Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

bnnbloomberg.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 185 posts

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#111

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mastax wrote: post #91
CBarkleyU wrote: post #5

Alternative title by me: Remote work frees up $800b to be spent more effectively.

When the paper value of an asset disappears you don't get the money back to spend elsewhere. Nobody does. Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Which happens to be what we want right now, as long as it can be done in an orderly fashion.

Lowered asset values does not destroy money in the sense that the money supply is unchanged (ignoring secondary effects, but those are hard ti predict anyway).

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#112

Post by commandar »

mycall wrote: post #87
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #50

We've become more efficient as a society. We stopped wasting fuel, our time and wear and tear on cars. All that time and material can be spent on something productive. Instead headlines tell about value of offices. Maybe that value was not real. It only existed because someone with power over employees could force them to waste resources. It's a market failure.

What are some examples of something more productive? Hobbies and family time?

Literally anything that isn't sitting in a car burning fuel if the same work can be accomplished without that use of time and resources.

Commuting is an externalized cost that gets absorbed by workers, city infrastructure, and the environment.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#113

Post by zeroonetwothree »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #109
mastax wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the paper value of an asset disappears you don't get the money back to spend elsewhere. Nobody does. Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Which happens to be what we want right now, as long as it can be done in an orderly fashion.

How is something worth anything? How is something worth $800b? Is it because someone else would pay $800b for it? Why would they pay $800b for that somethin? Is it because they need to in order to make more money? If that all is true, then by destroying the need to pay $800b, we freed up $800b, right?

This is not exactly correct. For example consider a single office building and say it’s worth $2 billion. But now demand has fallen and the most anyway will pay is $1 billion. The other $1 billion is not “lost”, but it’s not freed up either. It just means that the buyer no longer transfers it to the seller. So the buyer has an extra $1 billion to spend on other things and the seller has $1 billion less. The net effect on the economy should be approximately neutral (of course sometimes if asset prices fall too much then companies can go out of business which can hurt the economy etc)

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#114

Post by sbarre »

akudha wrote: post #102
jacknews wrote: post #6

"Remote work risks wiping $800 billion" No guesses which angle this is coming from. "Attendance still is 30% lower than what it was before the pandemic and only 37% of people are back at the office every day." And yet the world has not stopped. In fact everything seems to be going faster than ever.

I don't even turn my video on these days during calls. Most of my team mates don't. Some of them don't know how I look and I don't know how some of them look. And yet, we work well as a team. We are all in different cities and countries and work remote. Unless our physical presence is necessary (hairstylist, nurse, chef...), we should aggressively push back on "come to office 300 days a year" requirement. Only dumb m…

This is fine for experienced workers who already know the job, but for anyone who is new (say first 2-5 years) or is looking for mentoring and growth/advancement opportunities, then the lack of in-person connections does hurt.

> Those who claim they build friendships etc at work, maybe genuinely ask yourselves - how many colleagues from your previous jobs do you really keep in touch?

I'll speak for myself and say that I am still regularly in touch with folks I worked at 4 jobs ago (12 years).. I guess it depends on why you are making those friendships, are you actually making friends or just looking to build social capital to give you advantage at work?

It can certainly be both, but if you don't keep in touch when you move on, then maybe it was only the latter.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#115

Post by luvthis »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #104
jacknews wrote: post #6

"Remote work risks wiping $800 billion" No guesses which angle this is coming from. "Attendance still is 30% lower than what it was before the pandemic and only 37% of people are back at the office every day." And yet the world has not stopped. In fact everything seems to be going faster than ever.

Companies could surely recoup some of those imaginary billions by letting go of a whole layer of superfluous managers whose only role is to peer longingly into empty cubicles.

[dead]

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#116

Post by doctorwho42 »

mycall wrote: post #87
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #50

We've become more efficient as a society. We stopped wasting fuel, our time and wear and tear on cars. All that time and material can be spent on something productive. Instead headlines tell about value of offices. Maybe that value was not real. It only existed because someone with power over employees could force them to waste resources. It's a market failure.

What are some examples of something more productive? Hobbies and family time?

This is a failure of our understanding of value in our current culture, which we almost always equate to productivity.

In a human society, agnostic of economics or politics, productivity would be the measure of ones ability to support their family unit , extended family, and community both in terms of physical support (food, clothing, shelter, child rearing, education, etc.) And emotionally support (cultural interactions, familiar interactions, social interactions). This is the fundamental nature of our social order, but with the advent and rise of modern American capitalism, everything must equate to a dollar amount. And that in a simple sense works for helping drive an economy, but in the complex sense of actual society - it devalues the foundational structures that make up human society.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#117

Post by simoncion »

mycall wrote: post #87
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #50

We've become more efficient as a society. We stopped wasting fuel, our time and wear and tear on cars. All that time and material can be spent on something productive. Instead headlines tell about value of offices. Maybe that value was not real. It only existed because someone with power over employees could force them to waste resources. It's a market failure.

What are some examples of something more productive? Hobbies and family time?

[dead]

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#119

Post by charles_f »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #5

Alternative title by me: Remote work frees up $800b to be spent more effectively.

On the owner side "Remote work will transfer $800b from someone to anticipated it to someone who didn't as much. Neither will do anything valuable with it anyways."

On the renter side "Remote work will allow all the rents to be redistributed to shareholders, who will stack it neatly in piles of virtual $100 bills"

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#120

Post by zeroonetwothree »

HWR_14 wrote: post #25
jayski wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an expert but I've read it's not easy to add all the necessary plumbing to provide showers and toilets if you redistribute office space into apartments. A lot of times office buildings will have one large bathroom per floor.

There was a time when many of us on this board lived in buildings without personal bathrooms and only shared facilities. Dorm style housing could work.

Once you are 30+ and have a family it becomes much less acceptable
Post reply on HN