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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>I don't care about the productivity conversation, it's just logistically dumb and if there's a cost in making fewer widgets for getting rid of traffic than so be it.

Exactly. The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don't get to pay for it.

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You see, optimizing the three factors you mentioned does not increase shareholder value. They don’t care about society, the environment or work-life balance.

I'd say the whole modern system of "shareholder value" should be the first to go...

I hope not. I owned a lot of shares in companies and it will fund my retirement (same as it will fund almost everyone's retirement).

The employee's welfare shouldn't exist at the employer's discretion. That's the conceit of feudalism and we've supposedly left that behind us.

it might be the way to transition towards a remote first economy - make them pay for the time and cost of travel within a certain distance, and if they prefer, they can instead fund the difference in housing cost to help you live closer to the office.

employers pay stuff like national insurance or health insurance, depending on where you are - this would just be a "commuting allowance" for jobs that really require it.

> The companies should stop ignoring the cost of commuting to society, the environment, and personal (from work-life balance, to family) just because they don’t get to pay for it.

Why would a profit-maximizing firm not ignore externalities it creates?

The solution is that they should pay for them; the personal ones they do as long as there is competition for employees, but the social/environmental ones need to be internalized via Pigovian taxation.

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