Because corporations are doing the majority of that pro-environmental advertising. I mean that both in terms of companies making changes (both real and greenwashing) and the News/Media corporations reporting on it.
Telecommuting could be absolutely massive for reduced emissions, could bring down urban house prices, improve inter-family relationships, and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable areas). Plus increase wealth to relatively poor rural areas.
Even some corporations are starting to realize that telecommuting isn't their enemy, but large ships move slowly, and recently we've been seeing a lot of "return to work" used as a way to conduct layoffs with lower negative PR/stock tanking. This isn't a byproduct but a goal of return-to-work (e.g. see Musk's text message conversation during Twitter-lawsuit discovery).
It's actually kind of incredible how it all seems to work. The cringe too of the fawning is a good indicator why Musk feels he can do whatever he likes, including attempting to troll everyone on his board. It seems so juvenile.
I don't think it's that weird, there not a lot of differences between people at the top or at the bottom.
It's the fact that they were idealized that makes this dip into their intimacy so strange.
But basically, those communications look a lot like ones that I would have with my own friends. And when I was a students, we were careful about spending 10 euros. Now, we have casual chats about buying a sauna for the garden, and if you think about it, it would sound crazy to someone making minimum wage.
If I had billions, I would talk as casually about huge amounts for actions with big consequences, because I'm still ...me. And I would still make jokes like "you have my sword" since we quote LOTR for fun, not because of social status. What? You thougth billionaires were taking all their texts seriously?
Also, calling people out for making mistake that cost you is kinda what everybody sane does. And apologizing to people when you made a mistake is not being submissive, it's being decent. Again, it reads like text I would send myself.
All in all, it seems pretty standard human behavior to me.
Now you may feel shocked that regular humans have so much power, but remember:
- a lot of luck is involved
- some skills like managing stress or being persistent may matter more than a lot others and those people may have much more than the average person
- this is by design in our system, the problem therefore is not that humans are humans, but that our system promote profiles that you don't think deserve it
- nevertheless, managing tesla or spacex is not something most people would succeed at, so there is probably some human traits those texts are not showing that make them capable of doing billions of dollars of operations
While it's fair to point out so many of the similarities between the people at the top and the bottom ... there are also differences. Notably, Musk is an outlier in many ways. The vast, vast majority of CEO's are highly conscientious at least in civil terms. They are 'restrained' if anything.
Again, even if they have some qualities that make them different in order to achieve big things, I would expect a Gauss curve to represent most traits distribution at the top like at the bottom. While most people show restrain, a few will be exhuberant, no matter the sample.
It's interesting that you start your post by demythifying these people only to close it by rebuilding the myth again. It's like we can't accept they are just like us posting on HN.
There is nothing mythical as having qualities that others don't have, and any context or system have a local maximum, which optimize for a certain kind of outcome.
My qualities would have me dead 200 years ago, but make me earn money and social status in 2022. It's not that I'm amazing, it's just the current context is very favorable to those qualities. So it's just a lot of luck, and being fit for certains things that happen to be advantagious in your environnement.
The myth is that the process is just and fair, according to some people moral standard. The universe doesn't care.
> not because of social status. What? You thougth billionaires were taking all their texts seriously?
And it’s mind blowing to me that money can’t buy a better iPhone, they all have to deal with fiddling with the cursor on HN, even princes in the Middle-East, no matter the height of the tower they’re at the top of, they use the same apps as us.
It's also incredibly lonely at times - despite being constantly surrounded by people - which I figure can warp your mind much like too much solitary confinement can. I don't say this from personal experience (un)fortunately, I say this as someone who has a family member that is a confidant of a billionaire from the middle-east (whom I'll refer to as Bob.) The family member is one of their close staff - travels with them everywhere and is in close proximity, daily - and possibly their most intimate friend as a result of this close proximity for the better part of 40 years, and the below.
In Bob's life he is surrounded by sycophants waiting for handouts, never wanting to be seen to annoy Bob nor lose his favour. Bob does not know who to trust. He has had those that he considered real friends and deeply trustworthy turn out to be thiefs and liars. A former school friend was secretly living in one of Bob's holiday homes _for years_, successfully evading detection by Bob by using his friendship to know where and when Bob will be. He was using his ties to Bob (and Bob's success) to gain favour in his own business and was using some of this money to bribe Bob's staff into silence. Apparently the friend went full "villain in disguise reveals his secret vendetta" when Bob asked if the friend needs help. Bob was heartbroken.
