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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

#611

Post by Ygg2 »

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…

I never said I was in America. In fact, it's much more likely I live outside of America.

Price of labor is way less. And so is cost of materials.

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

#612

Post by Ygg2 »

eropple wrote: post #508
Ygg2 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS based on what? I can show you the desk. I did found his bill. It was $30 bucks more. The price for IKEA piece was materials plus delivery. The price for that desk was design, delivery and assembly on the spot.

IKEA has some "halo" items, but most people, when they're talking about IKEA, are talking about stuff like their GALANT table/desks. What IKEA item were you comparing it to?

HEMNES stain white writing desk.

I need drawers to store stuff next to my computer.

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

#613

Post by shafyy »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #204
shafyy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. The problem is that, like with clothes, people THINK they need more and newer things all the time because Marketing tells them that they do. I read somewhere (can't find the link right now) that shit tons of clothes and other items are not laying around in warehouses not being sold (due to lockdown) and I don't see people walking around naked in the streets. S…

Well the thing with furniture is that it fills up your place quickly. As apartments get smaller (most countries are in a housing crisis) that pretty much stops people buying furniture they don't need. I only ever buy furniture because I really have a need for it. Not because I think it's cool or anything.

That's great, but I assure you, a lot of people just throw out old furniture and buy new ones just because they feel like their old furniture is out of style.

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

#614

Post by shafyy »

minikites wrote: post #431
shafyy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. The problem is that, like with clothes, people THINK they need more and newer things all the time because Marketing tells them that they do. I read somewhere (can't find the link right now) that shit tons of clothes and other items are not laying around in warehouses not being sold (due to lockdown) and I don't see people walking around naked in the streets. S…

>The problem is that, like with clothes, people THINK they need more and newer things all the time because Marketing tells them that they do. This is a problem with capitalism, not IKEA or clothing.

Maybe, but companies do have choices and don't need to blindly maximize profit.

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

#615

Post by hrktb »

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.

The "don't hate the player hate the game" approach only works if the player has no influence on the game.

Corporations and politics are not two separate entity that act independently.

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

#616

Post by dalmo3 »

fy20 wrote: post #609
perilunar wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

TIL about are. I just thought hectare was 100x100.

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

#617

Post by minikites »

shafyy wrote: post #614
minikites wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that, like with clothes, people THINK they need more and newer things all the time because Marketing tells them that they do. This is a problem with capitalism, not IKEA or clothing.

Maybe, but companies do have choices and don't need to blindly maximize profit.

Yes they do, the system will punish them if they do otherwise:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/american-airlines-stock-si...

>American Airlines has tried to make amends, by announcing a significant pay raise for flight attendants and pilots , to take base pay rates to industry highs, years ahead of when union contracts would become amenable.

>The stock AAL, +6.63% tumbled as much as 8.6% in intraday trade, before paring some losses, even though the airline reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations, while revenue rose in line with forecasts.

>“We are troubled by [American’s] wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups,” Baker wrote in a note to clients.

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

#618

Post by tomrod »

ac29 wrote: post #610
worldvoyageur wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any more evidence of this? My own experience with East Texas timberland is more representative of the grandparent comment.

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

#619

Post by drewzero1 »

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…

>Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime.

Honestly, I haven't found IKEA to be all that cheap? When I was looking for a bed frame they seemed comparable to other midrange furniture places. I could definitely have found a similar thing cheaper online or maybe even at Walmart.

I guess I'm used to buying furniture used, where the floor's the limit for how cheap it can be, but my impression of IKEA was that people go there for the showroom experience and the meatballs more than the price.

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

#620

Post by StillBored »

alacombe wrote: post #562
StillBored wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that after it dies frequently it will release all the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. In the case of turning the tree into furniture its really what happens at the end of the furniture's life. If it ends up buried in a landfill then the carbon is probably sequestered for a few hundred years, but if it ends up going through an incinerator for electricity/etc generation then its not actuall…

> I think the point is that after it dies frequently it will release all the stored carbon back into the atmosphere Only if it burns, dead tree are generally eaten away over decades by insects, fungus and birds.

Rotting, as its known, is just the tree being metabolized by other living organisms. That process is the same as burning except in that the energy is used by the organism. The net result being the carbon being turned into C02 same as burning.

AKA, whether you burn it, or leave it in the environment to rot/compost/etc the carbon eventually turns back into C02. In order for trees to be a carbon sink they have to be sequestered in an O2 free environment forever. AKA, they need to be feedstock for the oil the cockroaches are going to use to build their civilization in a 100M years.

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