5 ms·

I read a theory once that one of the reasons why so many Boomers were able to buy land or houses cheaply that later appreciated substantially in value was the i

• pkaye 6y ago
  What percent of workers do work that can be done remotely?
  • oedoedxef 6y ago
    Currently, or 5 years from now? Anyone working in the "services" industry, which is most of the United States, can work from home. And if the laws ever change for restaurants and auto-repair shops, I suspect you might see that being done from home as well.
    • 0xffff2 6y ago
      What kind of restaurant job do you see being done from home?
      • elihu 6y ago
        I'd guess that user oedoedxef is referring to running a customer-facing business (a diner, an auto repair shop, or whatever) out of a primary residence, whether that means living in a commercially-zoned property or doing commerce in a residentially-zoned property or perhaps eliminating the distinction entirely.
        • 0xffff2 6y ago
          That's my guess as well, but that's a very, very strange definition of working from home.
          • oedoedxef 6y ago
            Why is it strange? Why should us software developers be allowed to work from home, but others who need a livelihood and provide valuable services to society should not be allowed to produce goods from home? After all, dentists and tailors see clients in their homes, and people who sell t-shirts online often manufacture and ship the goods from their home.
  • elihu 6y ago
    I don't know, but I suspect for the readership of Hacker News at least it's pretty high. (And I suspect there's a lot more people who can picture themselves working from home indefinitely than if you had asked the question a year ago.) Not all jobs can be done remotely, but for the ones that can, the various impediments seem to be dropping away.
  • barbacoa 6y ago
    >What percent of workers do work that can be done remotely? Not a huge number, but that's all you need to support a small town economy. It's like the plight of the rust belt -- you had small communities that relied on manufacturing job to support the local retail and services jobs. When those manufacturing jobs evaporated due to outsourcing those small towns imploded.
    • asdff 6y ago
      What percent of remote workers do their shopping at the local mom and pop vs. online? I would expect this is a much higher rate than non remote workers who are commuting past that mom and pop store every day, where it would be convenient to stop in and grab something on their way to work or home. Remote workers in a rural town have little reason to leave their house and go to town, which in a rural town might itself be a 10-15 min one way drive on unlit (and frequently unplowed in winter) roads that typically lack a sidewalk.
      • barbacoa 6y ago
        Rural town is an oxymoron. There is a big distinction between rural and towns. Even towns of 1-5k people are surprisingly dense since most were built out before urban sprawl became a trend.
• marcusverus 6y ago
  I've had a similar thought regarding the impact of affordable autonomous vehicles, for two reasons. 1) Commuters who can read / game / whittle while they commute will be willing to commute farther, and 2) if widespread adoption of autonomous cars can mitigate the effects of traffic (i.e. enable us to actually drive the speed limit during rush hour, or at least closer to it), we'll be able to commute farther in the same amount of time. Those effects combined would unlock an absolute ton of land around urban areas.
  • asdff 6y ago
    I have my doubts that autonomous cars will do much for traffic. Traffic doesn't necessarily happen because there are too many cars on the freeway, but too many cars on the much more limited capacity streets which back up onto the freeways. Everyone taking a self driving car into work isn't going to change the fact that traffic is bad because everyone insists on traveling 20'x5' apart from one another through a dense urban environment, which is the spacing a car gives you in bumper to bumper traffic. Now autonomous articulated bus that can hold 60 people sitting down in the footprint of 3-4 cars, that's another story.
    • bgirard 6y ago
      > more limited capacity streets which back up onto the freeways These are often because of a bottleneck such as a traffic right (particularly left turn signal) or stop sign. If autonomous vehicles can be tweaked to increase throughput (better reaction times, shorter follow distance, less accidents, higher speed through chokepoints like tolls, not distracted or not accelerating slowly on light changes) you might see significant traffic reductions as a result. Little's law is applicable here. The problems with bus or commuter lines is it's hard to get people to share a route efficiently. I've had it work in the past but only where I picked my housing according to an effective commuter line for my school or work. But that's hard to arrange at scale. Where effective commuters line don't scale instead if you combine the above wins with an uber pool like service where 3-4 people are efficiently routed together. You could be looking at 2-3x fewer cars on roads that have better throughput and fewer bottlenecks.
    • 6y ago
• notthemessiah 6y ago
  Ain't a theory, it's by design: Robert Moses was the architect of this suburban vision of America. Not only did they pave the way out of the city, the highways also paved over the homes of millions of existing residents in the city, displacing them further out. Furthermore, highways were often used as barriers between rich and poor neighborhoods. You should read The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.
  • leafmeal 6y ago
    The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York earned Robert Caro a Pulitzer prize for biography. I'm reading the first of his 5 part (and counting?) biography of Lyndon Johnson which I also highly recommend.