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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

#601

Post by GekkePrutser »

iso1631 wrote: post #526
GekkePrutser wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was really happy with the delivery service here in Spain actually! They brought it all the way up to the apartment and they were quick and careful.

But yeah N=1 :)

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

#602

Post by GekkePrutser »

m463 wrote: post #227
GekkePrutser wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people actually love it! Some people really view it as a day trip. Especially the showroom part. I always skip that entirely :P I know, I don't know how someone can love it either.. I hate the way they have these predefined paths so you can't quickly get what you need. And if you try to use the shortcut they make it as difficult as possible. Usually I pick everything online and find out the storage locations, an…

We don't mind the food - meatballs and lingonberry soda! However they've designed the store to TRAP YOU and make you go through the "shopping gauntlet" to exit.

True, when I was a consultant on the road I'd eat there all the time. Quick, cheap and much better than McDonalds. And also near the highway most of the time.

Usually I'd try to walk out through the entrance after :) Most of the time this worked fine.

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

#603

Post by chordalkeyboard »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #201
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment, and the sibling that made similar observations, are correct. But a regulatory system where people are taxed on the net carbon contribution of their holdings is likely to reward them for owning land that is occuppied by plants.

But the point still is that net carbon contribution of land occupied by plants is zero .

I think the point from Ikea’s perspective is that the regulatory regime may consider it to be net positive.

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

#604

Post by andromeduck »

mikem170 wrote: post #594
andromeduck wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would all be better off if corporate taxes were reduced to low single digits in favor of regular individual income tax and VAT bit the optics aren't good so it's never gonna happen except if you're big enough to have creative accountants and political/economic clout like Ikea and others.

I've held that point of view, but heard something recently that gave me pause: The high tax rates of the 1960's were the reason that companies paid their employees more and/or invested in research, producing things like Bell Labs. The reasoning was that when corporate tax rates are low companies will use the extra money to play financial games, and when corporate tax rates are high companies know they are better of o…

I'm not sure I entirely buy that. Sector monopolies were much more common around that time too which makes broader research investments easier to recuperate and there was also strong market incentives to do so because the bottom kept getting eaten up by foreign and particularly asian manufactuerers.

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

#605

Post by Geminidog »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #583
Geminidog wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which degree should we start judging at? Morality doesn't need to be codified into exact terms in order to be relevant. At what point does killing become a crime? When you kill an ant for no reason? When you kill an animal for food? Or when you kill another human for survival? Intuitively I know the differences. But articulating my intuition into words can lead to loop holes so I'd rather not. The moral module in yo…

>You don't need a law to tell the difference from right and wrong and nothing is as simple as electing the right person to make things right again. A business that tries to do the "right" thing in a system that allows everyone else to do the "wrong" thing, will not survive. Is it wrong to not offer a new mother sufficient time to bond with her newborn and breastfeed her newborn for a minimum year per the recommendati…

Your initial argument painted the problem as a moral conundrum questioning where we draw "lines." I cannot agree with this sentiment. Codifying such intuitions into axiomatic rules is challenging but classifying a given situation without being aware of the codified rules is simple and intuitive.

As for your new argument, this is something I can partially agree with. If the landscape allows for such immoral behavior and thereby as a consequence requires everyone to adopt the same immoral behavior as a means to survive and stay competitive then I can't fully blame you for your actions.

That does not fully excuse it though. A Man dying of starvation may have no choice but to kill and eat his own child. The situation does not absolve the man of all guilt. Obviously, your situation is not as extreme, but the similarity it shares with you and your circumstances is the fact that you having no choice does not make you completely innocent. Apologies to everyone reading for the extreme example, the extremeness of the example helps fully elucidate the moral ambiguity associated with hard choices.

Also self justification flies far, people will come up with all kinds of excuses to give merit to their own actions. Is exploiting those loopholes truly absolutely necessary for survival? Or is it something you tell yourself without really knowing the full details? I don't know your exact case, but the above is a common trope people use to lie to themselves. People will refuse to look deeper into certain details that make them uncomfortable so they assume a reality that best justifies their actions.

