Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

You can argue that inequality stemming from that doesn't actually matter, because nobody is worse off - but that's a different argument from whether remote work creates inequality or not.

I.e.: to each according to his value and ability, not purely according to his need. But do so with compassion. I think a fair bit of what goes wrong when this topic and other related ones come up, is that people that advocate for things such as meritocracy are immediately portrayed as heartless and lacking compassion because they advocate for that thing.

Agreed. There is another dimension to it as well. Labor pricing is set by "replacement cost."

In a country where workers have been made precarious intentionally [1], replacement cost will be much lower than (a) the surplus value created by the worker, (b) the risk a worker bares in work activities.

There is empirical evidence that this is taking place on a grand scale. [2]

[1] https://chomsky.info/20120508/

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jofi.12909

[1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/inside-the-vault/spr...

Now it is still interesting to measure a correlation between the income and the ability to work from home and the practical impacts in our current organizations and in specific situations, but this has to be qualified and interpreted very carefully, because I'm not really sure that the conditions for some are specifically worsened in order to be specifically enhanced for others - at least in normal times. Actually, I'm not sure the conditions are even always necessarily enhanced for those who work from home, for example working exclusively from home might be a bad idea for some people; and some companies may have the idea that working from home forever is the new normal, even without pandemic constraints. In that context, that would be one less choice for the workers, compared to a balanced situation. But that has to be completely contextually qualified: it would seem fair to amortize and compensate even otherwise neutral characteristics (not affirming that WFH ability is usually completely neutral) if they become huge disadvantage in specific situations. Because why bother living in a society otherwise?

So it boils down to choice (and I mean root choices: if you have the choice and choose a work occupation that you find extremely fulfilling, but that you can't practice from home, then usually the lack of choice on the work at home subject is only very secondary compared to your original choice of this activity), and in that regard maybe it should be read as a (potential, and very indirect) symptom of real problems rather than a problem on its own: I agree that the ability for individual choices that matter will be greatly improved by e.g. accessible good quality education and health care systems, and the US seems lacking there. The thing is that even if that does not change at all the wage vs. WFH correlation, the overall situation will still be enhanced if that improve the ability for people to chose their job.

Let's say a brain surgeon makes $2m/year. That makes sense, they are uncommonly talented.

Does it make sense that someone can amass as wealth 50,000 years of brain surgeon economic output ($100bn)? If the distribution of human endowments is Gaussian, as it likely is, this level of wealth accumulation cannot be explained by superior productivity alone.

See the top households:

Net Worth of the 10%, 1%, and .1% Households Percentile Threshold 10% 2% 1% 0.10% Net Worth $1,182,390.36 $5,816,220.17 $10,374,030.10 $43,090,281.00

The top 1% owns 35% of the wealth in this country. the next 9% own 40%. The bottom 50% own 1.67% of the wealth. That's the problem. Most people are paycheck to paycheck with little opportunity for wealth creation / stability. Most of this is inherited wealth; the wealthy today, across not just the US, but the globe, are largely descended from the wealthy of many generations past. There's a great study on the gravity of wealth from the UK:

https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/30/whats-in-a-name-wealth-and-s...

I dunno who Wyatt Koch is, but if he has designed a shirt and managed to produce it in such volume and with such materials as to be attractive to men (I assume) with money who want to be comfortable, he should be commended. That is very difficult.

I would think that working from home all the time as a matter of course (as opposed to being forced to, like during a pandemic) would allow lower income people to live further from the expensive cities and, arguably, in much better conditions.

I know that if I could WFH full time I could move to the suburbs (or even to a smaller city) and live in a house bigger and cheaper than my current flat.

We all talk about robots, but I have yet to see ANY robot remotely capable of the simplest jobs. At my work, an exaust fan failed overnight. Replacing it is a simple task: a few screws and some basic wiring. Latency isn't the issue. There are no robots with the dexterity to even consider such a job. I'd be amazed if one exists that is capable of navigating the ladders and corners needed to get to the fan. (Flying isn't an option. We are near an airport.)

Even ignoring the WFH bit, a remotely-controlled 'nursebot' could be the best case. Not only would it prevent communicating disease, but it would reduce stress on nurse's bodies, more precise medication administration (by reducing error + augmenting knowledge).

Although, isn't human contact considered an important part of recovery?

I guess the nursebots would be better in some cases than others.

Most of pilot training consists of dealing with emergencies. Pilots tend to be highly motivated to be safe because they hit the ground first. There's a saying among pilots that saving themselves saves the passengers.

I wouldn't get on an airplane with a remote pilot.

BTW, in WW2, bringing the chief of maintenance along for the check ride after an overhaul ensured a quality job was done.

In reference to some kind of changing circumstance that was going to compel their rank and file to spend more time doing some work-related task, the labor rep said, "They're entitled to their time" with a kind of finality I envy.

Absolutely no wiggle room around the question of, "should they be paid for every minute they spend on the clock for someone else's business." The ubiquity of salaried work really gets me sometimes.

I don't know if our congress could ever come together on something like this in 2020, but I'm sure some highly specific implementation could be found that everyone could more or less agree to. Is there any existing project or group campaigning for this idea?

I’m not very convinced by this. 100 years ago you could employ a lot of people to dig a ditch because labour and spades were cheap. Today, I think you can’t realistically give people spades and I worry the large efficient digging machines would be too expensive or in short supply to start a massive campaign of ditch digging. They also require training. But maybe I’m wrong.

