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IKEA in a vacuum has many many flaws. As I see it though, what IKEA displaced wasn’t the family owned expert artisans manufacturing built to order furnitures.

IKEA in a vacuum has many many flaws. As I see it though, what IKEA displaced wasn’t the family owned expert artisans manufacturing built to order furnitures. It was piss poor, badly designed, actual shitty materials, poor country labor intensive flat packs. When I was a kid my family bought cheap mass produced furniture from shopping malls, the looks were fine, it came from Vietnam or China [0], and the quality was laughably bad. Finished product would be slightly crooked. Screws slightly loose. Smell terrible. And people would have that “what did you expect for that price” grin. [1] I can’t imagine employees were treated in a stellar way either, we heard scandals after scandals about third world factories, and the quality itself was a testament to how much humans were involved in all of that. So, I see IKEA as a provider of somewhat decent furnitures instead of shitty ones, most other parameters staying the same (they don’t, I genuinely think they’re not worse than the 80s~90s post colonialist euro companies) [0] how the table turned, quality wise… [1] to address the obvious “why didn’t they buy more expensive furniture that could have lasted way longer instead”…the answer is simple: upfront money. The same reason people don’t buy 5 story apartment buildings even if that would bring them more money in the long term.

actionfromafar 4y ago
The effects of IKEA must be very different depending on where in the world they were introduced, and when. If your country (cough-cough USA) had already descended into the "crap products globalisation stage" before IKEA came along, it will feel like a net positive. If your country (cough-cough Sweden) got IKEA before that stage, I would say, yes, IKEA displaced quality furniture. I'd say the overall problem is un-accounted for externalities. Cheap crap from China or Vietnam is just a symptom of the same illness. Crappy products are okay, in a free market economy. But crappy products with huge environmental costs undercutting "kosher" crappy products, is not okay. What use are even labour and environmental laws if one can skirt them by pushing the problem elsewhere?
- com2kid 4y ago
  Ikea also sells nice, solid wood, furniture. And they typically do so at a price that is much more affordable than their competitors. If you want to go into Ikea and just buy long lasting solid wood products, go ahead! Indeed I'd argue Ikea has made new solid wood furniture more accessible, heck sometimes new Ikea wood furniture is cheaper than consignment store wood furniture!
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    I see. Then it's OK to skirt environmental and worker protection laws, I guess. As long as the products are nice.
    - lovich 4y ago
      That’s generally been the decision the western world has settled on, which seems like an improvement in that we at least need the products to be nice
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Environment is tough. I see IKEA to blame here, but as long as there will be customer for cheaper goods who don’t care much about where the wood comes from, or how all of that is fabricated, it won’t change much. Other smaller makers have the same conundrum when they source their wood from bigger entities who will either hide where it actually comes from, and/or give plausible deniability. That’s where I see having everyone hypothetically switch to smaller furniture makers wouldn’t be enough, we’d need a lot more to make actual progress. A bit the same way so many corporations are “carbon neutral” through offset, even if it’s a scam under most of these. IKEA using it’s position to do something could be a realistic solution, I just don’t know if there is much hope in that regard. The coffee scene could be a exemple where traceability helps a lot to improve the market (as a consumer there are options to do the right thing for non crazy prices), while the global picture stays grim as the most sold coffee will always be the unmarked super market value pack. Worker protection: same as for Amazon, I wish they rapidly advance their robotization programs. In the meantime I strongly support more regulation, and would like security and social policies baked into the prices, especially as I don’t think there would be that much actual impact. Just as wish more companies across the board get unions.
      - actionfromafar 4y ago
        We provide a regulatory ecosystem - inside that ecosystem, Amazons and IKEAs are the winners. If we change the ecosystem, other companies would evolve to be the winners. (Or IKEA and Amazon would change.)
jjkaczor 4y ago
As per your note [1], this is the "Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

actionfromafar 4y ago

The effects of IKEA must be very different depending on where in the world they were introduced, and when. If your country (cough-cough USA) had already descended into the "crap products globalisation stage" before IKEA came along, it will feel like a net positive. If your country (cough-cough Sweden) got IKEA before that stage, I would say, yes, IKEA displaced quality furniture. I'd say the overall problem is un-accounted for externalities. Cheap crap from China or Vietnam is just a symptom of the same illness. Crappy products are okay, in a free market economy. But crappy products with huge environmental costs undercutting "kosher" crappy products, is not okay. What use are even labour and environmental laws if one can skirt them by pushing the problem elsewhere?

com2kid 4y ago
Ikea also sells nice, solid wood, furniture. And they typically do so at a price that is much more affordable than their competitors. If you want to go into Ikea and just buy long lasting solid wood products, go ahead! Indeed I'd argue Ikea has made new solid wood furniture more accessible, heck sometimes new Ikea wood furniture is cheaper than consignment store wood furniture!
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  I see. Then it's OK to skirt environmental and worker protection laws, I guess. As long as the products are nice.
  - lovich 4y ago
    That’s generally been the decision the western world has settled on, which seems like an improvement in that we at least need the products to be nice
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    Environment is tough. I see IKEA to blame here, but as long as there will be customer for cheaper goods who don’t care much about where the wood comes from, or how all of that is fabricated, it won’t change much. Other smaller makers have the same conundrum when they source their wood from bigger entities who will either hide where it actually comes from, and/or give plausible deniability. That’s where I see having everyone hypothetically switch to smaller furniture makers wouldn’t be enough, we’d need a lot more to make actual progress. A bit the same way so many corporations are “carbon neutral” through offset, even if it’s a scam under most of these. IKEA using it’s position to do something could be a realistic solution, I just don’t know if there is much hope in that regard. The coffee scene could be a exemple where traceability helps a lot to improve the market (as a consumer there are options to do the right thing for non crazy prices), while the global picture stays grim as the most sold coffee will always be the unmarked super market value pack. Worker protection: same as for Amazon, I wish they rapidly advance their robotization programs. In the meantime I strongly support more regulation, and would like security and social policies baked into the prices, especially as I don’t think there would be that much actual impact. Just as wish more companies across the board get unions.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      We provide a regulatory ecosystem - inside that ecosystem, Amazons and IKEAs are the winners. If we change the ecosystem, other companies would evolve to be the winners. (Or IKEA and Amazon would change.)

jjkaczor 4y ago

As per your note [1], this is the "Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."