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

#606

Post by thaumasiotes »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #550
thaumasiotes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A very large group doing a very large purchase can buy cost-effective security. That really depends on how much they want the security. People defend territory all the time. It's very, very expensive to do that -- have a look at some city walls -- but it's cost-effective because they are using the territory. But no, no matter how large the group, they cannot buy cost-effective security for their giant stretch of wi…

> Compare American government efforts to stop people from using land to grow marijuana. Is the problem that the American government just isn't big enough? People are generally doing that in areas where people are allowed. Also the government has a stupendously large amount of land that it didn't pay for and a low budget for keeping anyone out. It's different if this is land you're purchasing in the modern age. If you…

> If you're buying a million acres for over a hundred million dollars, then that's about 150 miles of border to patrol.

> If that's too expensive then go up to 10 million acres, which triples the land area per mile of border. Or 100 million acres.

I don't really follow. The use case is that you want to prevent small farmers from encroaching on the jungle. This will only ever happen at the border between where the small farmers end and the jungle begins. If you buy land behind the border, that's nothing but a waste of your money (until the border is so thoroughly dejungled that your old hinterlands is the new border).

In turn, this means that all of the land you're interested in is border. You can't rely on the fact that a circle has a high ratio of area to perimeter to claim cost-efficiency, because you're structurally constrained to owning maximally cost-inefficient strip shapes.

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

#607

Post by Dylan16807 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #606
Dylan16807 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compare American government efforts to stop people from using land to grow marijuana. Is the problem that the American government just isn't big enough? People are generally doing that in areas where people are allowed. Also the government has a stupendously large amount of land that it didn't pay for and a low budget for keeping anyone out. It's different if this is land you're purchasing in the modern age. If you…

> If you're buying a million acres for over a hundred million dollars, then that's about 150 miles of border to patrol. > If that's too expensive then go up to 10 million acres, which triples the land area per mile of border. Or 100 million acres. I don't really follow. The use case is that you want to prevent small farmers from encroaching on the jungle. This will only ever happen at the border between where the sma…

Doesn't that risk someone buying the land behind your strip and developing it?

But assuming your scenario is the right one:

Buying only the border land is a strict improvement in efficiency over my plan. Instead of paying X million for land and Y million for security to protect a huge swath of rainforest, you only have to pay X/50 for land and Y million for security. Who cares about what percent goes to what, you're saving tons of rainforest for even less money.

In the extreme you might realize you don't even need to buy any land, you're just paying for security to protect the rainforest. Instead of paying 100 billion to own and never visit, you pay 1 billion a year to protect land you don't own. Which... sounds fine to me!

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

#608

Post by jfim »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #462
fimdomeio wrote: post #13

I have a problem with IKEA. Aren't those peaces of furniture made of composite materials and those not so sturdy shelves a sustainability problem when compared to traditional furniture making which is mostly wood glue a protective coat which lasts for hundreds of years can be infinitely repaired in a workshop with some basic tools. And then it it all ends it can became firewood, which ikea furniture can't. Shouldn't…

Why can't IKEA furniture be used as firewood?

Particleboard is held together with glue, and the paint and glues probably aren't the best thing to breathe when they burn.

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

#609

Post by fy20 »

perilunar wrote: post #233
trymas wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who does not know how much is an acre: 66k acres is ~27k hectares or 270sq.km.

> 66k acres is ~27k hectares That's a strange way to put it. More obviously, 1 acre ~= 0.4 hectares or ~4000 m² Alternatively, 1 hectare ~= 2.5 acres

In some countries there is also the are unit of land, 10x10m. There are 100 of those in a hectare (hecto = 100).

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

#610

Post by ac29 »

worldvoyageur wrote: post #577
snoshy wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in this particular case is that Ikea is not taking productive forest land and taking it out of production. It is taking naturally forested land that is at risk of deforestation that would ostensibly then be used for a monoculture wood farming industry. If this land was used for timber, it would reduce biodiversity in Georgia. That would unquestionably be a bad outcome for the environment. Deforestation…

I take the point. Removing land from the potential to be developed is different from removing land from production. Not that anyone is saying this directly, but I disagree with the argument that good, productive land left fallow is better than good productive land that is producing. My brother makes a living and feeds his family based on his wood lot. Traces of original settlers from nearly two hundred years ago are…

That sounds pretty awesome, and kudos to your brother and his family for how they are managing the land. But, you must realize what you described is not representative of most commercial timberland. You can see the effects of timber operations via satellite imagery, even quite far zoomed out - see most of western Oregon, for example.
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