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Is remote work bad for the economy?

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Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#271

Post by carlosjobim »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #64
freetime2 wrote: post #53

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…

>An economy which prioritized taking care of the people who are out of work

People shouldn't be out of work, unless they want to and are able support themselves.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#272

Post by rosetremiere »

klodolph wrote: post #156
briga wrote: post #25

Bad for which economy? Countless programmers over the years have packed up their bags and moved away from their small towns to live in big expensive tech hubs. This has certainly been beneficial for the economy of large metros--they didn't pay to educate these workers and in many cases these workers (including myself) were raised and educated in completely different countries. So these metros have a huge pool of high…

The big metros are more efficient (dollar-wise) and have a lower environmental impact than small towns. Small towns, in the US, are already subsidized by big towns, at least economically.

> and have a lower environmental impact than small towns

Can you expand on that (or link to more) ?

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#273

Post by bluGill »

manfre wrote: post #233
treis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those gentlemen would probably also waste time in an office environment. You're just substituting wasting time at work with wasting time at work (from home). There's way more distractions at home and not everyone can handle it. It's just wild what people find appropriate to do during meetings that they're supposed to be paying attention to. In office yeah maybe someone would read emails but you wouldn't be fully imm…

> Feel like for most people if you're stuck in the office you might as well do some work. The biggest distractions in the office are the coworkers. Random hallway conversations, loud talkers in neighboring cubes/offices, people walking up to your desk with a question that should've been an email/chat (but really they are too lazy to check the ticket system/wiki/doc store for the answer). The level of distraction vari…

The whole point of the office is the random hallway conversations, the conversations you should be in on that you know about only because you overhear it from the cube next to you, people walking up to your desk to ask a question.

20 years ago my boss ordered me to work from home one day when I had an urgent task to get done. Most of the time though I was better off in the office - while I couldn't get as much high concentration work done, I was doing more useful work because I was in sync with the office.

The above assumes that a significant number of people are in the office everyday. A pure work from home environment works because people figure out how to use other means to communicate important things. However communication is much harder, and thus takes more effort. As a shy person I would be much better off in the office all the time as I don't put enough effort into communication.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#274

Post by thatsamonad »

bequanna wrote: post #243
antihipocrat wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the local suburban businesses are loving the extra foot traffic, at the expense of less foot traffic in downtown areas. I'm sure home delivery services are benefiting too. The suggestion that the general economy is suffering because of people WFH doesn't make much sense, spending is just reallocated. .. Now if people were saving any money previously spent on commuting and eating out, then that would reduce G…

Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers. They could get away with this because they had a captive group which was previously forced to be in that location with relatively few options.

> Right, and in my experience urban retail is often high cost, low quality. Some of the dirtiest stores/restaurants you see are in urban centers.

This may depend on your area but this hasn’t been my experience. I used to commute into downtown Portland for work and we had a great selection of options for lunch and happy hours, a plethora of food cart options which were great and affordable, and a number of decent bars where you could meet a friend for drinks afterwards.

Now I work from home in the suburbs and, while I wouldn’t trade being remote for anything, the food options here mostly consist of bland fast food and chain restaurants. One of the things I miss the most is grabbing a decent lunch with a coworker and breaking up the monotony a bit.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#275

Post by Steltek »

INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #210

The issue is that middle managers are being proven as ineffective and useless. The guy who wanders around the office synergizing everyone now has a spotlight on them, because its been proven over the last few years that people can be efficient and productive without Lundberg stopping by and asking for a progress report. The only part of the industry that has now been proven unnecessary are the ones clawing and fighti…

There are ineffective managers but there are also ineffective ICs. With WFH, there are definitely people trying to do as little as possible. Objectively measuring people's effectiveness at work is hardly a solved problem.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#276

Post by carlosjobim »

ramphastidae wrote: post #259
carlosjobim wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's only agriculture, but rural areas give much more to urban areas than they receive back, evident by the massive waste and corruption within the cities and the throngs of people being sustained in the cities without producing anything of value or anything at all. In the past you could certainly say that urban areas give back just as much or even more, when factories where concentrated in cities. Tod…

That’s not evident at all, just your biases talking LOUD.

Materially it is a fact that urban areas need rural areas to survive, while rural areas needs don't need the urban areas.

The country side can be self sufficient, the city can never be. Thousands of trucks deliver excess goods from the country side to the city every day. Saying that it is the city that supports the country side is fancy accounting.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#277

Post by mydriasis »

dymk wrote: post #226
OJFord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidised by more than the effect of the employee living, eating, and being entertained there? And that doesn't account for GP's immigrant case at all.

Suburbs are economically insolvent, dense cities aren’t. That’s the case for basically every suburb and dense downtown in the US.

I think that's because of what we're talking about right now -- all of these workers heading to the big cities instead of living out in the suburbs. When the workers return to the suburbs, business will follow them, and they won't be insolvent anymore.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#278

Post by bluGill »

dymk wrote: post #226
OJFord wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidised by more than the effect of the employee living, eating, and being entertained there? And that doesn't account for GP's immigrant case at all.

Suburbs are economically insolvent, dense cities aren’t. That’s the case for basically every suburb and dense downtown in the US.

Source for that claim? I hear it all the time, but never a source that actually stands up to scrutiny. (strongtowns is the most common - they are not a source)

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#279

Post by kibwen »

carlosjobim wrote: post #211
klodolph wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big metros are more efficient (dollar-wise) and have a lower environmental impact than small towns. Small towns, in the US, are already subsidized by big towns, at least economically.

Big cities are dependent on agriculture and raw materials from rural regions for their survival. The small town can exist without the big city, the reversal is not true. As always through history, politicians and bankers plunder the country with taxes and interest. This wealth is then distributed by them, from the big cities, but that doesn't mean that the wealth originated there.

And agricultural areas are dependent on transport hubs to deliver them goods resources from far-flung regions, as well as manufactured goods where the factories want to be near those transport hubs to minimize the cost of inputs. Farming villages are not all producing their own fertilizer from scratch, nor are they all manufacturing combine harvesters from locally-sourced iron. Likewise, facilities for essential high-skill services (e.g. advanced medical care) cannot sustainably be housed in every hamlet in the world.

Concentration will always happen, and it will always happen to the benefit of rural areas, who will pay a premium in order to access the goods and services that are most efficiently produced in urban areas, in the same way that the high-density areas will pay a premium for the agricultural outputs of the rural areas.

Therefore, as far as this goes:

> The small town can exist without the big city, the reversal is not true.

This is only true for values of "exist" where small towns are reduced to primitive subsistence farming. If you live in a rural area in the US and enjoy modern comforts like an iPhone, you have the cities of Shenzhen, Los Angeles, and whatever your regional rail hub is to thank for getting it into your hands.

Re: Is remote work bad for the economy?

#280

Post by mydriasis »

UncleMeat wrote: post #222
carlosjobim wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big cities are dependent on agriculture and raw materials from rural regions for their survival. The small town can exist without the big city, the reversal is not true. As always through history, politicians and bankers plunder the country with taxes and interest. This wealth is then distributed by them, from the big cities, but that doesn't mean that the wealth originated there.

Most small towns where remote workers might settle are not driven by agriculture. Agriculture matters, but we don't live in an economy where everything outside of metro areas is just farms as far as the eye can see.

This is strikingly false in the state of Ohio. If you drive outside of the cities, you will literally see farms everywhere. As far as you can see.
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