171–180 of 363 posts
Remote work is great for: - People who want more quality time with family - Environment. Less pollution. - Businesses who can save money by not needing an office. If “the economy” doesn’t like it, it needs to adapt. The economy should support people, not the other way around.
Remote work is great for: - People who want more quality time with family - Environment. Less pollution. - Businesses who can save money by not needing an office. If “the economy” doesn’t like it, it needs to adapt. The economy should support people, not the other way around.
> Remote work is great for: - People who want more quality time with family I'd argue it's great for people. In general. I don't have family, I can spend more time with my dog, I can make morning or afternoon walk longer, I can get better at cooking cause I have more time, I have more time for hobbies, to deal with personal stuff, I can go to public institution or a doctor if I have to, without taking a day off since…
I've just started a new job for an enterprise company. It is proving insanely hard getting in contact with folk. Myself having to introduce myself every-time. Trying to find someone to give me basic mentoring, even trying to understand the hierarchy.
Not only does communications break down over email, messenger, people get the wrong intention of the email, if I wish to add input I have to encounter where it doesn't feel like I'm the bulldozer. Many skills are lost WFH.
Code reviews suck over webcam, sharing knowledge is insanely hard and I'm not lucky to have a house with a spare room where I can dedicate to work. My own personal space is not an office nor I do I want it to be.
The trip to and from work allows me to break work mode and have my own freedom without having a work laptop stashed underneath the desk. It may cost me £ to get in the office each day but heck do I prefer it. I'm 33. WFH is not for me, I find it hell.
The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business. Something that seems similar that comes up often around here is when there are proposals to improve the road system to move traffic out of towns. Currently the main highways run through…
> The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business. There's a pattern of restaurant closures. People want food from restaurants, but the demand shifted to different locations and restaurants were forced to close for some time. When a r…
what assets? If the restaurant is renting, their assets are just the equipment they own. The landlord will only get what they by selling those equipment for rent owed. I don't see how a transfer of wealth is happening in this scenario.
If the restaurant's location is owned by the proprietor, then they're their own landord. Their creditor would have a claim on the property, if they borrowed money to run the restaurant. But calling this a transfer of wealth is misleading - the owners of the restaurant signed up for the debt. Businesses and investments are not guaranteed to succeed, and using leverage increases the risks of losing more. How is this a transfer of wealth, except for the lenders recovering what they could, as is their right to do for lending out the capital in the first place?
To editorialize: This is how all economic exchange works, and any talk of "the economy" being "good" or "bad" is mystification. The powers that be are cranking up rates hoping but not really expecting to avoid a recession. In their view, a recession (i.e. more pain for working people) is acceptable collateral damage when weighed against the risk of continued labor inflation (i.e. more pain for asset owners).
Not everything is some technocratic spreadsheet puzzle to be balanced. There are winners and losers.
There was another article in the Sydney Morning Herald [0] behooving everybody to get back to the CBD because...mental health...cafes will close... What if you work in a tech park that has few or no amenities, or your work office is in a cruddy bit of town you really dislike? When the house is tidy and the washing done in the 10 minutes an hour I can wander away from the work laptop, I feel a lot happier than worryin…
> a sacrifice I have to make and you should never be making a sacrifice for someone else, without enough monetary compensation. The only sacrifice one should make is for enrolling in the armed services.
Just like with joining police - in some places it is good thing to do. In others, you are joining another criminal organization.
That’s the root of what the economy is … how much useful stuff gets done.
Whether remote work has that effect remains to be seen. Certainly in the short term there’s a lot of evidence it has. That would make it very unlike other examples of change we have, such as switching from horse and buggy to cars.
All the other considerations are merely moving money from one area to another. This is irrelevant to a “good economy.”
In the end, the total wealth available to all participants in the economy is a function of the resources available and the meaningful work done.
That’s it.
Such a straw man article. He ignores the main argument against WFH which is that people are walking their dogs or doing yoga instead of actually working. I take long naps. I know I'm less productive but I can't help it.
That's an argument against you working from home. My experience was that I worked just as effectively at home and had two hours a day extra that I could use for exercise, relaxing, and in fact a bit of extra work.
Coffee breaks, social media, reading HN, which in WfH means walking the dog, spending a few minutes with your family, doing some yoga stands after a meeting.
And that is perfectly fine. Unless you're very focused and enjoying a particular task, no unassisted human being is capable of being 100% productive 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. I might be an outlier, but in my experience, max focus can be held for up to 4 hours a day, the rest is low focus work and faffing about.
That aside, there are so many upsides. Not the least of which are the reduction in time and energy waste, and pollution. Or less reductive sexist models of childcare and home duties. Work life balance, employment and unemployment and underemployment and mental/physical health could all improve at scale. Sure, some people suffer. Were talking aggregate here. Many sad special cases exist.
Work needs redefining but radical redefinition without planning is not sensible unless revolution is a goal.
Rate of profit, investment in people is complicated.
The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business. Something that seems similar that comes up often around here is when there are proposals to improve the road system to move traffic out of towns. Currently the main highways run through…
> The economy is for the people, the people aren't for the economy, ideally. If you run a business that relies on particular behaviour, like people commuting the office, then I'm sorry things are hard but we do not owe you our business. There's a pattern of restaurant closures. People want food from restaurants, but the demand shifted to different locations and restaurants were forced to close for some time. When a r…
Is that what actually happens?
"That's nothing short of wealth transfer from restaurant owners to landlords."
You're arguing that the owners of commercial real estate are winners here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free market economies also offer a solution to this problem. Restaurants close due to lack of demand, and the workers find jobs doing something else that is in demand (e.g. food delivery).
That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. The workers have to get a job, because they arbitrarily have to make some profits to benefit someone else who is just taking advantage of the market shift and their leverage to do so. That’s an economy which is good for a few people with access to capital, but bad for everyone else. An economy which prioritized taking care of the people who are out…
so your problem is the human condition? Where for someone to exist, they have to work and produce something from which others in society would pay for?