I saw the above comment under an online article about IKEA's attempts at coming to New Zealand. There has been a campaign to get IKEA here for a couple years but the idea has fizzled. Scouts looking at possible locations have been thwarted by the Environmental Court of Mt Wellington saying it would bring too much traffic and cause chaos to Auckland. This is indeed true but only because the transportation infrastructure hasn't changed in 60 years. Also the site landlords sneer that IKEA wouldn't be able to afford the rent. IKEA. Wouldn't be able to afford the rent. People here want something like IKEA so badly because it is impossible to buy new furniture or housewares for anything less than a month's wage. So the same furniture gets moved around on TradeMe over and over and we all have houses that look like set pieces for Golden Girls.
There is an admirable virtue in not wanting to homogenize one's own country and to promoting longevity of possessions but there is also a danger of one's country being left behind and eventually not being able to keep up in a global market, all resulting from pride and fear of change. The puzzling thing is that they're not holding out in order to sustain local industry, no, everything here is made in China.
There's a smugness to certain individuals, a feeling that they've got it right and the rest of the world (and especially the United States) is doing it all wrong. But I wonder how much of their imagined success is due to ingenuity and how much is due to geography....and how much of their imagination is left unblemished simply due to their freedom from worldliness.
I'm just sayin'.
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