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Remote work doesn't scale to society. It's a thing mostly privileged, educated, or experienced people are capable of. At some point, someone has to make or do

by bbarn 5y ago

Remote work doesn't scale to society. It's a thing mostly privileged, educated, or experienced people are capable of. At some point, someone has to make or do something physical. With very few exceptions, like entertainment, all of our remote jobs eventually tie in to some good being produced. Even pure services jobs ultimately feed some machine that produces physical products, and those will always need to have access to cheap labor and good shipping lanes to succeed. You can be a cloud engineer, but the people buying cloud services are eventually selling something to people making things. The impact so far has been more people with more money getting to live in places where their previously "city" salaries give them an edge in cheaper areas. It's also been that some companies have started to adjust salaries for remote work downwards, both of which will flatten out the temporary advantage being a remote worker brings to society. The only answer is basically socialism, and most of us (myself included) don't like that answer because human nature is to compete.

acdha 5y ago
It's true that remote work isn't compatible with every job but I think it'll have more of an impact than you're predicting because those jobs don't all have to be in the same places as they have been historically. We've seen an over-concentration in certain areas where existing major businesses drove demand up stratospherically in places like NYC, SF, etc. I'd predict that remote work will spread things out more by making it more viable to make living decisions based on things like proximity to family or lifestyle amenities which would be completely inconsistent with being in the office in Manhattan at 8:30am every day. That should be good for a lot of those service industry jobs in smaller regional cities where the cost of living is much lower. Socialism is an interesting angle because that term has a lot of different meanings and it's loaded in the U.S. because Americans try to use it as synonym for communism, despite many counter examples. I wouldn't, for example, consider Europe or Canada devoid of competition and those examples show how much money we could be saving with more socialist policies in ways which actually improve competition. For example, unlinking health coverage from employment removes a significant risk for small businesses, improves job market competition, and significantly lowers one of the factors driving prices up. Similarly, subsidizing childcare both helps parents work — with costs in the $20-30K range per child there are a lot of lower-income people who could work but are unable to make the finances work. I'd prefer to pay that out of general tax revenue than expect every coffeeshop to be able to pay baristas that much more since that's a big expense to spread over a small pool of workers.
- bbarn 5y ago
  I live in Iceland now (but I'm American, and this is only a few years old move). We have state-run healthcare, but the quality is seriously lower by I'd say an order of magnitude than what I experienced in the US. I don't know if it's possible to get the quality of care without individuals paying. Yes, there's obviously some bloat in the system - a lot of bloat, but people tend to forge the US has world-leading health care. It's just really expensive.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That’s interesting because my only experience with the Icelandic medical system was the opposite: a relative needed an ER trip & the experience was faster and far cheaper than they’d experienced in the U.S. (their copay on MIT’s insurance was greater than the total). The thing with U.S. healthcare is that it’s very unevenly distributed. If you’re in something like the upper 10-15% income wise and live in a major urban area, you can definitely get quite good care but many people have worse coverage, especially given how much more they have to pay and the time required to wrangle insurance and providers. I’ve known a number of people from outside the U.S. and they’ve generally commented on the greater cost & much greater inconvenience compared to Europe, Canada, Israel, Japan, etc. but a few who needed specialists mentioned that was easier as long as you could afford it.
    - bbarn 5y ago
      So, what you've described isn't health care, it's trauma care. In that respect, you're absolutely right. A fellow expat here had a turn over car accident requiring a helicopter flight and it cost him almost nothing. I'm talking about health care, as in staying healthy. Regular visits, monitoring conditions, things like that. You have to schedule anything like that months in advance, you never see the same doctor twice as they tend to import temporary doctors from other Scandinavian countries, and every time you see someone it's starting over. Something as simple as hypothyroidism can be an uphill battle that the patient basically has to monitor themselves. Simple surgeries like hernias, etc. you can end up waiting months to get. Test results are hidden from patients, many very good prescription drugs simply aren't allowed in the country, and in many cases, we're using two generation old cures when much better ones exist. The hospitals are also IMO disgusting. Yellowed dirty walls, people walking around in socks due to custom (which is a great way to spread around foot fungus, something a TON of people here have). That paper that you pull down between patients on the beds only gets changed if someone gets it wet or bloody. I could go on, but it feels like low quality care every time I go. You're also right that being in the top 15% (I'd argue it's more like 30%) in the US means you have excellent health care in the US.
cannabis_sam 5y ago
> because human nature is to compete. Do you seriously believe this? Both cooperation and competition has been advantageous and disadvantageous at different times and in different contexts.. Personally, I’m at least happy that my mum didn’t decide to compete with me for survival…

