IKEA is actually an example of a particularly horrible trade in this category. Claude estimates wood furniture price fell by 60% with IKEA. Plastic furniture on the other hand is 99% cheaper, far better at distributing furniture than IKEA ever will be.
So what did IKEA do, marginally cheaper furniture, complete destruction of demand for artisanal furniture (me alone buying some artisanal furniture is not propping up demand), apparently all our great wood workers should learn to code right now, but no worries LLM will code cheaper than them now, so maybe they should become YouTubers next.
And the particularly galling fact in this stupidity is the quality of the product is worse. Everyone now lives with worse furniture, the extra dollars they save, I guess they spend it on Netflix now, and we destroy a large avenue to express, human creativity, skill and craftsmanship for slightly cheaper furniture, lmao even. We will be perfectly fine with plastic furniture for the really poor, and higher quality more expensive hand crafted furniture for everyone else, they can maybe subscribe to Netflix less in return.
So what did IKEA do, marginally cheaper furniture, complete destruction of demand for artisanal furniture (me alone buying some artisanal furniture is not propping up demand), apparently all our great wood workers should learn to code right now, but no worries LLM will code cheaper than them now, so maybe they should become YouTubers next.
And the particularly galling fact in this stupidity is the quality of the product is worse. Everyone now lives with worse furniture, the extra dollars they save, I guess they spend it on Netflix now, and we destroy a large avenue to express, human creativity, skill and craftsmanship for slightly cheaper furniture, lmao even. We will be perfectly fine with plastic furniture for the really poor, and higher quality more expensive hand crafted furniture for everyone else, they can maybe subscribe to Netflix less in return.