Everyone is talking about fast fashion, but no one is talking about the plague of fast furniture. It’s impossible to find true durable pieces that can last for generations anymore, even the so-called “Amish made” pieces are typically cheap stuff being bulk produced in one of a dozen massive factories.
I can’t even find a solid wood panel bed at any of the vintage or resale shops anymore. Particleboard is the only choice we’re being given. It’s tragic.
@irenes@krusynth My family were antiques traders. The market collapsed in the last 20 years because young people have neither the money nor the location permanence to justify buying heavy heirloom joinery.
There's also the consideration about modern notions of child safety, but dealers I know recognized that their clientele were only getting older. Flea markets closed up, and auction houses targeted more and more affluent audiences. Prices increased accordingly.
Which is a shame, because there's a reason those pieces have lasted centuries.
@mttaggart@irenes@krusynth I'm also thinking that the prevalence of particle board and MDF has parallels to a discussion from last week about Sears kit homes and how the plans and lumber could be delivered all across the country 100 years ago.
We simply don't have that much lumber to cut anymore. Nearly the old growth forests outside of national parks are gone, replaced by faster growing softwoods and thinner trees that don't yield big planks for cabinet sides and table tops.
@irenes@krusynth my partner is a classically trained woodworker.
We did the maths the other day. A good gaming table would cost, purely time and materials, around 5k to build. Maybe 2k by cheapening everything. And that would be minimum wage for her, barely breaking even. Bad social protections too, because self employed.
There is not enough people with that amount of money. The purchasing power collapsed too fast.
@irenes@krusynth oh the wood went up but it is the hours that raise the price.
Inflation was applied to furniture, but more generally the reason we got purchasing power parity is that we got cheaper stuff made with more efficient mass production. For woods, that means particles board. And more hardware for joints (not a bad thing!)
Fundamentally without mass producing (and hard wood hard for mass prod) no reduction in labour cost for woodwork. And it ships badly if not flatpacked
@irenes@krusynth flatpacked stuff wins because you are not shipping air through the whole logistic, so can reduce labour cost by going to cheap labour country (and you can pay above living wage there and still win. So even ethically...)
I do not agree with all he offers,UK centric, but quite true all over the Western world.
Salary have not grown but rental cost grew massively in the mix. For less housing space. Result is a drastic collapse in purchasing power starting in the early 00s.
Plus productivity in manufacturing in Western stagnated, which compound with inflation.
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