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The author's answer to the title question seems to be: No. Which I agree with. If the answer was "Yes" however, I would question if that's even a bad thing to

The author's answer to the title question seems to be: No. Which I agree with. If the answer was "Yes" however, I would question if that's even a bad thing to begin with. If our economy is reliant on people driving to an office and spending their money at a restaurant, then our economy is pretty terrible to begin with.

thundergolfer 4y ago
Spending money at restaurants is great, way better than everybody sitting at home eating their own lunches. I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. > Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumours - far more likely in the city. Well you know what, so is everything else! Including sex, coffee and conversation. - Dylan Moran
- galleywest200 4y ago
  Sure, it is fun. But the point of the article and discussion is not to be city-phobic like your quote suggests -- rather why do we need our economy to focus around people commuting? It is not only inner-city folks. A lot of these restaurants in cities rely on all of the people coming in for work.
  - thundergolfer 4y ago
    I was replying to someone who said spending money in restaurants is undesirable. I was not replying to the article.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  Whose economy are we talking about though? I mean I understand what you're saying but most people I know still prefer eating at home most of the time and going to restaurants occasionally, mainly because meals out cost 3-10x as much as eating at home, unless you start every meal from scratch. this is really important for families.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > mainly because meals out cost 3-10x as much as eating at home If you are at a place that sells an experience that happens to come with food that may be true, but one in the business of selling food is going to beat your home kitchen every time. The big difference is that the home kitchen costs are largely front-loaded. This does mean you generally need less free cashflow when you are hungry, which is an appealing attribute to someone who budgets by looking at their bank account balance. However, it also means you sacrifice a fair amount of opportunity. That does not come cheap.
    - pillefitz 4y ago
      Home kitchens can be had for cheap, so I don't really get why paying 15 USD vs. 3 USD 2-3 times a day should be a better deal.
      - randomdata 4y ago
        $15 USD for a meal at a business in the business of selling food? Your local cost of living must be insane! I think you'd be hard-pressed to spend much more than $5 USD for a meal at a food business around here. In these parts, I can go to a restaurant in the business of selling an experience, with nice ambiance, a server who will wait on you hand and foot like you are some kind of king, etc. and can have nearly anything on the menu for $15 USD. At that price you're paying to get to act like a king for an hour or two, not for food. If your local cost of living is that high, what's the housing market like? High CoL and high rent often to go hand in hand. If you sold your appliances and offered your kitchen space as a bedroom rental, what kind of income are we talking here?
- freetime2 4y ago
  > Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. It's fun, but spending time with my kids is the best. > I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Not sure I agree - I can whip up an inexpensive, healthy, and satisfying meal with food from the supermarket in less time than it takes to walk a couple blocks to a restaurant.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    don't forget shopping and cleaning up too. the main problem with restaurants is lack of control of ingredients and fixed portion sizes. i can't adjust based on how hungry i am.
- sw104 4y ago
  YMMV
- AllegedAlec 4y ago
  YMMV. The 'hustle and bustle' of the city is something many people would rather avoid.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eyelidlessness 4y ago
I reached the same conclusion but from a different angle: if remote work is bad for the economy, but good for the people who enjoy it, how many other aspects of serving “the economy” are in conflict with serving the people who participate in it? Maybe it’s the economy itself that’s bad. Maybe looking for ways to balance changes like remote work with a bad economic system isn’t nearly ambitious enough. Maybe labor that needs induced demand shouldn’t shape society at all. Maybe it’s arbitrary makework—maybe the laborers, and the society making arbitrary work, would both benefit more by supporting those humans who’d otherwise do makework.
- freetime2 4y ago
  Free market economies also offer a solution to this problem. Restaurants close due to lack of demand, and the workers find jobs doing something else that is in demand (e.g. food delivery).
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. The workers have to get a job, because they arbitrarily have to make some profits to benefit someone else who is just taking advantage of the market shift and their leverage to do so. That’s an economy which is good for a few people with access to capital, but bad for everyone else. An economy which prioritized taking care of the people who are out of work would be beneficial for basically everyone except the people who benefit from every outcome anyway.
    - chii 4y ago
      > That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. so your problem is the human condition? Where for someone to exist, they have to work and produce something from which others in society would pay for?
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        My problem is this being framed as the human condition, as if some people doing labor for others to survive is some immutable fact from on high. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, part of an economic system created by people who reap outsized benefits compared to their own labor. It’s also a system which has promised efficiencies which would reduce work, which it’s delivered but very unevenly and mostly inversely proportional to the people actually doing the work. We already live in a post scarcity society for some, but the people who get to enjoy that are generally not the people who make it possible. My problem is that the people who make that possible don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and people who are actually disabled are totally at their mercy. All because we’ve collectively decided capitalism is some kind of unquestionable, perpetual compromise which never has had to make good on promises to anyone who wasn’t already wealthy.
epistemer 4y ago
IMO this whole nonsense argument stems from poor high school economics education and not teaching Schumpeter in high school. Per Schumpeter a 100 years ago, the economy is an ever changing process from technological change and entrepreneurship. Of course remote work is going to have good and bad aspects that come with the change. Practically the golden rule of economics is that everything is a trade off.

