Thing is, if you ask your friends why they chose to settle down in the place they are living, it is very rarely 'because it was close to the office'. I think th

Thing is, if you ask your friends why they chose to settle down in the place they are living, it is very rarely 'because it was close to the office'. I think that is a direct consequence of the 'volatility' of work. Your grandparents might have expected the company they joined in their teens to employ them for the rest of their lives. This sounds alien today. Not many people take it to the extreme of working with a laptop and a sat-link from a remote tropical beach, but plenty chose and environment they like, be it a hip bristling city or somewhere more rural for the peace and quiet, and then suffer the commutes that come with accepting a job. Now you are right that there is the potential for abuse, certainly in employer side ruled sectors, an maybe we need some safeguards, but we need to try and stop this madness. Turning some of the costs from employee to employer seems to work. I didn't run into many companies where the devs had 3x4K monitors and a quiet private office, because you know, at times 'you need that extra efficiency'.