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It is actually not easy to decide this question. We can at least try to formulate a framework to think about it rationally. Remote work is not a new economic ca
by college_physics 4y ago
It is actually not easy to decide this question. We can at least try to formulate a framework to think about it rationally. Remote work is not a new economic category but just a reconfiguration of what we call the knowledge economy (The total economy (TE) being the sum of the real economy (RE) and the knowledge economy (KE))
RE is 1) material stuff being extracted, processesed and moved around by people and 2) physical services provided by people. The size of RE is constrained on the supply side i) by material scarcity, environmental considerations etc, and on the demand side by ii) saturation of material consumption needs by the average human
In contrast, the knowledge economy is essentially information: collated, processed, transmitted etc by people's brains and digital artifacts [0]. Given the zero marginal cost of reproduction, the size of KE is constrained by i) intellectual property enforceability and ii) saturation of information consuption needs by the average human
Back to the original question, remote work is making KE more efficient and is entirely natural. In fact the work-from-office pattern is mostly a historical relic of how RE was organized. Remote work can be judged as positive or negative contribution towards TE in the context of a point-in-time analysis (i.e. here and now) or the overall balance of RE/KE in a sustainable economy. Moving millions of brains around in massive 2 ton exoskeletons that consume enormous resources in order for them to type into inane powerpoints and spreadsheets is not exactly "a good economy".
In any case, it could be that a sustainable economy (where KE is mostly WFH could be "smaller" in monetary units, especially if it has a major collaborative and open source component) but it is by no means clear it would "worse".
[0] KE obviously requires some RE, which is for example why the pandemic induced bloated hardware inventories