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Parable of the Sofa

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Re: Parable of the Sofa

#251

Post by anthomtb »

bunnie wrote: post #42

The bit about "lifestyle business" always being uttered in contempt resonated with me. I always assumed it was just me being overly sensitive to folks expressing concern over my life choices, urging me to snap out of my "mid-life crisis" and do something "useful" like raise money and scale up, or "apply myself" at famous institutions with "real impact".

> "lifestyle business" always being uttered in contempt.

This must be correlated with peer group and/or geography. I am in a mountain west city surrounded by skiers, cyclists and climbers. Lifestyle business is never mentioned in contempt, rather as a logical choice to support ones hobbies and outside interests.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#252

Post by thrance »

tristor wrote: post #216
thrance wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck convincing the chinese worker that made your phone of the merits of capitalism.

It’s funny you say that, because the primary beneficiaries of capitalism have been exactly those workers over the past four decades. While not good for American workers, off-shoring and outsourcing have lifted over a billion people out of poverty since the 1980s. China had the fastest growing middle class in the world, so much so, that as a buying market they’re absorbing the entire stock of many categories of high q…

Economic growth by itself means nothing for the working class. Without redistribution it amounts to exactly zero improvement of their living conditions.

Below is a link to a news coverage of a study that claims to have shown that while poverty (as defined by the world bank) dropped spectacularly in 1980s China, the inability to afford essential commodities skyrocketed in the early 1990s, and didn't recover fully since.

https://theconversation.com/chinas-capitalist-reforms-are-sa...

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#253

Post by j45 »

Lifestyle business is often sent out as a slur, often originating from someone who has said lifestyle from being wealthy.

Traditional VC investment by its definition is trying to hedge it's returns by investing in the time of startup founders, and often only large bets make the return worth while.

Increasingly, I agree with the idea to call a business "self-funded", because that's what it actually is, instead of bootstrapped or lifestyle.

I would say it might not be a stretch that what every founder is doing is to make an improvement in the lifestyle of their team and clients. VC investment is a good vehicle when entered into mindfully, and also drastically changes your course.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#254

Post by selimthegrim »

selimthegrim wrote: post #131
aebtebeten wrote: post #112

> I’m not smart enough to figure out what the regulatory regime is that would ban most of what private-equity does and tilt the playing field in favor of resilient lifestyle businesses. When I discovered a polity full of SMEs and resilient lifestyle businesses, I immigrated here. Some vague thoughts from a few decades of trying to figure out specifically why it seems to work so much better than the Old Country: Resil…

Curious minds want to know of where you speak…

If it’s where I think, my brother already lives there but the immigration process is formidable.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#255

Post by tristor »

thrance wrote: post #252
tristor wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny you say that, because the primary beneficiaries of capitalism have been exactly those workers over the past four decades. While not good for American workers, off-shoring and outsourcing have lifted over a billion people out of poverty since the 1980s. China had the fastest growing middle class in the world, so much so, that as a buying market they’re absorbing the entire stock of many categories of high q…

Economic growth by itself means nothing for the working class. Without redistribution it amounts to exactly zero improvement of their living conditions. Below is a link to a news coverage of a study that claims to have shown that while poverty (as defined by the world bank) dropped spectacularly in 1980s China, the inability to afford essential commodities skyrocketed in the early 1990s, and didn't recover fully sinc…

Thanks for the link. I don’t buy it. It does not match what I have directly observed, and seems to be mostly moving the goal posts. In purchasing power parity, the average Chinese person is massively better off today than in 1980, there’s simply no way around that.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#256

Post by mokanfar »

baggy_trough wrote: post #66

This is like people complaining about how air travel sucks compared to the time you could get a rib roast carved in the aisle in the 1960s. Markets have determined that people prefer cheaper, shoddier sofas compared to expensive high quality sofas. If you don't believe that, then go into business as a high quality sofa factory.

Most of today's world furniture comes from -----. Most of the problems in the furniture market today deal with a trend that middle class try to imitate the rich interior design look and feel. The uneducated consumer is surrounded by a market ----- created demand for which is furniture knockoffs of fashion furniture brands that you see in Interior Design Magazines.

The furniture is built with poor materials, and dangerous chemicals treating finishes and frame construction. Almost all faux finishes (veneer, marble, concrete, leather, stone etc...) is made with really bad ingredients to give it the overall look and feel to the real texture they are trying to imitate.

