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But it may have been after amortization.

The conceit is similar to "ordinary plates vs paper plates".

Nobody is arguing that a single ordinary plate is "cheaper" than as single paper plate, but one can still argue about how TCO of a set of ordinary plates vs constantly buying a stream of new paper ones just to throw them away after each use.

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Ikea furniture doesn't just break, usually. You can have the same Ikea furniture for decades. Even if it did though, you can also still buy the solid wood Amish furniture for a reasonable price if you're intending to keep it your entire life. A big Amish couch is ~$5k on the high end. A big Ikea couch is $1-2k, which people can and do buy multiple times.

It's just that people expect that they should be able to replace their furniture every five years on whims, and it also be high quality, and it also be cheap. That's their problem.

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