> It also has the advantage that it would allow some of these high earners to move from turbo-high cost of living areas to much lower ones.

I generally find these arguments compelling but I just looked and I can’t find much evidence of a significant benefit. Partly I think this could be a lack of studies or me misreading the data, or that it is just difficult to measure (and there are different things to measure too, eg the FTC defines broadband as >= 200kbps, which is I think not generally what is referred to when people talk about improving rural broadband). Do you know of any studies into whether improving rural broadband actually has these beneficial effects?

Competitive internet in the US is almost an oxymoron. I have two choices here, and they magically always set the same price, which is no cheaper now than ten years ago. I can walk to a cocktail, a pour-over coffee, boutiques, and my choice of macaron or Parisian-style croissant, but I cannot get cheap and high-bandwidth internet.

Subsidizing relocation is not the best alternative. Farming regions already suffer from a shortage of labor. It would be far better for one of a family to be able to get a good tech job while another in the family farms than the current state of affairs, where I know a farmer who actually commutes by his private plane to his second job as a college instructor. Farming is important, because food is important. No other service is expensive there, unless you want a Brazilian keratin treatment or something. Relocating the last of America's farmers is not a great answer.

Last, I will get my teeth looked at as soon as it's possible, whether I'm WFH or not. You only get one set of adult teeth.

Humans are social animals and I think it's common for people in privileged positions to want to associate with others like themselves.

They're not miserable people simply because you don't get to have another luxury. They're circumspect and compassionate for not simply being complacent and instead exploring all of the effects. You do realize the authors themselves benefit from remote work right?

Guess what: if the world is going to improve for poor people then we rich people are going to have to forgo some luxuries; reagonomics/"rising tide raises all ships" doesn't work (how well are the poor people in SF doing?). Casting aspersions on people (authors here) for sounding the alarms on yet another impending structural shift that will further weaken the poor is a special kind of immoral.

I am a remote worker. I'm certainly not for making my own life worse.

Surely we can see a mismatch, however, when there are people who are considered essential enough to risk their lives, but not considered essential enough to be paid enough to own their own home or car. I think there are a lot of non-remote jobs which can't be done remotely, but I do think we could pay those workers more.

(Btw, I appreciate that your comments have improved away from this direction in general.)

Which in turn means whatever those workers are providing will cost more. In most of the jobs under discussion, labor costs are a large fraction of overall costs, so raising labor costs means making the overall good or service more expensive. And nobody wants to pay more--not even the workers themselves, who are also paying for similar services from other workers.

You left out the actual correct answer, which is a combination of:

3. Increase the productivity of individual workers. That means the workers are producing more value per unit of work.

4. Make the workers entrepreneurs. That means they are now owners of the capital constituted by their increased productivity and skills, so they capture more of the value they create.

In short: workers need to stop thinking of themselves as workers, and start thinking of themselves as owners of capital, since that's the better bargaining position to be in.

Addressing point 2, right now the US economy imperfectly applies wages to an individual worker based on the demand for their skills. If their skills become more scarce or they develop better skills their wages should increase. If we say pay them more without changing the demand or the skills they have who will pay them more? Where will the money come from?

The simple answer might be to pay the CEO less but their value is also set on Market rates for their skills and demand, so if a chain paid the CEO less they would leave and go somewhere were they got paid more. Then that chain would have to higher someone else for more than the reduced rate of the previous CEO.

I also like the idea of paying people at the bottom of the economy more, but the government shouldn't just mandate some people make more and other people make less. We must find a way to either change the skill level or demand for those employees.

Artificially changing demand for low skilled employees is a bit scary because it incentivizes investments in automation. I would be helpful if a demand increase plan lead to a technological innovation the reduced the need for any of those workers. In my opinion investing in the skills of low wage employees is the best way to solve income inequality.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Std pareto curve. population of 100. 10 are aristocratic. 90 lower class. if you net equal losses, population 80 and you have increased equality. This is a simplification.

I count throwing out a foreign oppressor, like the American revolution or the Czech "velvet revolution" as a separate category. Those can be good.

In fact most of the deaths happened out in the countryside, Infernal Columns, Revolutionary Weddings (masss drownings of clergy) and the Revolt in the Vendee.

But if we're trying to compare the impact on rich vs poor we should probably use per capita numbers because there are far more poor than rich.

That said, sometimes we as a society do need to "swoop in". The obvious cases would be things like loan sharks, dealers of highly addictive drugs, etc. Right now remote work doesn't seem like one of those cases.

But let's talk more about the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). Many have the misunderstanding that EMH is some sort of axiom that people actually believe. No one actually believes it to be literally true, but without EMH as a guiding principle, modern finance could not exist. The actions of many market participants creates the mostly/sometimes efficient market we have today.

Put another way, in order for a market to be efficient, it needs participants who are arbitraging away the inefficiency. But because they are profiting off the (temporary) inefficiency, clearly the market isn't efficient!

> For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.2.two.html

Or perhaps you're looking for the angels that Madison writes about in Federalist #51 to distribute all capital fairly without assigning ownership of any of it to those to whom it is distributed?

> It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

most robots are quite capable, but the AI isn't there

I don't care if I make a dollar and you make a billion if one dollar will provide for my entire life, and if that life is pleasant in an absolute sense.

Equality is a false god.