[marcus_holmes]

I make my own furniture. I am absolutely not a carpenter. But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home.

This is an analogy, obviously. Ikea has been innovative, and it does provide a useful service for people; if you just moved into a new place and need to furnish it as quickly and cheaply as possible, then off to Ikea you go. But it's still shitty furniture.

My furniture doesn't look great, sometimes. My joinery is not perfect. I don't have all the tools I need to do this properly. But the design goals for each are what we need to live our lives. My wife has a stupidly high bed in her office, piled mattresses so she can spread them out if we have many visitors. I made her a bedside table that matches that height. It's a complete one-off; I won't make another that size, and we probably won't need it if we move house.

My point is that we already have this split in other areas of our lives; the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year). Ikea furniture. Buying a mass-produced crockery from a big store, or buying hand-made crockery from a local potter. We're just adding information and code to this split.

[technotarek]

I’m not a furniture maker, but I have a rather close connection to the industry. I used to hate ikea furniture. In fact I hated almost all modern furniture that mass market, that wasn’t high end. I was a huge proponent of vintage furniture ( and still am), but I have really come around on ikea. They sure still make some crap, but they also make some genuinely innovative pieces that can last if you treat them with a basic level of care. I’d specifically call out / praise a few of their beds with built in drawer solutions. A few good desks too. They also have other mostly solid wood products too. It really depends. Just my $0.02.

[rainbowDolphin]

Agreed. I was a carpenter for a long time and have built everything from completely disposable structures to things that ended up in Design Within Reach.

I think Ikea is great. Sure, the cheaper stuff consists of veneered particle board at best. But they (at least used to) use thicker veneers, often include relatively high quality hardware, and make some products that are just completely solid (stainless kitchen gear, simple but serviceable pine furniture, standing desks, some bedding).

What gets to me are places like West Elm and similar companies. Mid-Century design, but it's the same veneered particle board as the much cheaper Ikea stuff, and costs far more.

[bostik]

Many of Ikea's wood (wood-like?) products are pretty flimsy, designed to be built once and never moved or taken apart. (cough - all cupboards, most cabinets - cough)

But somewhat ironically their steel kitchenware is competitive with catering equipment. It may not be as well designed for maximum functionality and storage packing efficiency, but costs about the same or even less than comparable Vogue gear. Over the years I've spotted an increasing number of street food vendors using Ikea bowls and trays, so the price and availability advantage appears to be real.

[graemep]

Billy bookshelves seem pretty good even though they are veneered board of some kind. I have several and they have lasted many years (eve ones bought second hand) and moves. Not the best, but not terrible and great value for money.

The cubical storage units are pretty solid and practical.

On the other hand the IKEA wardrobe I have is falling to pieces.

> What gets to me are places like West Elm and similar companies. Mid-Century design, but it's the same veneered particle board as the much cheaper Ikea stuff, and costs far more.

Somewhat similar to what I was thinking. In the UK John Lewis sell (or used to) sell bookshelves very similar to a Billy (in construction and appearance depending on the veneer) at three times the price.

[fragmede]

That's the thing. Ikea's alternatives are all worse in some dimension. The Amish do make good furniture though.

[marcus_holmes]

Agree completely. As I said, Ikea provide a valuable service. And I'm sure that for some pieces, quality is compatible with the core design values of cost and transportability.

And, to extend the analogy, I'm sure Google's AI results will be perfectly serviceable for some people in some situations.

But for my wife's odd, non-standard, situation I had to build it myself. And for some people's odd, non-standard, situation they'll need to construct (or find) a bespoke information service that matches their needs. That will probably cost them more and the joinery won't be as neat.

[saalweachter]

There's a tier of quality that's just fine... as long as you don't move it much, either from home to home or just rearranging too much.

If you do, then the unglued joints decay and it becomes wobblier and wobblier.

[bigfatkitten]

Ikea is an interesting place in that you can get something that will either last either 15 minutes or 75 years. There really isn’t much in between.

[Procrastes]

I want to buy you a CMOT Dibbler Sausage for the Vimes reference. Perfect metaphor for this situation. His point was that it was the cheap boots that keep people poor, so that makes me think artist and artisan patronage will be an even bigger thing in years to come.

[tonyedgecombe]

I’ve become quite doubtful about the Vimes theory because getting boots resoled involves labour so has become relatively expensive.

Also my expensive boots didn’t last a lifetime, last time I went to get them resoled I was told they had deteriorated too far.

[Procrastes]

The metaphor may not hold up well in practice, but as counterexamples, I've had a pair of motorcycle boots since the late 80s that have never needed any maintenance beyond some saddle soap, and my grandfather's fountain pen from the 1920s just turned 100 and still writes fine. I put a new nib in it about 15 years ago or so.

[valicord]

My IKEA furniture has lasted 12 years so far, including 3 moves, with only minor cosmetic damage.

[gammarator]

I have a 20 year old Malm dresser that made four moves and is doing just fine.

(I do have it screwed into the wall as it’s been recalled for tipovers.)