The fashion brand furniture keeps evolving as a fashion brand should even when it comes to furniture. Therefore, furniture is a trend market, where people can afford it. Where people can not afford it, they fill their space with the knockoff furniture, realize it is not good quality, accumulate enough money to repeat the cycle with another poorly manufactured replacement. This is what is driving most of the demand today to keep churning out low price-point furniture for the newly emerging middle working class of today's world that do not understand what really goes on behind the scenes of how their furniture gets made, or maybe they don't care.

The other furniture market is for people who, as others commented, leave furniture pieces to their children. Those groups do not care about fashion, as with people that just need clothes to walk around not caring about the brand that they are advertising.

There is still good affordable furniture out there. Hand-built with care and precision as a Rolls-Royce car would be in the factory, mostly small companies in Italy and other parts of the world still to this day make great long-lasting pieces. The locality of the furniture manufacturer matters on the price significantly. Shipping logistics for furniture is a nightmare.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#257

Post by thrance »

tristor wrote: post #255
thrance wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic growth by itself means nothing for the working class. Without redistribution it amounts to exactly zero improvement of their living conditions. Below is a link to a news coverage of a study that claims to have shown that while poverty (as defined by the world bank) dropped spectacularly in 1980s China, the inability to afford essential commodities skyrocketed in the early 1990s, and didn't recover fully sinc…

Thanks for the link. I don’t buy it. It does not match what I have directly observed, and seems to be mostly moving the goal posts. In purchasing power parity, the average Chinese person is massively better off today than in 1980, there’s simply no way around that.

Ok. What I meant to convey, is that I (personally) don't believe the exploitation part was necessary in the (undeniable) uplifting of the average Chinese. And that a lot of Chinese workers are still alienated, putting upwards of 12 hours a day on soul-crushing jobs.

I believe there are more effective ways of lifting populations out of poverty.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#258

Post by brewdad »

drrotmos wrote: post #248
photon_lines wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The point of the article is that the big business model is "continued growth", which depends on constantly increasing sales, which means products necessarily get shittier so that they must be replaced more frequently.' - Sorry to interject here, but this is extremely wrong and nowhere did I find this take-away from the posted article. There are massive businesses that do sell extremely high-quality products - in fac…

> If you allow a person to buy a $800 sofa which looks great on the outside and is made in China albeit with extremely low quality materials vs. a sofa which looks almost exactly the same but is priced at $1500 but is of much higher quality - most consumers will obviously choose the $800 dollar sofa vs the $1500 since that's how the free-market functions. Is this rational though? This is rarely the choice though. In…

I bought a sofa from a local builder a few years ago for around $2500. The frame is well built but the cushions lost their original shape within 6 months. All told, I'd rather have the sturdy sofa that looks a bit sloppy over a sofa that will break if more than three friends sit on it but I'd really rather have a sturdy one that still looks great after five years.

Maybe next time.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#259

Post by brewdad »

borski wrote: post #249
photon_lines wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but this is once again where the free-markets and economics come in: if the mass-produced ones match the custom-made ones in price, consumers will start switching to custom-made sofas. The mass-production suppliers will either have to 1) lower the price of their sofas or 2) increase the quality of production to match the quality of the custom-made ones. Both 1 and 2 are great for consumers and this is why competi…

That’s not quite true, because many people don’t have good custom sofa makers near them. Moreover, because they are small businesses, they don’t have the same capacity for marketing as big brands; most of their business is word of mouth. Also, custom sofas take time to build - not much, but 2-4 weeks or so. So there are a lot of reasons big brands are convenient. But you pay for that convenience in quality.

Not sure about sofas but when I bought a bed and some bookcases and nightstands last year all from national retailers, the lead time was 4-12 weeks depending on the product. Getting a custom sofa in 2-4 weeks would beat the competition in many cases. Again, the market constraint lies in knowing about the small vendor in the first place and having a way to purchase it conveniently.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#260

Post by tristor »

thrance wrote: post #257
tristor wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. I don’t buy it. It does not match what I have directly observed, and seems to be mostly moving the goal posts. In purchasing power parity, the average Chinese person is massively better off today than in 1980, there’s simply no way around that.

Ok. What I meant to convey, is that I (personally) don't believe the exploitation part was necessary in the (undeniable) uplifting of the average Chinese. And that a lot of Chinese workers are still alienated, putting upwards of 12 hours a day on soul-crushing jobs. I believe there are more effective ways of lifting populations out of poverty.

> I believe there are more effective ways of lifting populations out of poverty.

I think you may be right. Unfortunately, what I have observed is that every attempt otherwise so far has failed. I think any approach which requires strong social and philosophical alignment will fail within a few generations, because the intrinsic motivation of humans includes an element of greed that seems impossible to stamp out. Systems that acknowledges and harnesses this fact of humanity show significantly more progress, even as they too have downsides.

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