Legally mandating remote work and adding public transit options and raising the cost of daily useless commute would go a veeeeeery long way. Because the petrol not burned by driving can be used to replace the coal plants.
I think you are overestimating the amount of jobs that can be done remotely.
Things that can never be done remotely: agriculture, construction, manufacture, hospitality, a big part of health/elder care, a big part of education, anything that requires expensive equipment (research, ...), artists/shows/events, the list goes on.
A lot of these sectors were either closed or running slow during COVID, which was not sustainable (you can't maintain the purchasing power of an entire population for decades if suddenly half of it stops working - it only works for a short while if you expect to be able to repay the debt you incurred to keep non-working people afloat).
So even if every single person that can work remotely does so, still expect big cities with transportation issues.
And that's without counting all the jobs that can be done remotely but are better done in office.
Most US cities need a small critical mass only to kickstart good [amazing!? okay, passable] public transport.
Urbanization is still in full force, cities are growing. (Even if COVID put a dip in the graph.)
Sure, the number one problem is density, but the US is ridiculously rich enough to support enough buses doing the rounds.
Agriculture is not causing congestion. (The rare combine on the rural road leading a queue is the exception.)
Construction is also a small part of the overall traffic. (Especially with more and more prefab happening around the world.)
Manufacturing, sure, production lines need operators, engineers, etc. Yet at the same time (speaking from experience) about half of the staff could do remote.
> So even if every single person that can work remotely does so, still expect big cities with transportation issues.
No questions there, but as I said a few sentences back, the peak is the problem. The upkeep (maintenance costs) for a transit network that can serve X number of people all commuting at the same time (in the same direction) is basically double than a network for half (or ~80%) of that demand.
Not to go into each of your counter-examples, but while some of them can't be done remotely today, surely we can get there.
Eg. how far away are we from having remote-controlled tractors and combine-harvesters? Sure, get them home into a garage when they need servicing.
Hospitality? There are places which, especially in the first pandemic year, have gone all hands-off (eg. get a token to access a property on your check-in without talking to anyone).
But rather than can we, I think the point should be should we? There's a psychological cost to working with people you've never met personally, never hanged around with... And some people will struggle to get any social activity happening in their lives without work.
I've worked remotely for 15+ years, but I don't think it's for everybody, or for anybody all the time.
People going to places is no the problem. The problem is the peak demand. (Eg. usual commute. Rush hour.)
It'd be much much better if people were spending all that fuel on traveling with friends to anywhere else. (Or just going to events/festivals.)
...
That said remote work without any IRL interaction is definitely psychologically unhealthy. But! Doing a twice monthly sprint rollover or whatever means a qualitatively different kind of transit than the daily commute.
You understand that agriculture didn't shut down because farmers couldn't sit on their tractors and pull equipment, but because nobody was buying the product they were producing, right?
That's... extremely totalitarian :) ...but legally forcing employers to allow remote work X days a week for jobs where it makes sense + solid investment in public transit would make wonders.
I’m not defending totalitarianism, but capitalist democracy really does a piss poor job at controlling negative externalities, to the point that I’m not really convinced it’s a good system of governance anymore.
Ok, so instead of “force companies to allow remote work” it’s “tax companies that don’t allow remote work a bajillion dollars a microsecond”. What’s the practical difference there?
There’s no intellectually defensible way to price the externalities off remote work at a bajillion dollars a microsecond. On some level you have to trust someone somewhere to do a good job. Taxes are tools to help that, not a substitute for it.
There’s also no intellectually defensible way to price quite a number of potential negative externalities. Dumping toxic waste in drinking water reservoirs, for instance, shouldn’t be allowed at any price. So I don’t think taxes are the actual answer for a lot of things, you just have to straight up ban them.
No, you can price that. The cost will be so high that people won’t do it and pay the price. That’s the point. You can set a price on emissions or pollution and if it’s a small amount the piece may be worth paying. At higher levels you figure out how to do something else that is not that. You don’t just continue what you were doing at greater scale.
um, the tax should be on the externalities. like the pollution due to commute, road wear, the generated traffic contributing to the peak. (eg. if you start work at ~11 instead of at 9 you contribute less to the peak)
Capitalism operates fine when you tax the externalities, it’s democracy that has an issue setting up the taxes rationally rather than based on which groups have political power.
