My ‘pay me’ philosophy also extends FWIW to working from home arrangements.
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@acb see what you’re describing is something you created, that your work is monetising, and the trade off you feel justifies it is something your boss never would have paid for. It’s a false economics.
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@liamvhogan @daedalus wait so your argument in favor of "back to office" is, if we don't force everyone to work downtown we won't have cute downtown businesses that people like, and hip people will move away and into other downtowns that still have cute businesses?
I'll admit I'm mostly confused about why a primary source of fossil fuels is worth keeping, and the reason being "but what about brunch spots"
The Doomsday Glacier is collapsing, we should all be staying home for humanity's survival
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@wilbr @daedalus disaggregating economic production from centres means *greater* dependence on cars.
It makes sprawled suburbs viable (for work, at least) in a way that they’re not when commuting inconvenience is in play; it changes the rent-curve for outer suburban and peri-urban areas. To be clear, I think this is a bad thing.
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@liamvhogan I simultaneously want to support much more midrise and highrise development near me so people can walk to downtown instead of take cars, and also live in the woods barely in touch with society subsistence farming. I don't think any of that involves suburbs. Suburbs are pretty universally understood to be soulless real estate scams that guarantee that you'll have to hop in a car any time you want dog food or a jug of milk.
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@wilbr and here’s the thing. If you want those two—which are very widely shared urbanist goals—then the first is a city where dwelling sizes are very small, residential space is at a premium, and it becomes extremely important that if people use some of it for working, that their boss pays them appropriately
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Actual Dr Buttocksreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan @daedalus if they're moving back, then the "problem" is solving itself. No need to worry.
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Liam :fnord:replied to Actual Dr Buttocks last edited by
@drbuttocks @daedalus depends. Are they being compensated in wages for the higher costs of housing in cities compared to regional towns, or are workers once again effectively subsidising firms? I know what I think
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Actual Dr Buttocksreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by [email protected]
@liamvhogan @daedalus that's a different problem from the one you just brought up though. Are you concerned for the effect WFH has on communities, or was that a distraction from the point about the commute being an entirely miserable experience?
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Liam :fnord:replied to Actual Dr Buttocks last edited by
@drbuttocks @daedalus my main point is that WFH is effectively an outsourcing of costs by firms onto their workers, and of a work practice that encourages sprawl. Since work can’t be done nowhere, someone has to pay for the logistical basics of production. People whose preference is WFH tell themselves that they’re ‘saving’ in time, firms are only too happy to have people think that
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@liamvhogan employers should pay me a premium regardless of where I work quite frankly
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Actual Dr Buttocksreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by [email protected]
@liamvhogan @daedalus I mean, if firms *and* workers are happy with with it, who cares? As mentioned, earlier, nobody is sticking it to the man by rubbing crotches with strangers every morning and afternoon. The solution isn't, then, force people to be miserable and waste a day or so's time every week travelling to and from a location people largely hate being at. It seems to me, a better solution is to have amenities also distributed. I know I'm very lucky in where I live, but (when I was able to work), the only commuting I had to do was to/from $University*, or for special events - everything else was walking distance.
*Hell, this was also the case when I was a roadie, too - I commuted to work because I had to, obviously, but everything else was walking distance from my house. Sprawl matters *significantly* less, if people don't need to travel to one central location to do their shopping/go to the doctor etc.
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Liam :fnord:replied to Actual Dr Buttocks last edited by
@drbuttocks @daedalus what you’re describing are the choices you’ve already made to get the most amenity out of your living arrangements. You’re paying a high premium in rent, same as me, to be close to cool things (because amenities can’t be both distributed and centralised, or else everywhere would be Newtown). People have always made those compromises of proximity vs travel time vs rent. What they haven’t done is effectively donate then the space to a firm’s overheads.
We both pay a very high housing cost and I happen to think that a boss should pay me for the use of that space if they want me to do work in it
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@liamvhogan People started talking about the benefits of WFH (“telecommuting”) *after* suburban sprawl — prior to that it didn’t make a heap of sense (or was already the case for many professions e.g. shopkeepers and doctors). So your alleged direction of causation is completely backwards. You can just say WFH is not to your taste. @drbuttocks @daedalus
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The actual relationship’s a lot clearer when you consider WFH arrangements that aren’t based on white collar computer based work.
Garment out workers, yes would most probably own a sewing machine and overlocker anyway, but their conditions of work, having to donate their *house space as well as their time and labour*, are much more clearly exploitative
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Actual Dr Buttocksreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan @daedalus Cost/benefit of the 15 minute city idea aside, if they're paying a premium for you to WFH because of presumably what you consider an imposition, then should they not also pay a premium for my commute, which I also consider an imposition?
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@hugh @drbuttocks @daedalus it’s true WFH isn’t to my taste. What I’m saying is that the taste *for* WFH experienced by a lot of people, for whom it’s partly commute convenience and partly a status marker, obscures that there’s a real monetary value of the space and resources they’re donating. That should be recognised and paid for, in cash.
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@hugh @drbuttocks @daedalus on correlation: 2020-2021 gave us a gigantic natural experiment in people’s desire to live in suburbs vs. inner urban areas. When people were forced to isolate, large homes with gardens and an excess of rooms, in outer urban suburbs, shot up in price and have stayed there. Units especially in inner areas haven’t had nearly the same sustained rise in demand.
Over a working population, that was a) a massive shift of value, paid for by the people doing WFH, effectively a donation to firms, and b) a grand argument against a lot of things that would tend to make (in my taste, yes) cities better: densification, more services, more mid-rise and terrace housing near centres
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@liamvhogan @hugh @drbuttocks @daedalus Coming home from a fairly useless and weirdly expensive day of WFW this is on my mind. Workers pay to work in all sorts of ways — maintaining a home office, commuting to work, maintaining a body (food, drink) and a wardrobe. Employers exploit all these resources they don’t provide all the time. Sometimes we get to choose what we pay for.