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by t-3 23 days ago
> Goods are usually (although not always) inferior when made by a machine. A hand-crafted solid wood table is still superior to something from Ikea.

False. Ikea is not representative of machine-made products, just their own brand of cheap and poorly-designed machine-made products which outsource assembly to the customer for novelty value. Machines are much more precise than humans and do tedious and complex work without cutting corners or getting tired. Buying handcrafted wooden furniture is a class and wealth flex, just like buying any other customized product. The superiority, if any, is entirely in the materials and bespoke design rather than the work - machines can do almost any of the work involved much better than humans.

2 comments

Seems we've fallen straight back into false dichotomy land.

In that there are a dozen shades of grey between "fully-automated, no humans assembly line" and "person using only hand tools maintained by hand". Tools _are_ machines, are technology, they've just been around so long we forgot that industrially forged steel needs an industrial steel forge.

Probably the best quality product you'll get is from a person who cares, sourcing materials they care about, working with it using their expertise and discernment, and using the most effective tools to get the job done - most, but not all of which will be power or machine tools.

But the point is that the human needs to direct the machines - sometimes that's just a thinking task, and sometimes it's a bunch more physically hands-on.

I know it's not the point of the conversation, but this is very overly harsh to Ikea. Their products are cheap (or, at least, they focus on cheap products), but why poorly-designed? I never had any of their furniture fail on me, and the concessions they make to get the lower price are really not deal-breakers in 99% of cases. It's really not bad at all. Also, selling disassembled furniture saves them a fortune on shipping, they don't do it because they think it's funny or quirky or something.