Comment by Kon5ole

Comment by Kon5ole 3 days ago

Commuting is probably pointless for a large number of individual office workers as well as their employers, but the busywork of commuting generates so much economic activity and value to society that it can't be killed overnight.

Having people move between home and work drives value in car sales, public transport, real estate valuations, construction, lunch restaurants, public infrastructure projects and countless other things that generates value.

The collected services catering to commuters is larger than any single company, and society can probably not handle a decision (most office workers can work from home) that effectively bankrupts it. It needs to slowly be replaced with something else.

iLoveOncall 3 days ago

> the busywork of commuting generates so much economic activity and value to society that it can't be killed overnight

Except when it was for 2 years and the economy boomed, you know?

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Kon5ole 3 days ago

>Except when it was for 2 years and the economy boomed, you know?
It wasn't a boom, it was a bust.
During the pandemic most governments paid through the nose to keep the economy going. The US even paid every American hundreds of dollars directly. Other countries subsidized everything from restaurants to car manufacturers.
Now that this money has to be recovered, inflation has eliminated a decade of salary increases for most workers and governments are borrowing left and right. We can't do many more years like that.
I'm not saying it's right that we force people to commute when they don't have to, but removing this part of the economy is a real problem that has to be handled.
It's like when a coal mine closes, just saying "the coal mine is no longer needed" is no comfort to the unemployed coal workers and the nearby town.

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