Maids, servers, and other staff are stealing things all the time - Bob maintains and reviews an inventory of stolen property with his security detail, with monthly targets... theft of his belongings is an ever present cost to Bob.
e
Bob's own family live an excessively sheltered life. His young children's best friends are their personal body guards - former military personnel that must be present around the clock as a stipulation of their kidknap/ransom insurance. This isn't a perceived threat, either. Bob's eldest son was abducted on at least one occassion, by a policeman no less.
Bob's life is managed for him. His staff manage his diet, his wardrobe(s), his social diary, of course his work engagenments take him all over the world often with little notice. He is never entirely certain where he will be and when. He is a slave to his diaries.
Bob spends the majority of his birthdays alone, on the phone to my family member, often crying about how lonely he is.
All that for money seems like a lot to sacrifice. There's also a fascinating effect that happens when the cost of things are literally of no consequence. Sentimentality is the only measure of value and material objects are just.. nothing but utilities.
Anyway, I would safely assume being a billionaire is not all doom and gloom, but it certainly has a different set of life-problems.
>Maids, servers, and other staff are stealing things all the time - Bob maintains and reviews an inventory of stolen property with his security detail, with monthly targets... theft of his belongings is an ever present cost to Bob.
I can solve this problem for Bob.
Live a more modest life and not have 10 homes with a million things in them. Maybe stick to first class flights, or even charter private flights when desired instead of owning a plane.
Yep. I'd say the solution is: Live a modest life, and don't advertise your wealth.
I doubt there is any law anywhere prohibiting a millionaire or billionaire from moving themselves and their families to a new place and living a middle class lifestyle under a new name.
Advertising one's wealth is a signal for "I seek validation" and "Please appreciate me"/"Be my friend because I am wealthy"
I doubt anyone is actually stopping Bob from quitting his job, moving to a new country, and living a quaint lifestyle.
Personally, I've up and moved and gone to live in a tent, just to see what it was like and essentially test myself and test the lifestyle of a vagabond.
It really showed me that, as a man, for the most part: you have no worth outside of what you provide for others. Men are expected to provide something for their community-- that is the basis of their social status: competencies (i.e. capable of productive things) and contributions.
It's not bobs wealth the want though. It's his connections. You can't just quit and move somewhere and expect your connections to be severed. Others will seek you out for your previous connections. Billionaires "know" you now. You have influence over them whether you like it or not.
For starters, the security issue won't go away by moving to a new place and living a middle class lifestyle under a new name, so they still would need to maintain that security staff which would make them obviously not middle class.
> For starters, the security issue won't go away by moving to a new place and living a middle class lifestyle under a new name, so they still would need to maintain that security staff which would make them obviously not middle class.
There are plenty of rich people who are completely unknown.
The inside of their house is a bit better decorated, and if they fly first class to a private resort, how are the neighbors going to know?
I dare say Bob has thought of this. But hey, it's easier to just armchair a complex problem away with a simple solution, than it is to acknowledge that complexity, amirite?
How is this a complex problem? Having to secure one’s assets is a problem to even non human species.
The thing that makes it simple is that all the things Bob has are purely unnecessary. So if Bob feels overburdened by the task of securing them, then the simple solution is to jettison them.
in other words, don't be a billionaire. However Bob has evidently decided to keep being a billionaire which means he has to maintain and review stolen property etc.
E: parent edited their post from "I wonder if Warren Buffet has any of these problems" in case anyone is wondering why this post looks out of place.
His wikipedia page documents how he and his family have disowned his granddaughter for revealing family secrets in an interview. So.. yeah, he probably does.
You can bet he has kidnapping insurance on his family, too.
Half these problems stem from massive income inequalities in society.
The president of the Netherlands famously bikes to work, vs the US president who travels around with a security detail at all times.
> His young children's best friends are their personal body guards - former military personnel that must be present around the clock as a stipulation of their kidknap/ransom insurance.
A problem stemming from income inequality. Organized crimes, such as kidnappings, start to occur in societies so unfair that being part of a crime syndicate seems like a good life choice for people.
If someone with 10 billion wants to feel safer, spend 9 billion improving the QoL in their chosen city. In an society of stark inequality, no amount of money can buy peace of mind, as you point out, money just buys physical security, and being protected from bad things happening is very different than not having to worry about bad things happening at all.
> Bob spends the majority of his birthdays alone, on the phone to my family member, often crying about how lonely he is.
I've had a few "wealthy", not rich, but 8 figure, friends and acquaintances. Perfectly normal house parties. The house is nicer, and the works of art on the wall are real, but nothing crazy. They also didn't flash their wealth around, very low key, nothing special until you opened the door and looked around carefully.
That said, I'm sure another couple 0's on the end of the bank account balance complicate things.
The increase of wealth and fame leads to an increase of isolation and decrease of safety and trust.
