I just bought a Creative Zen music/video player. I haven't received it yet. However, I noted that the Zen does not have a user-replaceable battery. This means that the average person will likely throw the thing out when the battery no longer takes a charge. Not a problem for me (I know how to disassemble and replace a soldered-in lithium battery). However, for 99% of Zen buyers, when the battery goes, the Zen will be trashed (even though it is otherwise perfectly OK). We used to talk about "planned obsolescence"; how about "forced obsolescence"? I repair antique TVs and radios as a hobby. These tube sets were designed to be repaired and reused. They still work great after restoration even 60+ years later. Why must we throw out all of our stuff and replace it after only a few years of use? It's fantastically wasteful, and even worse, most of us never acquired the skills necessary to fix things. We not only can't repair our electronics, vacuum cleaners, cars, etc.; we can't sew, fix our plumbing, repair our furniture, or do much of anything other than consume new stuff. We have become (for the most part) hopeless and helpless when it comes to maintaining our physical environment. When something breaks, we throw it away and buy a new one. What was that line from Huxley's Brave New World: "ending is better than mending"? I bought a rebuild kit for my dryer the other day for $12. It turned a squeaking, rumbling 10 year old dryer into a smooth running machine again. My co-workers said "Why did you bother? Just buy a new one". My point here is that WE are the problem, not IKEA or the Chinese. WE must refrain from buying disposable junk and learn how to fix what we own (or bring back repair shops).

John Anderson argues "It's perfectly fine if the bed is too crappy to pass on to my kids, because I don't have any kids."

Well hell, add a huzzah for the decline of family while we're at it.

Until there are less starving or abused children all over the world, there is nothing admirable in popping out babies like a factory...

I'm willing to go along and consider the various tangents in this article, but it seems more a loose collection of evil buzzwords (carbon footprints! Chinese labor!) than real coherent analysis of consumer culture or the stuff we buy.

Costco is praised for its treatment of employees, they sell stuff for really cheap. I don't really see the intrinsic connection between whether a company sells more or less expensive goods, and how it treats its employees. There might be a correlation perhaps, but the solution is to stop the unfair practices, not buy more expensive stuff.

There were some interesting comments about cheap labor in China driving down the middle class here. But they can make good stuff cheaper in China than here too, so better quality goods wouldn't really change that either.

Ultimately, the world buys too much stuff (cheap and expensive), consumption of any kind is the problem with our culture, not the quality of our goods. A desk at Ikea is actually likely to have a pretty long useful life, it's not the desk's fault that the owner feels compelled to replace it in a year.

Dear rooneyboston, did I scold anyone? Well... I DID call them 'sheeple'. I apologize

Dear Betzee, I am so in agreement with you. Keep patronizing those vendors in that valley. It's not elitist. {Rooney is just railing against Elites - not Us! ;-}

What to do to preserve 'American' culture... tip street Musicians. They are part of the American culture you want to preserve - a living culture. Buy their CDs and take them home and listen to them - even if they're just scrawled with Sharpie and recorded with a clip-on microphone

Take the MUSICIANS home and listen to them

Someone in another thread some time ago said patronize Prostitutes. It's not so erroneous as it sounds. It's a very direct economic stimulus. Drink beer brewed in your hometown

Gary Larson penned a cartoon of Wildlife Preserves. A family are touring in their automobile to view animals preserved in jars. What does it mean? It fuels many thoughts for many years

Edit... edit... edit...

Rooneyboston, why did you have to say that - just when we were feeling comfortable with ourselves?

If it weren't for your performance as Salon's most obnoxious troll during last year's election campaign, I'd almost fall for high and mighty act.

The simple reality is, you can fling crap with the best of 'em, but can't handle it when someone else gives as good as they get - especially when they wrap it around the facts, something you never seem to have on your side.

I have to say though, I'm especially pleased that an IKEA exhibit opened in a Stockholm museum only weeks before you made your silly "IKEA will never be in a museum" statement. It's as though the whole universe revolves around making you look like a fool.

It does a pretty good job, too!

It might be easier to pay attention to what you have to say if you were a bit less invested in the "you're an idiot" school of discourse.

I take it you have issues which go well beyond the purview of this thread. Either that, or gobs of stock in IKEA.

Oh look, Salon's village idiot KateTex is gonna try to edjumicate someone. This should be good for laughs!

If this is your frame of reference, little wonder you nominated my post for most idiotic on this thread (while neglecting to mention the many other commenters who seem to agree that IKEA furniture is not built to last).

I ignored the other comments because they all clearly came from idiots, too. Yours was just breathtakingly stupid. Which, obviously, is what we've all come to expect from you.

For starters, those other comments came from lunkheads stupid enough to assume that inexpensive, mass produced furniture is somehow a new phenomena. It has in fact been around at least my entire life - I know, because I grew up in a neighborhood where every single house was packed full of the ugly, disintegrating crap.

Although they weren't packed quite as full of it as you are.

And if you'd bothered to read - or, perhaps I should say, were able to read and comprehend my post - I noted that I'd moved several times since purchasing my IKEA furniture back in '99. So not only has it held up well, but most of it has survived the best efforts of several movers to destroy it - always the most stressful event in the life of a piece of furniture. No "durable" furniture made from "real wood" would have fared any better.

Durable furniture made of real wood lasts far, far longer than 10 years and it can be refinished any number of times, including those times when movers ding it up.

Yes, or - like most furniture in America - it'll just be thrown out or donated to Goodwill when the owners move, die, or plain get sick of it. No doubt wasting a lot of expensive, slow growing and scarce hardwood in the process, hardwood that you can bet wasn't "sustainably harvested". Unlike my IKEA furniture, which IKEA at least makes an attempt to ensure is sustainable harvested, and is comprised almost entirely of inexpensive, fast-growing varieties of wood.

If everybody ran out and bought "quality" hardwood furniture, every last remaining hardwood twig on the planet would be gone in a week.

You really think IKEA goods are going to end up at Cooper-Hewitt or the Met seventy or so years from now, lacking hermetically sealed storage? Not likely, not at all.

There's actually an exhibition on right now at a museum in Stockholm of IKEA furniture from the past 50 years. Looks like there was one earlier in the year in Munich as well. Since IKEA itself never maintained such an archive, the Stockholm exhibition had to be populated largely with pieces donated by their individual owners. So yeah, not only has IKEA's stuff held up for 50 years now, but it's on display in a museum. The older it gets, the more museum attention it's gonna receive. We've seen this happen before with other mass manufactured goods.

I'd also add that IKEA's obsession with making everything flat-packable has dramatically reduced their carbon footprint relative to other furniture manufacturers. They can cram an obscene amount of furniture into a shipping container, and warehouse it in a very compact space. It also reduces the need for fuel-sucking delivery trucks. If all new furniture was IKEA furniture, it would probably reduce the overall ecological impact of furniture manufacturing, not increase it.