Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 141 posts

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#51

Post by pfdietz »

jeffbee wrote: post #16

The article doesn't even mention that this company already went bankrupt once this century, in 2008. Like some of the other posters, I furnished my cupboards with Duralex decades ago and never needed any more. In the same way, I filled my flatware drawers with Oneida decades before Oneida disappeared, and my plates are all from some long-forgotten Swedish stoneware maker, and I bought all my furniture from a dead Ita…

Also, smaller family sizes means people are inheriting such things rather than buying them. If anything, there's antique overload.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#52

Post by powerclue »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #37
sigmoid10 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the…

The main they don't survive is not due to capitalism. (Capitalism is just trade without use of force at the end of the day) but due to the lobbying power of corporations. Corporations constantly lobby the government for more regulation and rules, which they just budget for, but smaller companies don't have the funds to meet so they cannot stay in business. Look at the first couple of years of COVID for example, Walma…

That's not what capitalism is... or it's a very elementary understanding of it. Trade without force existed prior to and contemporary to capitalism. (See markets and mercantilism for more history there.) Capitalism is specifically the sort of mercantilism under which maximizing one's capital (typically the money commodity) becomes the aim.

Historically, money commodity was used to mediate exchange between two other commodities - I sell my wheat, get money, use money to buy pork. I'm buying commodities because I intend to use them or share them. Commodity -> money -> commodity. Capitalism inverts this -- the goal is to maximize money. I start with money, I convert it to a commodity that I can sell for a greater value, to get larger money. Money -> commodity -> money. You see Amazon operate this way: "if we can put one dollar in and get $1.01 out, do it".

Highly recommend this book on the transition in England and France from agrarian and feudal mercantilism into capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Capitalism

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#53

Post by dmix »

> the soaring cost of gas and electricity were the firm’s largest and most worrying expense

Difficult to have factories when basic utilities are expensive. China has a big advantage there as well, not just in labour costs. They invested heavily in energy infrastructure over the past few decades.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#54

Post by powerclue »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #48
sigmoid10 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason why worker owned companies (which were quite prevalent and a key factor in the 20th century's socialist movements) did not survive in our capitalist world. If we want to see these kinds of companies thrive, we need to change the entire market philosophy. Otherwise they will always be out-competed by companies that favour revenue/profit over worker benefits. In fact they will not even take off in the…

[flagged]

You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#55

Post by mytailorisrich »

powerclue wrote: post #54
mytailorisrich wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You realize there's an entire spectrum of socialist ideology between liberalism and authoritarian planned economies, yeah? It's not a Boolean, and it's not a slippery slope. We could have broadly liberal markets owned and run by the workers, and without the authoritarianism.

This is a slippery slope... The comment I replied to is an example of that: specifically on this aspect, it doesn't really matter whether a company is owned and run by the workers (we can have thay today and we do), but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete. Wishing that there wasn't competition is the slippery slope that ends badly, always.

Obviously mandating workers-ownership is authoritarian in itself.

Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#56

Post by pfdietz »

rlonstein wrote: post #50
pfdietz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass furnaces operate somewhere around 1500 C. Electrical heating would work, but that's also quite expensive, usually even more so. What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials.

> What they'd want to do is try to recover and reuse heat. In principle, there's no reason "new" heat has to be added each time they heat a batch of glass, if heat can be transferred from cooling glass back to the input materials. Have you worked in any industrial or craft setting involving molten glass or metal? Walked around a workshop? There's no way the heat is going back into the process.

I know there are industrial processes where heat is efficiently recycled, but I agree there are serious practical problems, particularly if the molten glass must be cooled quickly. Still, even somewhat lower grade heat can be upgraded back to high grade heat with high temperature heat pumps.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#57

Post by exo-cortex »

tormeh wrote: post #43

I remember looking at their website and thinking the product design was horrible. The "Picardie" design is iconic, but not really in a good way. In my mind it says "functional" and "old". That's probably unfair, but it is what it is. Everything else they have is generic in the extreme. The IKEA catalog has far more interesting glassware.

Funny that you mention IKEA. I have 4 very old IKEA glasses that were made by Duralex. I just love the fact that they're about as old as I am (40 next year) and we're able to survive that long. I consider them to be the peak of IKEA glassware. Today IKEA glasses are known to be breaking easy - sometimes simply by getting hot in the dishwasher. The design might look fresher, but they won't last.

The rest of my glasses (most) are Duralex as well. They're just very ... durable. I was kind of getting annoyed that the brand became so popular that I see them everywhere now (every other cafe serves water in them). I'm not French btw, my love for the glasses simply comes from seeing them outlast time and many pretty dramatic falls (a few times on hard ceramic tiles from a meter up and bouncing up almost as high again - leaving a few nearby mouths agape in the process). But reading that they're a worker owned cooperative makes me want to buy many more from them. That's what I want: Stuff that's build to last a long time by people who can live from their work. Who cares if they look dated? For something that's used daily being old is a testament to their quality. I use my IKEA-Duralex glasses almost daily. They look much cooler than any new shit with their battle-scars ight scratches :-D). IKEA is literally the opposite.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#58

Post by Loic »

Broussebar wrote: post #27

As the article said Duralex was the brand use by a large number of school cantinas in France. Inside of each glass there’s a small number used by the brand to identify the mold used for the creation of the glass. For kids that was a way to decide who is going to fetch the water for the table (smaller number or higher number of the table). That’s why the CE is holding his glass like that in the guardian article. Besid…

Durable is really the French household name "par excellence".

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#59

Post by tormeh »

dmix wrote: post #47
tormeh wrote: post #43

I remember looking at their website and thinking the product design was horrible. The "Picardie" design is iconic, but not really in a good way. In my mind it says "functional" and "old". That's probably unfair, but it is what it is. Everything else they have is generic in the extreme. The IKEA catalog has far more interesting glassware.

Definitely looks like something you’d see in a 1970s movie or your grandma’s old cupboard.

Yeah. They're grandma glasses at this point.

Re: 'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex

#60

Post by jascination »

I know Duralex because they're the de facto coffee cup for a latte in the world's best cafes. I dunno how or why it happened, but since about 2008 if you go to a cafe in Melbourne and your latte comes in anything BUT one of those Duralex glasses, you should run for the hills.
Post reply on HN