thundergolfer 4y ago

Spending money at restaurants is great, way better than everybody sitting at home eating their own lunches. I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. > Then you get these articles about how unhealthy life is in the city. You know; mobile phone tumours - far more likely in the city. Well you know what, so is everything else! Including sex, coffee and conversation. - Dylan Moran

galleywest200 4y ago
Sure, it is fun. But the point of the article and discussion is not to be city-phobic like your quote suggests -- rather why do we need our economy to focus around people commuting? It is not only inner-city folks. A lot of these restaurants in cities rely on all of the people coming in for work.
- thundergolfer 4y ago
  I was replying to someone who said spending money in restaurants is undesirable. I was not replying to the article.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
lost_tourist 4y ago
Whose economy are we talking about though? I mean I understand what you're saying but most people I know still prefer eating at home most of the time and going to restaurants occasionally, mainly because meals out cost 3-10x as much as eating at home, unless you start every meal from scratch. this is really important for families.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > mainly because meals out cost 3-10x as much as eating at home If you are at a place that sells an experience that happens to come with food that may be true, but one in the business of selling food is going to beat your home kitchen every time. The big difference is that the home kitchen costs are largely front-loaded. This does mean you generally need less free cashflow when you are hungry, which is an appealing attribute to someone who budgets by looking at their bank account balance. However, it also means you sacrifice a fair amount of opportunity. That does not come cheap.
  - pillefitz 4y ago
    Home kitchens can be had for cheap, so I don't really get why paying 15 USD vs. 3 USD 2-3 times a day should be a better deal.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      $15 USD for a meal at a business in the business of selling food? Your local cost of living must be insane! I think you'd be hard-pressed to spend much more than $5 USD for a meal at a food business around here. In these parts, I can go to a restaurant in the business of selling an experience, with nice ambiance, a server who will wait on you hand and foot like you are some kind of king, etc. and can have nearly anything on the menu for $15 USD. At that price you're paying to get to act like a king for an hour or two, not for food. If your local cost of living is that high, what's the housing market like? High CoL and high rent often to go hand in hand. If you sold your appliances and offered your kitchen space as a bedroom rental, what kind of income are we talking here?
freetime2 4y ago
> Inner city areas full of people chatting in restaurants and cafes at lunchtime and after work are the best. It's fun, but spending time with my kids is the best. > I suspect massive adoption of restaurants would be more efficient too, if we cared about that primarily. Not sure I agree - I can whip up an inexpensive, healthy, and satisfying meal with food from the supermarket in less time than it takes to walk a couple blocks to a restaurant.
- em-bee 4y ago
  don't forget shopping and cleaning up too. the main problem with restaurants is lack of control of ingredients and fixed portion sizes. i can't adjust based on how hungry i am.
sw104 4y ago
YMMV
AllegedAlec 4y ago
YMMV. The 'hustle and bustle' of the city is something many people would rather avoid.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

eyelidlessness 4y ago

I reached the same conclusion but from a different angle: if remote work is bad for the economy, but good for the people who enjoy it, how many other aspects of serving “the economy” are in conflict with serving the people who participate in it? Maybe it’s the economy itself that’s bad. Maybe looking for ways to balance changes like remote work with a bad economic system isn’t nearly ambitious enough. Maybe labor that needs induced demand shouldn’t shape society at all. Maybe it’s arbitrary makework—maybe the laborers, and the society making arbitrary work, would both benefit more by supporting those humans who’d otherwise do makework.

freetime2 4y ago
Free market economies also offer a solution to this problem. Restaurants close due to lack of demand, and the workers find jobs doing something else that is in demand (e.g. food delivery).
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. The workers have to get a job, because they arbitrarily have to make some profits to benefit someone else who is just taking advantage of the market shift and their leverage to do so. That’s an economy which is good for a few people with access to capital, but bad for everyone else. An economy which prioritized taking care of the people who are out of work would be beneficial for basically everyone except the people who benefit from every outcome anyway.
  - chii 4y ago
    > That’s really just a reconfiguration of the same underlying problem. so your problem is the human condition? Where for someone to exist, they have to work and produce something from which others in society would pay for?
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      My problem is this being framed as the human condition, as if some people doing labor for others to survive is some immutable fact from on high. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, part of an economic system created by people who reap outsized benefits compared to their own labor. It’s also a system which has promised efficiencies which would reduce work, which it’s delivered but very unevenly and mostly inversely proportional to the people actually doing the work. We already live in a post scarcity society for some, but the people who get to enjoy that are generally not the people who make it possible. My problem is that the people who make that possible don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and people who are actually disabled are totally at their mercy. All because we’ve collectively decided capitalism is some kind of unquestionable, perpetual compromise which never has had to make good on promises to anyone who wasn’t already wealthy.

epistemer 4y ago

IMO this whole nonsense argument stems from poor high school economics education and not teaching Schumpeter in high school. Per Schumpeter a 100 years ago, the economy is an ever changing process from technological change and entrepreneurship. Of course remote work is going to have good and bad aspects that come with the change. Practically the golden rule of economics is that everything is a trade off.