Hacker News Reader

Comment by briefcomment | Hacker News Reader

No one's disputing that.

It makes sense that if people who can work home do so, the environment will be better than if they don't work from home. Also, many people who cannot work from home at the moment are still driving to work (restaurant workers, grocery store workers, other retail). This current situation isn't too far off from a state where just those who can work from home do so, and the rest drive to work. And anecdotally, the air where I live has gone from one of the worst in the nation to delightful.

View on HN

> This current situation isn't too far off from a state where just those who can work from home do so, and the rest drive to work.

it seems pretty very far off to me. I'm having a nice time working from home, but all my friends that don't work at a grocery store (restaurant workers, tutors, social workers, theater techs) are sitting at home not getting paid.

I'm not sure how to estimate what fraction of the workforce actually needs to commute to work, but it seems like they make up a pretty significant amount of the people that are not driving right now.

I was comparing the current situation with the state where everyone is forced to stay at home. Right now, everyone is not forced to stay at home. If you're saying that the current situation is closer to everyone staying at home than to business as usual, you're probably right.

However, where I live, a majority of the restaurants are open (just doing drive through). Tutoring is possibly something that can be done online. I've known many high quality tutors running business entirely from home. Theater techs, social workers, and other similar jobs probably make up a very small fraction of the workforce compared to restaurant, retail (I believe the majority of retail stores in my area are open), and grocery workers. So I still think the current situation can give us a decent idea of what driving volume and pollution levels will look like in a situation where people that can work from home do so. The current situation is definitely biased towards less driving though.

Pretty much half the retail that doesn't sell food is closed where I live. The local mall is entirely closed, and many businesses that are open are reducing hours or doing "curbside service" meaning a lot of the staff is probably furloughed. My own business is either shut down for 10 more days, or 32 days at least, depending on whether we're under nonessential services.

This is not sustainable in the least man. Eventually all you guys working from home are going to feel it too, because a lot of the businesses you sell your software to are not earning revenue to pay you or to hire consultants.

I said

"I was comparing the current situation with the state where everyone is forced to stay at home. Right now, everyone is not forced to stay at home. If you're saying that the current situation is closer to everyone staying at home than to business as usual, you're probably right."

So I'm not saying this is sustainable. This definitely gives us a better idea of what pollution and driving may look like if people who can stay home do stay home, than by trying to guess what it would look like before the shutdowns started. I also said "The current situation is definitely biased towards less driving though".

I just want to point out that we shouldn't label this situation as some unobtainable ideal when it comes to pollution, but rather as a real world glimpse of what pollution could be if more people worked from home than have in the past.

I would argue a strong case that tutors and social workers don't need to commute to work. What part of their job can't be done online?

Face-to-face interaction is very important to both roles. You can certainly offload some, maybe most, academic instruction to online, but not the tutoring part.

my tutor friend probably has a temporary problem. as soon as remote school gets going, I'm sure she'll be able to convince her clients to pay for remote tutoring.

but as a social worker, you can end up making house calls to some very dysfunctional (or at least, the opposite of tech savvy people). a lot of these people simply can't figure out how to do video calls reliably; they might not even own a computer or have a mobile plan with enough data for video. sometimes the social worker is helping them perform physical tasks.

> This current situation isn't too far off from a state where just those who can work from home do so, and the rest drive to work.

A lot of "the rest" are staying home, at least in California. Only certain businesses are allowed to remain open.

Unemployment claims are up quite a bit, especially in California and Washington due to the shelter in place orders -- and that's data from last week, when only portions of California were locked down.

Most retail and restaurant employees are at home not getting paid, and many have already been laid off. A lot of those people live paycheck to paycheck and won't be able to pay rent on April 1st.

I know some retail employees who are furloughed and still being paid, but their companies probably can't afford that for more than a few months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com