Google employees who work from home could lose money

This is mainly discussing WFH, so in this case people actually are living in the office.

>The majority of people do need a car even in Europe.

>In France, unless you live in central Paris you do. In the UK, unless you live in central London yo do. Now, if you live around Paris or London you may be able to commute to work by public transport, and many people do, indeed, but many also commute by car, and the vast majority do outside of these areas. I'm sure the same applies to many other countries.

Actually in France it's much more than Paris, living in Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulouse, Besancon to name just some cities I'm familiar with, you can live without a car. Similarly in a lot of German cities even down to population levels of 50,000 people you can often live perfectly fine without a car.

>> you live in an individual house

>On the other hand, living in an individual house with a garden is much nicer than living in a flat and many people (including in Europe) either do that or aspire to that.

And a lot of people at the same time want those houses to be right in the city centre as well, and can't afford it. Also I think the flat vs house trade-off is a huge function of type and quality of flats and the city planning.

>I'm usually getting a lot of flack here for saying this, but if preserving the environment means severe constraints on people's lives (housing, diet, transport, etc) then perhaps the way forward is to reduce the global population to a point where that everyone can enjoy life while still preserving the environment.

Sounds like a great idea. It's funny how people regard reducing carbon emissions by changing behaviour (e.g. moving to flats, using less cars ...) unrealistic, but then put suggestions like this forward. How would you reduce earths population by a factor 2 in the next 100 years? Even if you could somehow do this, there would be huge economic implications (much bigger than going to a zero carbon economy in the same time).

> My vision of an ideal future is everyone able to live in nature, in a house with a large garden, rather than in tower blocks, in pods, only eating what's allowed.

What are you willing to give up for that future, because the reduction in population that would make this possible doesn't come for free.

I have not read the counter to this - the cost reduction of office overhead that Google does not have to pay for the employee. No building, no heat/cooling, no building maintenance, no office furniture, no electricity, no networking, no parking, no janitorial service, no security guards, and so on.

> It's not a trade. The worker just loses.

How so? Money (pay decrease) for time (no commuting = 10 hours of your life back every week) seems like a pretty classic trade.

There may be some enterprising startups that could take advantage of this situation where people have experienced the states of working at home (and the lockdown) that has broken employees away from the prevailing rat race system that had them ensnared in making money to squander money and showboat money.

The window of opportunity is very small and those high value employees who the big corporates can ensnare with high salaries are surely willing to value or prioritize other criteria for the time being. That window will surely close soon if the choked out economy is throttled back up again and the neo-slaves go back to their bread and circus to keep them distracted.

You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position), but there is also a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven. Massive investments in capital assets in the form of real estate and their overhead costs that are also collateral and backs all kinds of other derivative things like valuations. For example, institutional value investors look to book assets for investment cues. If the justification for office space breaks and is sold or even leases are cancelled, it will skew the numbers and institutional investors (private and public) that divine those numbers who rely on or are even legally compelled by past patterns, are not necessarily adapted to these new or future patterns and changing realities.

The system, any system is inherently driven to revert to the mean. This community, over most other communities, should realize that.