[Broken_Hippo]

A lot of their furniture now has warnings that it must be secured to the wall - for that very reason. On their (Norwegian) website, this starts with furniture around 100cm tall, especially if it is talland thin or sits on legs.

I guess the change (and recalls) are a result of lawsuits from that same dresser.

[jonfromsf]

I think the Malm has the highest body count of any individual piece of furniture on the planet.

[account42]

Keep in mind that IKEA today is also not going to be the same quality as IKEA 20 years ago, even for products that still have the same name and look.

[wanoir]

> the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year)

This made me think of a fascinating exception to this

Luxury-brand cars usually get turned over every couple years so as to avoid their inevitable maintenance cliff

[marcus_holmes]

It is an interesting exception.

The really rich people that I know of drive 10-year-old beaten-up Land Rovers, though.

I think there's a nouveau-riche slice of folks who buy "luxury" cars thinking that they confer status. There are brands like this in every industry, that adopt all the pointers of "luxury" except actual quality.

[bitwize]

There was a study sometime back that suggested most American millionaires live in homes of modest or at least unostentatious size and drive used cars of American make. These days it'd probably be of Japanese make, as Toyotas and Nissans are relatively cheap and last forever. Having a lot of money and showing the world that you have a lot of money are completely different goals. You'll be flat broke if you join an MLM with 99.5% certainty, but if you're a good enough salesperson they'll loan out a Mercedes or something to drive around so you can show off how rich the plan made you and "edify your upline". You're on the hook for fuel and maintenance, though.

Maybe it's the Scots-Irish in him, but my father was always one to go for the luxury stuff, but still seek out the good quality stuff at as good a price as he can manage and fix it up if it were broken. He knows how to keep a Cadillac Eldorado on the road for 20 years or more, so of course he's going to spring for the fancy if a used one turns up at a good price. In the 80s he bought a small mansion that was in a quasi-dilapidated state but had been standing since the opening years of the 20th century. We renovated it inside and out, and today it's on the National Register of Historic Places (though my parents no longer live there).

[wanoir]

> still seek out the good quality stuff at as good a price as he can manage and fix it up if it were broken.

I think that's a nice story to highlight, being able to do things well and preserving that knowledge

While there can be benefits for mass producing things, what actually is produced is going to be limited by what techniques are conducive to automation. So the techniques that are hard to automate are lost from the market of provided goods and then human capital for it also gets lost (can't think of any concrete examples off the top of my head, but maybe the techniques for some elements of clothing that are now only found in couture/custom pieces). Another related idea is how there are much fewer color variations in manufactured goods now, simply because it simplifies the mass manufacturing process.

[marcus_holmes]

> can't think of any concrete examples off the top of my head, but maybe the techniques for some elements of clothing that are now only found in couture/custom pieces

Maybe how clothes used to come with a decent margin on the hems so you could alter them, but now they don't?

[28304283409234]

> Toyotas and Nissans

You seem to have misspelled "Honda". ;-)

[bitwize]

I don't have direct experience with Hondas, but I'm sure they're fantastic. My mom had a Nissan in the late 90s that she got with 100,000 miles on it and put another 100,000 miles on it before getting rid of it.

[wanoir]

My admiration of Honda and Toyota comes from their hybrid offerings, probably the most practical kind of car to get.

EVs have the charging requirement, so it’s a lifestyle / home setup adjustment. Plus, other trade-offs like being way heavier due to the battery, and higher risk of being totaled if the battery pack is even slightly damaged.

Slight aside: I only recently learned how much easier it is to total an EV. A small accident can be fine for a gas car, but for an EV, if it does anything to the battery, and requires replacing the battery or going deep inside to try and figure out what’s wrong with it, it’s just not worth it anymore, and gets declared totaled by the insurance company. Not great! Felt it was worth including in my expected cost calculation for whether or not to get an EV.

And regular cars haven’t gotten MPG improvements in years.

So I have a good impression of the hybrid technologies they’ve developed! Though their electrification strategy seems completely different. Toyota/Lexus I think are in the hybrid lineup still. Whereas Honda went full electrification and shut down a lot of production so as to refit their factories. I believe one of the reasons that Honda sales plummeted recently, since they had just ramped down production.

Maybe that technology will be lost someday, I wonder how well-documented it is and if it’d be easy to ramp back up

[tonyedgecombe]

I see this in my village. There is a good mix of private and social housing. The private houses tend to have modest cars whereas the social houses have something flash.

[bmitc]

Ikea has long existed before the Internet and over capitalization.

I have several Ikea pieces in my home, and I've had some for over a decade. If you build Ikea stuff properly, are selective in what you purchase, and use wood glue when constructing, then it lasts as long as anything else really.

Their flat packed designs are actually innovative. People can outfit an entire room by using a Honda Fit to transport.

[marcus_holmes]

Agree completely, as I said their design priorities are cost and transportability, and they provide a valuable service. Mostly I hate the shitty laminated chipboard half their stuff is made from. If you replaced that with actual wood, and some of the weird aluminium pegs with actual dowels or joinery, it'd be fine. But that's kinda beside the point; if you did that it would be more expensive and less easily transported, and therefore wouldn't fit their priorities.

