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This seems a bit delusional. Who actually believes the government knows how to run a business? If you think remote work should be encouraged by the government, all they need to do is use taxes/tax breaks to incentivize it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... even if letting the people who can work remotely do so is a net win overall for everybody when you consider the reduced environmental impact.
And if continued forever, reduced pressure on high housing costs, which currently hit lower income earners very hard.
>> "Benefits not available to low-income workers" A more accurate statement would be "Benefits not available to low-income jobs " There are plenty of jobs that simply cannot be done remotely. The more physical the job, the less it can be done remotely. A meat packer at a meat packing plant cannot work from home. A construction worker cannot build houses from a desk. (I'd add nursing, but a large amount of those jobs…
Education: Jobs exist to give people who aren't geneticists or neurologists something to do.
Diplomacy: Jobs are a past concession for people giving up private wealth for public development.
Defense: No coincidence a lot of jobs work the same as weapon systems. Regardless of nations, a lot of stateless actors today are really dangerous.
Unproven risk: Things can spiral out of control and it takes time for something new, like using genetics or beams to butcher cattle, to become palatable and accepted by the public.
Amortization: What do we do with perfectly working, if inefficient, process and infrastructure if everything is free, there's no demand, and without maintenance bad things leak out of it?
There are plenty of solutions that take out the physicality. I wouldn't bet against it:
What you do is you work on a larger scale. Instead of unbolting a muffler, just shred the entire thing. Cars are a public utility with a free tier. Take the same principle to unmanned private jets.
Take out the entire urban center with a rail system. Catheterization, preventative medicine, therapeutic imaging, genetics applied to chemotherapy, blood thinners.
I would also bet most people will be surprised at the amount of busy work. Kill yourself pumping a barrel of oil, only to drive to the coffee shop to complain about pumping that barrel of oil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
... even if letting the people who can work remotely do so is a net win overall for everybody when you consider the reduced environmental impact.
Is this the fallacy of goodharts law? Just straight up killing all the poor people is also a net overall win too but that's not what we want either.
Since there is no limit on the ceiling, but there is a limit to the floor, things that increase economic opportunity tend to decrease equality. Things that reduce economic opportunity tend to increase equality. See e.g. Steven Pinker: "...the most effective ways of reducing inequality are epidemics, massive wars, violent revolutions and state collapse." https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/twenty-questions-steven-p...
But we are in the midst of a pandemic, and income inequality seems to be increasing even faster.
The suggestion that governments can close the remote working gap is not very well thought out. A large percentage of low income work is service work that requires physical presence. You can’t make the typical burger joint remote friendly without automating all the jobs away.
They are miserable people who want to make things worse for remote workers because if everybody can't have something then nobody can.
They're not miserable people simply because you don't get to have another luxury. They're circumspect and compassionate for not simply being complacent and instead exploring all of the effects. You do realize the authors themselves benefit from remote work right?
Guess what: if the world is going to improve for poor people then we rich people are going to have to forgo some luxuries; reagonomics/"rising tide raises all ships" doesn't work (how well are the poor people in SF doing?). Casting aspersions on people (authors here) for sounding the alarms on yet another impending structural shift that will further weaken the poor is a special kind of immoral.
>> "Benefits not available to low-income workers" A more accurate statement would be "Benefits not available to low-income jobs " There are plenty of jobs that simply cannot be done remotely. The more physical the job, the less it can be done remotely. A meat packer at a meat packing plant cannot work from home. A construction worker cannot build houses from a desk. (I'd add nursing, but a large amount of those jobs…
Even more accurate is "most low income jobs" call centers aren't exactly high income. Anyway technically the physical jobs can be done remotely if latency isn't a concern but if it is sufficient to remote work the question usually becomes "Why not do the last 10% and fully automate it?"
Since there is no limit on the ceiling, but there is a limit to the floor, things that increase economic opportunity tend to decrease equality. Things that reduce economic opportunity tend to increase equality. See e.g. Steven Pinker: "...the most effective ways of reducing inequality are epidemics, massive wars, violent revolutions and state collapse." https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/twenty-questions-steven-p...
Would it be similar to say "factories worsen inequality by mostly helping high-income earners" (consider England during the Industrial Revolution)? New technology increases our productivity.
Historically, that's what happened. The average wage went down because less training was required despite more people being employed. Revenues went way up, quickly.