, for example, that if they have children and claim those children as a deduction they are thereby avoiding federal income taxes. Individuals avail themselves of the parts of the tax code that benefit them just like Big Corps do. You are not required to claim offspring as a deduction, so I guess by the logic of many people in this thread anyone who does is scummy because they are avoiding taxes? Seems kooky.

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

#449

Post by gregmac »

bmitc wrote: post #368
killtimeatwork wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of it is solely designed to hit a price point (“a $10 chair”) and is made of cheap plywood Isn't plywood actually stronger than real wood? It's even used for aircraft construction.

I have found that a little wood glue on the joints goes a long way in the IKEA furniture I have.

That's a great idea, I'll definitely be doing that in the future!

I've added L-brackets to key spots on Ikea furniture before, and it often increases how sturdy it feels by an order of magnitude.

Just the other day I fixed a 5 year old Billy bookshelf (that I broke while moving it, while partly loaded with books) by securing the cardboard back with screws instead of finishing nails and adding a couple metal brackets to the bottom. Cosmetically, despite being (ab)used by my kid, it still looks fine, and now feels even more sturdy than before. Wish I had thought of adding some glue (or maybe No More Nails) to secure the back even more.

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

#450

Post by eurasiantiger »

kebman wrote: post #439
tshaddox wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the furniture market is just insane. If you want a chest of drawers, you either pay $100 for a cheap flat pack self-assembled one from IKEA and take it home today, or similar prices for a similar one online from Wayfair.com (a bit more of a gamble), or you pay over $1000 for something that won’t show up for 6 months. It’s bizarre that you can buy a brand new car with cash and take it home today, but the supply…

I'd love some insight in how this industry works. I know there's some shops that literally do woodworking and upholstry for that bespoke furniture, but as far as I know, most of it is designed for industry production and mass produced. And indeed, if it's one thing IKEA is doing, it's exactly design for mass production at scale, but the quality is not super-high, perhaps even intentionally. I think, when it comes dow…

Ikea definitely has tiers of quality. A $50 desk is basically cardboard, a $500 desk has some MDF around the edges to make it feel sturdier, and the $1000 desk might even have some real wood in it.

The real problem with IKEA is that they use a supply chain that tends to bribe officials into cutting down old growth forests, destroying wildlife habitats.

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