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!

> Ikea also sells nice, solid wood, furniture. And they typically do so at a price that is much more affordable than their competitors.

I've seen (and own) some solid wood furniture from IKEA. I'm usually an IKEA defender (see another post I just made on this thread).

I would not describe their solid wood furniture as "nice". Given the way they tend to assemble even small members from multiple small scraps of wood glued together rather than single pieces, I think calling them "solid" is even a bit of a stretch, at least in some cases. They're also made out of fairly soft wood, usually, and barely finished, if at all.

I see. Then it's OK to skirt environmental and worker protection laws, I guess. As long as the products are nice.

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.

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.)

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

No, and I don't think anyone has argued that. The argument is that the company has both good and bad aspects to it.