And, of course, their bedside cabinets are the wrong size for my wife's bed, so I'd have to make one anyway.

And this is just an analogy; if you like Ikea-style Google Search, then great for you. I pay for Kagi because that Ikea-style Google Search doesn't work for me.

[JohnBooty]

Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love like making furniture? Or maybe help you directly in your furniture-making, by perhaps helping you to research things?

Please don't misunderstand: my point is not "AI is good."

It is problematic in many ways. My point is that I think the "AI versus actually doing cool human-crafted stuff" split is... a misguided, maybe even harmful, mental model of a more complicated reality.

[luk212]

That's the promise of every new technology. Although there's been massive progress over the past 50+ years, the amount of free time that people have has actually gone DOWN (https://clockify.me/working-hours)..."I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes"...we'll see

[notabotiswear]

> Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love.

Personally, I don’t believe that would be the case. Jevon’s paradox mixed with the natural tendency to exploit others. One could argue that technology -in general- didn’t really save people time by itself, it’s regulation - a social construct, and I am counting both cultural and legal enforcement of them as well- that did. Just look at how workers in countries without your European-style protections fare. Wikipedia’s article on the Chinese 996 [1] has a nice map for deaths due to long working hours by country, notice the dominant colours for each quadrant of this (projected) globe.

Pre industrialised societies’ labourers were limited by daylight and travel distance. The modern availability and abundance of artificial lighting, mechanised transportation, and telecommunication means their grand kids are expected to -and often do- toil every waking moment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

[xgulfie]

What time is AI going to free up for me? Can AI go to the grocery store for me, do my laundry, do my dishes? Can it let me clock out early? The spoils of AI do not go to individuals

[DauntingPear7]

AI, as it stands, only can save you time with non-human interaction “intellectual” tasks on a computer. So really not much

[AlexCoventry]

It's excellent for R&D.

[fragmede]

It's not AI, but there's Doordash and Rinse if that's what you're trying to optimize for. The robots will be coming out, soon enough, and then we're all in trouble though.

[eproxus]

I think in a different society this could have been the case (possibly, assuming the hype is somewhat true).

But the way society is structured now? We still live in feudalism, just uplifted to modern levels of ”comfort” (if you take of your western glasses and look at the whole world. There are still people living in medieval conditions today in some places in the world).

The way it’s going it’s only going to make rich people richer, and give them more power to control this system and perpetuate it. I don’t see that drastically changing anytime soon, unless we do something about it on a societal level.

[wolvesechoes]

Direct consequence of industrial revolution was an INCREASE in workload. People worked MORE, not less. It required organization, protests, political pressure and even some bloodshed to get 8 hrs workday.

People that push for AI are not interested in making your life better.

[account42]

No, because the machine consumes all of your time that it can take without literally killing you. If you manage to free some time somewhere, the machine will adapt and eat it up. We have so-called developed countries talking about raising the retirement age and cutting holidays, that's the "future" we are living in.

[deadlocked]

I don’t disagree with your overall point but developed countries are raising their retirement ages because they’re trying to stave off pension crises. It’s the surprising alternative to taxing corporations and the ultra-wealthy appropriately.

[newaccountman2]

> But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home.

I have seen/heard this a lot lately, but all the Ikea furniture I have ever had has been great. Among others, had a chair that was good for like 11 years lol

[marcus_holmes]

I think this is actually a counter-example of what you think it is.

Chairs should last generations. A chair lasting 11 years is not exemplary. A chair falling apart after a few years should be the exception, and a bad thing at that.

Again, Vimes Theory: rich folks inherit furniture that their grandparents bought, and maybe need to get it re-upholstered once in their lifetime. Poor folks have to pay for new furniture every few years because it falls apart.

[perilunar]

My parents bought some really nice modern furniture when they married in the early 1960s. 5 houses and 60 years later (and a few re-upholsterings), it still looks and works as beautifully as ever. My brother will probably inherit it in a few years, then his kids; it will likely get another 60 years at least.

One of my friends has a kitchen table her great grandmother owned.

Neither of us (or our parents) are rich, but good, well made furniture used to be an investment. Now most furniture is disposable.

[newaccountman2]

> Chairs should last generations. A chair lasting 11 years is not exemplary. A chair falling apart after a few years should be the exception, and a bad thing at that.

IDK, this feels to me more like an aspiration or desire about what furniture quality should generally be, and not really a description of what most furniture is actually like.

> rich folks inherit furniture that their grandparents bought, and maybe need to get it re-upholstered once in their lifetime.

I get that this is beside the point, but IDK why anyone would want their grandparents' furniture, aside from maybe a few choice really nice, antique-ish things. If I was "rich", I would rather buy my own furniture for the most part...

[marcus_holmes]

I think it's about quality rather than style. What do I know? I make ugly furniture for myself ;)

[graemep]

Stuff that has lasted two generation will be antique-ish (if not actually antique) and usually nice. It will have the quality it should, rather than the quality most furniture has.

All my grandparents' furniture is properly jointed and made of good wood.