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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

#521

Post by tpmx »

headsupftw wrote: post #516
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…

Wait a sec. When the products are sold by IKEA, they are cheap but they are "products that people actually need". But when they are from China, they are "cheap crap from china"?

Wooden IKEA products (which is what this thread is about) tend to be produced close to the forests, so northern/central/eastern Europe.

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

#522

Post by Jochim »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #501
Jochim wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

To be fair, trickle down economics is just fantasy. Tax avoidance is something everyone with a 401k does and is encouraged by the tax code. If there's something unique about what they're doing, especially as a result of them lobbying for certain parts of the tax code, then I can see it being judged harshly. If anyone can do what they're doing, then I don't see it as particularly negative.

A 401k has the specific purpose of helping individuals fund their retirement years, something society has agreed is worth providing some benefit for. There is an element of intention to the exemption and it serves a specific purpose.

> If anyone can do what they're doing, then I don't see it as particularly negative.

Typically not just anyone can do this, smaller firms do not have the resources set-up these schemes. Smaller firms are also much more likely to be slapped down by the government. The result of this is that larger corporations are further advantaged.

I think attempting to equate personal and corporate taxation is a mistake. Corporations are increasingly transnational in a way that people cannot be, and they are leveraging not just local tax codes, but often established treaties and differences between national tax codes that were introduced with different intent.

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

#523

Post by SamBam »

eropple wrote: post #352
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.

In America at least, the only way to make a significantly better desk than an IKEA one at similar prices is to omit the costs of tools and labor. Even after omitting the very significant cost of tooling (my corner clamp jigs for cabinetry cost half what a GALANT table does), getting good material you actually want will easily hit a hundred bucks for a fairly small, plywood-based desk. (Baltic birch isn't cheap! But i…

Yup. Anyone who starts to make their own furniture suddenly has a new-found appreciation for why furniture costs what it does.

That fact that you can easily spend $400-600 on the wood alone for a new dining table is staggering. (And makes you really, really careful while you build it.)

(My pandemic working-from-home desk was made of cheap box-store plywood, because I wasn't going to splurge on baltic for something that I hope I won't be using in a year. And it still cost what an IKEA desk would cost (but fits perfectly in my space, which is why I made it.))

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

#524

Post by chrisseaton »

rlpb wrote: post #283
chrisseaton wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But don't you want something more substantial and created with more craft? No. My furniture is...part of the furniture. I care about it being practical. I don't care about its heritage. IKEA quality is perfectly adequate for me, so I'm not inclined to pay for any more. I also appreciate light furniture that can be moved easily. Furniture that is more "substantial" and made from real wood[1], for example, is far mor…

And that's fine, that's how some people view food and they're happy with junk food in the same way people are happy with junk furniture. Junk food and junk furniture are both consistent, cheap, simple, unsurprising, available anywhere, and sometimes that's what people want. But that's what it is - junk furniture.

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

#525

Post by [deleted] »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #433
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people reading this are probably aware of the distinction in technical, legal terms. But it doesn't matter, because we're not prosecutors or the IRS. But I still call it tax evasion colloquially, because I'm just an average Joe who can't prosecute anyone so my legal opinion doesn't matter. My judgement is not whether it's illegal, but whether it's immoral and scummy. My neighbor, a self-employed painter, claimin…

The difference between avoidance and evasion is very important. One of them is legal and economically encouraged, the other one is an accusation of a crime. Also, most people learn this in high school. Calling it evasion when it is avoidance only confuses people as to what you mean, and makes people think you don't know what the terms mean. > My neighbor, a self-employed painter, claiming his work truck (that he also…

[deleted]

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

#526

Post by iso1631 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #210
iso1631 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything I have in my house is Ikea, from the desk I'm typing this on (10 years old) and the cupboard next to it (12 years), to my 4 year old bed (had to buy a new bed frame when we moved in to this house because the divan couldn't fit up the stairs) Aside from one wardrobe which I had to get rid of (it was 237cm -- too tall for this house, so I gave it to my parents), the only furniture I can think of that…

Here in Europe it has a pretty bad name too. But I love it. Their furniture is very versatile, functional and easy. Also, even though furniture snobs hate it, I love pointing out their KALLAX or BILLY units behind them in online meetings :D :D Then it's "oh yeah but this is my home office, it's not so important". In my place literally all my furniture is from Ikea and I love it. I don't like spending much on it, and…

Asked around the office (mainly London based), 6 people like Ikea furniture, 1 person didn't.

All aggreed that the delivery service is rubbish.

Tiny sample

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

#527

Post by loceng »

maccard wrote: post #94
jacquesm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem is that furniture, instead of a class of objects with longevity and functionality has now become a fashion article, and IKEA is a large factor in that shift.

Not to beat the snowflake millenial drum too hard, but my parents moved from the house they've owned since they were younger than me. They have furniture like bookcases, beds, couches, tables, much of which they offered to me. But I live in a 2 bedroom apartment that is less than 1/3 of the size of their house, so it just doesn't fit. As an example, their dining room table is wider than my living room! I can't take a…

Yup, very important point that IKEA has aligned with modern day living constraints and arguably modern day fashion. This highlights the issue of the Landlord-Rental complex that needs to be countered too. All a "fun" experiment but we must get these systems in check - we could all live like Kings and Queens in a sustainable world if only for organization and rallying resources towards so - against the status quo and those currently incentivized against such a system.

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

#528

Post by loceng »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #122
helmholtz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complication is EXACTLY why we need to be even more in panic and hair-on-fire about environmental issues. A colleague did some analyses for the life cycle emissions of refrigerants. The complexity in the process was absurd, and basically intractable without simplifications. How much indirect CO2 emissions are caused by an inefficient compressor? How much does it depend on how you generate electricity? Which count…

Great example. Reminds me of Milton Friedman's "Nobody knows how to make a pencil" essay. A lot of human progress is result of human actions but not planning. Centralized planning around "climate change" would 100% be a recipe for disaster and a monumental failure about which future generations will write for 100s of years just the way we talk about slavery today. Your use of carbon makes my existence on the planet a…

It comes down to you do whatever bare minimum "we" determine is necessary to do your part in this struggle, or we'll eventually go to war to hold the line if your practices unsustainablility outweigh the cost of war; arguably in globalised society you can and should use economic levers first.

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

#529

Post by stkdump »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #325
hiq wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Gotta love victim blaming. The problem isn't complicated tax laws, the problem is that the governments making them are national entities that have to answer to their national voting population and companies like IKEA are international entities, so have a very easy time to do stuff that is inside the letter but outside the spirit of the laws of the various countries.

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

#530

Post by dirtyid »

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 know in 10 years replacements for their core products will still be available.

Lots of iterative design revisions and deprecation makes many of IKEA systems not particularly future proof. But in general I think there's massive ecological benefits to how far IKEA goes to value engineer their products. Though ironically this means all the savings are going to be redirected at other consumption.

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