Today, we bought a dining table from Ikea to replace our dining table from Ikea. Well, that is not quite true, we made the old dining table from a table top and some legs from Ikea very cheaply 3 years ago to serve a purpose it no longer serves. The new one is a little larger and hopefully, stable enough that my daughter can't rock it and laugh as all of our drinks spill.
Now, I have nothing against Ikea products themselves and I actually don't mind building them myself, as it is kind of like being handy for real, just not. What I dislike is that I must shop at Ikea if I want to get something. Cheap, decent quality, mass produced. What's not to love?
A few years ago I had a discussion with one of my brothers about this situation that I perpetually find myself in and most likely, many of us find ourselves in, a conspiracy. Perhaps not a 'completely intentional' one but close enough to.
We are in balanced crush, have you noticed? I can comfortably even say the majority of us as for these global conglomerates to operate the way they do, the majority of us must buy from them.
In my family, we always have enough to consume mass produced products, never enough to get out of debt. Is this by accident? I don't think so. Mass production works on volumes and margins, and an optimisation to maximise profit and minimise offering costs.
Minimising costs means a crushing of supply chains in about every imaginable way, all the way down to child and slave labour. The lower down the food chain, the more the crush and the wider base crushed. For many companies, it is even possible that the CEO earns more per year than all of the hands-on production level employees combined as production can be in the dollar a day categories.
So, where do low level earners buy when they need something? Well, mass produced conglomerates of course, how can they afford more? Not only are the conglomerates killing the artisans through prices, they are part of the system that makes buying from an artisan impossible as the individual table maker must buy retail materials and has no supply chain to crush down to lower prices for customers.
Their potential customers just don't have the money to spend on such luxuries, even though what they would spend with them is much, much more likely to be invested back into their local economies with more tax paid on it than the conglomerates who use creative accounting practices and shelf corporations to mitigate most tax burdens. Something the small business owner cannot do.
This is what annoys me about Ikea and all of the others similar as well as the government enablers. There is a dishonesty in the system that punishes the local artist with tax and makes them criminals for doing cash-in-hand jobs for a slightly lower price to win a client whilst it is fine to have a company earn 150 million in revenues and pay only 200.000 in taxes in the country it was earned (a local Finnish example). And then, the 149.8 million went offshore.
This is pretty scammy behaviour in my opinion and I think most will already know and agree on but, how often do we think about it? When we get that bargain on sale, we never see the supply chain getting crushed and convicting the unseen into a conglomerated life of consumption.
Of course, neither corporation nor government have any incentive to break this cycle as the balance allows them to have a continual supply of customers that continually push majority of the earnings towards a narrow and very high peak. Cooperation for centralisation of mutual benefit for the few.
What do they say is the way out? Save. What does this mean? No locally made, locally owned, artisan crafted dining table. I have too much debt for such luxuries. And because of that debt, the cycle is very, very hard to break.
To break it, I must save which means consuming cheaply. The debt however has interests that make it harder to pay off the longer and higher it goes. If I do manage to pay it off, it means the conglomerates and the middleman banks have benefited heavily anyway but, my chances are very low.
It is kind of like cigarette companies selling nicotine gum. Yes, the chances of quitting is higher and they will lose a customer but, the vast majority still fail so in the meantime, they are making money by selling gum.
The vast majority of the world fails to break the debt cycle they commonly find themselves in but while they try, those that put them in debt still benefit.
Like the things I built today and will continue on tomorrow, I have been hammered, nailed and screwed. Most of us have no choice but to bend over and buy it.
Always enough to buy, never enough to not.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
One option is to buy used. My wife and I are going to need to buy a new kitchen table soon. Put off by the high prices of new premium products and not willing to buy from Ikea we have turned our eyes to the second hand market. Perfectly fine furniture can be found used at a small fraction of the cost of the same products fresh out of the factory. I'd much rather buy a table with the top made out of solid wood instead of chipboard because such a table top can be maintained and repaired much more easily.
