Hacker News Reader

Comment by dymk | Hacker News Reader

A tragedy of the commons has never been solved without centralized organization, and the “but the market will fix it!” responses are frankly just boring now

View on HN

This is not a tragedy of the commons.

Some companies will enforce RTO. Some will not. The market will decide how valuable that is, and remote-capable companies should benefit for it.

Some rivers will get pollution dumped in them. Some won’t. That’s just the market at work!

For your analogy, market proponents know about this, it is called "externalities". Yes, governments have a place here as they need to make sure the party responsible for certain activities will price their externalities (in your example, polluting a river).

The problem with pollution is that it creates externalities that are not borne by the polluter. Can you help me understand what externalities are involved in the RTO context?

Here are a few: more traffic and pollution, more traffic accidents and deaths, increased budgets for roads to accommodate, reduced family time, higher stress and increased medical costs, increased transportation costs born by employees and government transit authorities, …

Why does that apply to this situation? What is the "common good" being destroyed by individual self-interest?

It’s not that “the market will fix it” it’s that “the market will provide you a choice to fix it for yourself”

Some companies are remote by default! You can get a different job!

it's simply a tragedy of the companies who persist to live in the past. Remote capable companies will outperform these RTO companies by attracting the best talents and by reducing their running costs for not having offices. In a few years time, these RTO companies will have to adapt or slowly die, that's why "the market will fix it"

How is this a tragedy of the commons?

Simply because it replicates the same inequality that was inherently built into the feudal system by companies that originated from industrial revolution copying it into the new production modes: The elites always had the right to 'working' remote, or not working at all. But the serfs, and later the 'employees' have always had to show up in the farms during feudalism so that the overseers could make sure that they were not slacking and therefore 'stealing from the lord' by their lack of productivity.

The factories/companies in the industrialized society copied this format and culture exactly as it was in late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this format, the benefits of the commons (in this case the capability of remote work that technology enables) is removed from the serfs artificially by forcing them to return to work just like how the unwilling serfdom was forced to go work in the factories by shutting the commons off to them by passing enclosure acts.

A “commons” is any resource, not just some physical place

> The tragedy of the commons is a phenomenon described in economics and ecology in which common resources, to which access is not regulated by formal rules or fees/taxes levied based on individual use, tend to become depleted

Okay but with remote work, what's the unregulated common resource being depleted or ruined?

The parent term is "Collective action problem", but, like calling all nasal tissue paper "Kleenex", people often forget the parent term and use the most well-known specific term (including me, recently).

Okay, so because the Blizzard employees aren't unionized, they can't force Blizzard management to back off this plan. I get that, and if those workers decided to unionize to address this issue I think that would work. But it doesn't stop them from seeking employment at other remote work companies. If the collective of employees at Blizzard can't or won't unionize, seeking employment at other companies is their next best option for those individual employees who care the most. That 'commons' hasn't been ruined, because such remote work companies really do exist and are a realistic non-ruined option.

"The commons", here, is the status quo of the last couple of years in which many employees at all software companies could work remotely. This commons is now being sectioned off into companies that allow full use of this resource, and those who don't.

This is a tragedy, and it is a tragedy about a common good that briefly existed as a common good, but it's not technically a "tragedy of the commons" in the original sense.

I understand people conflating the terms in this example.

Also, management can't legally unionize, at least in the US. Even middle management, who are affected by this policy change.

> Okay but with remote work, what's the unregulated common resource being depleted or ruined?

The power of workers to dictate their working conditions. Currently, this common resource is being overused by elites who are able to command remote work for themselves but not for regular level workers.

Remote work at Blizzard for Blizzard employees is the resource we’re talking about here

The suggestion to which you responded was "Or you know, you can quit and go to a full-remote company." The "commons" would be the entire job market for games programmers, not this company specifically.

A common good is rivalrous and non-excludable. It doesn't apply to "any" resource.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com