by bbarn 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

It's true that remote work isn't compatible with every job but I think it'll have more of an impact than you're predicting because those jobs don't all have to be in the same places as they have been historically. We've seen an over-concentration in certain areas where existing major businesses drove demand up stratospherically in places like NYC, SF, etc. I'd predict that remote work will spread things out more by making it more viable to make living decisions based on things like proximity to family or lifestyle amenities which would be completely inconsistent with being in the office in Manhattan at 8:30am every day. That should be good for a lot of those service industry jobs in smaller regional cities where the cost of living is much lower. Socialism is an interesting angle because that term has a lot of different meanings and it's loaded in the U.S. because Americans try to use it as synonym for communism, despite many counter examples. I wouldn't, for example, consider Europe or Canada devoid of competition and those examples show how much money we could be saving with more socialist policies in ways which actually improve competition. For example, unlinking health coverage from employment removes a significant risk for small businesses, improves job market competition, and significantly lowers one of the factors driving prices up. Similarly, subsidizing childcare both helps parents work — with costs in the $20-30K range per child there are a lot of lower-income people who could work but are unable to make the finances work. I'd prefer to pay that out of general tax revenue than expect every coffeeshop to be able to pay baristas that much more since that's a big expense to spread over a small pool of workers.

bbarn 5y ago
I live in Iceland now (but I'm American, and this is only a few years old move). We have state-run healthcare, but the quality is seriously lower by I'd say an order of magnitude than what I experienced in the US. I don't know if it's possible to get the quality of care without individuals paying. Yes, there's obviously some bloat in the system - a lot of bloat, but people tend to forge the US has world-leading health care. It's just really expensive.
- acdha 5y ago
  That’s interesting because my only experience with the Icelandic medical system was the opposite: a relative needed an ER trip & the experience was faster and far cheaper than they’d experienced in the U.S. (their copay on MIT’s insurance was greater than the total). The thing with U.S. healthcare is that it’s very unevenly distributed. If you’re in something like the upper 10-15% income wise and live in a major urban area, you can definitely get quite good care but many people have worse coverage, especially given how much more they have to pay and the time required to wrangle insurance and providers. I’ve known a number of people from outside the U.S. and they’ve generally commented on the greater cost & much greater inconvenience compared to Europe, Canada, Israel, Japan, etc. but a few who needed specialists mentioned that was easier as long as you could afford it.
  - bbarn 5y ago
    So, what you've described isn't health care, it's trauma care. In that respect, you're absolutely right. A fellow expat here had a turn over car accident requiring a helicopter flight and it cost him almost nothing. I'm talking about health care, as in staying healthy. Regular visits, monitoring conditions, things like that. You have to schedule anything like that months in advance, you never see the same doctor twice as they tend to import temporary doctors from other Scandinavian countries, and every time you see someone it's starting over. Something as simple as hypothyroidism can be an uphill battle that the patient basically has to monitor themselves. Simple surgeries like hernias, etc. you can end up waiting months to get. Test results are hidden from patients, many very good prescription drugs simply aren't allowed in the country, and in many cases, we're using two generation old cures when much better ones exist. The hospitals are also IMO disgusting. Yellowed dirty walls, people walking around in socks due to custom (which is a great way to spread around foot fungus, something a TON of people here have). That paper that you pull down between patients on the beds only gets changed if someone gets it wet or bloody. I could go on, but it feels like low quality care every time I go. You're also right that being in the top 15% (I'd argue it's more like 30%) in the US means you have excellent health care in the US.

cannabis_sam 5y ago

> because human nature is to compete. Do you seriously believe this? Both cooperation and competition has been advantageous and disadvantageous at different times and in different contexts.. Personally, I’m at least happy that my mum didn’t decide to compete with me for survival…