Most of our furniture was bought used. We used to do it because we were broke college students. Now we do it because it makes sense financially and environmentally. Plus, as you've noted, older furniture tends to be of much better quality -- and it's often pretty easy to give it a quick repair or update.
Sure. There are all kinds of products on the market for wood repair and surface finishing.
My view on this is similar to yours, my wife's :P
We actually do this a lot with baby clothes. W have bought some new for occasions but the majority is from the flea markets. It is something I do like in Finland, the flea markets come with a lot less shame than in Australia.
It's a given that a lot of the baby clothes are bought from the flea markets. Even upper middle class families do that here. It has to do with the mentality that no good thing should go to waste.
Add to everything the fallacy that is mass produced items quality. Quality which is good enough to survive an acceptable life cycle but not to last.
Good enough to save for the next mass produced low price item but not good enough to save for a table which will last 15 years or more.
The vicious cycle of limited warranty and short consumption lifespans. If it weren’t for the EU, and it’s compulsory minimum 2 years warranty, things would be even worse.
It’s a trap. An economically calculated trap. For profit.
Its a trap, definitely, and one to make sure that every cent we have cycles through big companies at some time. You have caught the dilemma and expressed it well. Thanks!
I am hoping that decentralised currencies and the associated businesses will screw around with the system enough to break it but, that takes us acting differently to them. Currently, this is not happening.
And don't forget when you finally have a good idea for yourself to really earn money, your new company is bought or broken with competion by the big business to protect themselves.
Yes. bought or broken....
Agree with everything you said except this sentence: "Of course, neither corporation nor government have any incentive to break this cycle..." The government and the corporation really aren't two different entities. the gov't is just an arm of most of these big conglomerates.
How dare you disagree :P
Yes, I can agree with that but, many still see them as separated entities. Well, not at Steemit...
I'm going to steem my way out of debt then buy tables made by local craftsmen
this is the plan :)
My heart and mind want so much to support small, local businesses, but my bank account keeps driving me to the mass-produced, cheaply made products at the nearest box stores. It's easy to use cost to justify my purchasing decisions -- except that if I actually only bought what I needed, instead of the things I think I need, I could afford to spend more on the locally produced, better quality things I really want. And feel good about it to.
A few years ago, my wife and I were making a decent move to support more local and then, the costs of an ill baby took what savings we had forcing local into the luxury category again.
Sorry to hear about your [email protected] do hope your baby has overcome whatever it was that made her ill...My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Peace
Well said...perhaps limiting what we actually spend on things we really do not need 'will' allow for the purchase of quality goods from the 'small' producers. Have a wonderful day.
As always @tarazkp...I did enjoy reading this 'original' @steemit post by you. Your style of writing is comfortably free flowing, with a touch of humor. Have a happy day.
Oh seems like a lot of work!
It is a bit crazy! But even if we are in debt we still buy things. The follow great marketing strategies to make us attracted to their products. Even if we dont need anything , we start imagining the need of it!
Ikea regrets use of forced prison labour
Ikea regrets being caught using forced prison labour :P
Exactly. :/
Nice, my grandpa was carpenter and I always work this
thanks to the difficulties of your life👍
love to read it, thanks..
that's pretty cool to know, thanks.
This exact thing (the crush, not the Ikea furniture, though I'm getting pretty mad at some of the Ikdea stuff that we have for falling apart, bloody melamine XD) causes occasional meltdowns when I think about it too much (because it invariably leads to thinking about how to circumvent it which results in running headlong into everything which iseems to be specifically designed to make sure it's as difficult as possible for anyone wanting to do something else to be able to).
But we'll work around it because we're an imaginative bunch.
And hopefully the people smart enough to be doing the bulk of the tooling for the workarounds don't become the new arseholes that we all currently hate XD
All those images of IKEA screws and fittings were giving me the shudders. I’ve put my fair share of IKEA together in my time and no-doubt will do so again. Feeling your pain.