321–330 of 363 posts
IMO way too much attention goes to beating around the bush when we need to take a step back and ask some more abstract questions about exactly what our goal as a society should be. There are some hard questions out there that are not getting enough attention.
The author's answer to the title question seems to be: No. Which I agree with. If the answer was "Yes" however, I would question if that's even a bad thing to begin with. If our economy is reliant on people driving to an office and spending their money at a restaurant, then our economy is pretty terrible to begin with.
Per Schumpeter a 100 years ago, the economy is an ever changing process from technological change and entrepreneurship.
Of course remote work is going to have good and bad aspects that come with the change.
Practically the golden rule of economics is that everything is a trade off.
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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) ?
This applies everywhere: just because a job or business has existed does not mean it has a right to exist forever. This is not being harsh on people; it's just a reality. The blacksmiths in the horse and buggy days saw demand for their services fall when time and technologies changed. The coal miners began losing their jobs when we realized that coal as fuel was more harmful than it was beneficial. History is full of…
What if the government helped people switch jobs after they're made redundant?
Look up the equivalent of the Department of Workforce Development for your state and find the employment and training section.
For example: https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/det/ and https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dislocatedworker/
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> And there the typical 35 year aggressive attitude I have to deal with daily. I'm actually 29 but sure. > Your joking right in thinking that no communication is loss via email? I would argue that more details are actually _preserved_ when communicating via email rather than face to face. If you cannot properly communicate via written text then yeah, of course any kind of written channel will be worse. I actually lik…
Good for you. This is really moot. 29, the age fits the angst.. I'm not saying WFH is bad. It should be allowed, but I disagree that it should not be a full working week. To those who prefer to work in the office, who communicate better in the office. Should be taken in to consideration. Sorry that my brain operates differently to yours. When you start to throw personal insults, "ITS A YOU" problem those make your po…
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The suburbs around Boston are effectively dense cities because they predate railroads, nevermind cars. You don't need skyscrapers to claim "density".
Is that a "No True Suburb" argument?
You've also called out Watertown, Arlington, etc as modern American suburbs before but their density ranks well above major cities. But that's because they're not modern American suburbs. They're classical Streetcar Suburbs that predate the car and that's a very different thing.
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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)
Why is the strongtowns paper not a source?
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Only if the alternative is bad. While it is true that most public transit in the US is bad, that doesn't mean it has to be that way.
It is impossible to build public transport that gives the same freedom of movement as a personal vehicle.
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It's not really about the money itself but the amount of work done. If people get less work done, that's less value added. Less 'stuff' is produced but the same wage is paid - regardless of what happens with inflation. Whether that's good or bad is another question, as is the question of whether it even is happening or not.
Even if less work gets done (citation needed, I think there are reasons why remote can increase productivity), you also don't have at least one major negative externality: pollution from commuting. There are also likely economic benefits: remote workers can move to areas that would otherwise suffer an economic drain from mass migration to large cities. Imagine how many other cities would benefit if most of us didn't…
Plus I can offer a High COL rate, Mid COL rate, and Low COL rate, and recruit talent from all over. Yeah my boy doing node.js in Des Moines or Nashville might not be as good as the shit-hot MIT grade in NYC, but I can pay him 60% less, and he's 80% as good as that MIT kid.
Problem is you gotta re-tool and be equipped for that kind of management, and the Boomer / old Gen-X crowd running the show isn't.
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Bad public transit exists all over. That doesn't make the idea of public transit bad, it just means we need better management of it.
Random route service is difficult to efficiently serve with mass transit. Public transit doesn't have to be specifically mass transit, but the collective need of "I need to go from random place A to random place B and later return" is almost never going to line up with a mass transit solution. Having high frequency mass transit service and decent transfers is better than the current situation, but it's really, really…