This argument of expense rerouting is a bit flawed. Suppose working from home saves one some money that they spend elsewhere. Working from the office they spend that money on fuel, indirectly spend on road maintenance, directly spend on vehicle maintenance where the shop in turn spends on parts and tools and so on. The money one spends circulates in the economy much longer and reaches more actors until it eventually falls back into original pocket. Working from home then they buy more items that have been manufactured in China, spend eating out where restaurants pay mostly wages and farmers, making the chain much shorter.
There are different economic health considerations for different spending habits. While not exactly a loss it's not entirely equal too.
It's clear that the pointless burning of fossil fuels didn't satisfy any human need. Then the question becomes: is the distribution of currency caused by the buying and burning of the fuels preferable to the alternative distribution if the currency had been spent elsewhere? If it is preferable, does that offset the waste of fuel for no purpose except redistributing currency?
Any time I hear these kinds of reasonings the question comes to mind: if some distributions of currency are preferable to others, and we know what such distributions look like, why not let the government do the distribution directly?
That sentence would have a different meaning if the conclusitory (looking for real word here) word "pointless" was not there.
Abundant reliable on-demand energy has enormously improved the human condition. I'm also glad the Dutch no longer dig up peat bogs for dirty fuel.
Because this presumes that the people in government will do what is preferable to the masses. My conception of government is that of a tool or weapon that various powers vie for control over. Why should I expect benevolence from such?
Yeah, but ... how much of it was pointless? Who decides if a use-case is pointless? You? Me? The government?
Burning fossil fuels can of course also be meaningful.
We're talking about driving to work when you can work from home.
It's arguable whether all of this is needed everywhere in the world, to such a degree as is presently done.
In the cities, the transportation needs of most folks can be covered by public transportation (depending on the country, admittedly) - it is more efficient, more green and also results in fewer traffic jams.
Furthermore it scales up and down better: whether at 50% or 80% of capacity it will do its scheduled route, as opposed to all of those people otherwise needing cars and parking spaces for those and so on, which isn't always entirely feasible in densely populated cities.
I guess it's just a different take on things, but if there's commute, we might as well make it more efficient, as opposed to spending 1-2 hours per day in traffic, which is essentially wasted time. Or not have the commute altogether.
In more rural areas or many places in the US as opposed to EU it's a slightly different story.
I looked up and wrote up my “what if I tried to commute on public transit to make a 9AM meeting?”
It’s ugly to the point where no one would voluntarily choose it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31723197
In my case, in Rīga (the capital of my country, Latvia), it was approximately:
- leave apartment at 7:45
- walk to stop in around 5 minutes
- wait 5 - 10 minutes for a trolley bus
- ride in it for 20 - 30 minutes
- walk from stop to work for 10 minutes
With a car, the same trip would be around 20-40 minutes.
For comparison's sake, walking would mean upwards of 100 minutes for that trip.
Regardless of whether in a car, or using public transportation, coming home in the evening often included waiting in traffic jams for close to an hour. In comparison, when coming home before 4-6 PM, the streets were relatively empty and there were no such traffic issues. Fewer cars, fewer issues of that sort.
But what holds here true doesn't hold true elsewhere and vice versa. Once you go past a certain scale of the city in question, transfers and other complications become unavoidable. Just how much of an issue it is, depends on many other factors as well (car ownership cost, possibility of accidents, the disadvantage of not being able to easily transport things when not owning a car and so on, lack of freedom without a car, especially when you want to visit less popular rural areas).
Neither beats rolling out of bed at 8:45, turning on the computer and brewing some coffee or tea, doing a morning shower and "being at work" 10 minutes later, though.
The best way to beat traffic right now without having to wait for anybody else to change is to get a motorcycle - if the climate where you live permits.
Wasting time fixing stuff that didn't need to be broken is intrinsically bad for the economy, but it's disruptive to suddenly have your now-pointless job taken away.
Of course, when you look at just the flow of the goods and labour, the organization of a national economy in general seems highly, uh, round-about — the money serves as the main controlling/directing mechanism so without it in the picture things look pretty funky.
yes, this holds up when there is something else to do, which is not always the case. I remember during the great recession, building contractors in Florida were praying for a hurricane to put them back to work. There was absolutely no other work to be found.
If we have 10% fewer people commuting during work hours, then traffic might move twice as efficiently. Of course, that uses less fuel, which is bad for the economy /s
that's a total assumption being made. Who knows how the money from an office worker's commute gets dispersed. It's likely too difficult to track exactly. And it's irrelevant to the person how this dispersion happens or why.
All they need to care about is that they've eliminated a source of inefficiency, and thus have extra money for either investment or different consumption.
...or prices rise to balance out the extra money.
The rest... pure speculation from poster's own limited view, the world is more complex than 'I stay home so just order more stuff from China', definitely not true for me. I can chip in mine - ie during travel restrictions forced to buy in more expensive smaller local shops for whole family. One heck of help for local economy. Spending vacations much closer, meaning tons of money flow back to local economy. Having time to plan and do some home repairs with local workforce.
And so on, random tiny examples have little significance in hyper complex situation that is called reality.