Ask HN: Should employers pay a fine for superfluous work-from-office policies?

I'm on the other side from you, but not in the way the OP is...

Personally I'm against this thing where "work" is a whole separate thing outside of "life". We're not doing anything directly to benefit ourselves, we're doing random often-useless tasks to make someone else rich, just so we can be allowed to access the basic necessities of life.

I long for world where "work" means "tasks that need to be done", not "the place I go to be a slave so I can earn the magic capitalism points". I long for a world where work is directly beneficial to us. I long for a world where there's no concept of "going to work" and "coming home from work".

I really long for a world where people don't think it sounds like a good thing to have to leave home and stop acting like a human for a massive portion of the day, every day, just to earn some arbitrary pieces of paper that only benefit us because life has been turned into a commodity by the parasites who benefit from this arrangement: the shareholding class.

I often wonder what the psychological impact of this is. What does it do to us to be forced to walk on a hamster wheel for 8+ hours a day in exchange for food?

Depending on the work, depending on the tool it's a discussion worth having. With parameters of the discussion set by the law.

Maybe. It's worth entertaining. But even then the discussion should take everything into account. I take the position that housing need to be built either way. But do all offices building need to be built?

If at any given time half or two third of your work force could stay at home. It means there is less office capacity that need to be built.

In any case, I welcome the debate.