Beyond a certain point, as a “known wealthy person”, you will never know if a romantic partner cares about you or your wealth. Same for your friends. Relatives. Anybody.
You will not be able to do things you’ve taken for granted - like go to the pub or to a restaurant or on a hike or ride your bike on the bike path - without additional effort and people.
This level of fame paranoia is commonly talked about, but is also extremely hard to reach without actually trying and spending resources in regularly keeping your name in people's mouths. You can achieve a great level of wealth without anybody caring: see extremely wealthy families in most countries who 99% of people won't even recognize even if you show them a picture with their name under.
This phenomenon is extremely interesting. I other words, the billionaires we know of may be almost drama queens, who might (might!) have paid marketing agencies to capitalize on their personal name and image. They fell into the LinkedIn trap, which is certainly a side effect of having to climb the social ladder yourself. You could be Facebook’s anonymous CEO if you had attracted attention on the board’s characters instead of yourself, but you would have dissolved your power; Unless, of course, your family were already in the business and you had been able to rise collectively.
There's plenty of wealthy stealthy people around, who put a lot of effort into their business and not necessarily into themselves.
They'd fly right under the radar.
The following may not be a perfect example of the above, but just read up on the late Thomas Murphy and Daniel Burke ("Tom & Dan") of ABC. I find their no-nonsense no-bullshit down-to-earth frugal approach to business inspiring.
Excessive money brings lack of trust, the only way to solve this is give away the money - whittle it down to the 10s of millions and watch all the sycophants disappear.
Imagine the world’s tiniest violin playing a sad song for the billionaire who alienated himself from the world.
Someone living in one of his many houses when he’s not around! Scandalous!
How about have one house and live in it.
You can have money and not be an asshole about things.
Warren buffet was once targeted by an armed gunman. The gunman burst into buffet’s kitchen where buffet, his wife (I suppose she’s also buffet) and another man were eating lunch. Little did the gunman know, the other man turned out to be buffet’s hired security. The bodyguard being good at his job quickly disarmed and restrained the attacker.
Why were they sitting and eating together? Because even though buffet was the richest man in the world at the time he behaves like a normal person and if there’s a guy who’s always around you invite him to lunch.
I assure you, I need to know nothing more about the relationship to tell you that Warren Buffet trusts and respects this man. And the feeling is mutual.
In conclusion: I recommend that Bob climb down off the high horse he thinks his billions require him to ride and join the rest of us in normal life. Connection is all around you, you have only to reach back out for it.
As for sycophants, if you want people to be candid you have to give them a safe place to do it. Musk will soon learn that the people who criticized him were right and he shouldn’t have driven them away.
As for people wanting a handout. If your money is a burden to you there’s an obvious solution.
Evidently you missed the entirety of the post where I have said my family member is Bob's confidant and intimate friend. And the example of his close, childhood friend betraying his trust. And you just said it yourself.. a literal gunman broke into the kitchen of the Buffet's residence whilst they were eating lunch, but it's the wealthy individual's fault for not trusting enough!?
Did you get lost on the way to reddit, or something?
If you are a billionaire you can choose to become a boring old millionaire with $5m net worth, and not have those problems, so the additional benefits must be worthwhile.
Lord Acton's maxim is "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The dumbed down paraphrases lose most of the insight. It's a little masterpiece of the English language, and as you note, who or what exactly is being corrupted, absolutely or otherwise, is intentionally underspecified.
I don't intend to de-rail the convo, but this is an important one.
> improve inter-family relationships
It could, maybe, but it can also be a significant source of strife. It's tough spending all day, every day with someone. Because of that, you find that people are either looking for larger homes in order to have private work spaces or renting office space. Both of those shift the cost burden from the company to the individual.
> It's tough spending all day, every day with someone
You literally do this with coworkers in an office. Except, you didn't get to pick those people and you have to be even physically closer to them. The last office I worked in was an open floor plan and the guy three feet next to me typed so hard I thought he would break his keyboard. And he was on a rubber dome!! It was louder than the loudest mechanical keyboard. Before that I sat next to the sales department. They would talk loudly on the phone for 8 straight hours. One time my desk was next to the break room. You like hearing people talk all day long?
> in order to have private work spaces
With open floor plans the only privacy you get is when you put on your headphones. Anyone walking by still sees your screen and wearing headphones all day is not great for your health.
You are very right - I am very lucky to have a shed/office I can hide away in and get some great work done in. I'd say it is a far better and more comfortable space than any office I've worked in. But when I had to work at the kitchen table with my wife and family in other rooms in the house it was so much harder.
For those with room, especially if you have a good sized commute, remote working is great (I really really value being able to eat with my kids and hang out in the evening), but you are right that if you are two people in a small 1 bed flat, or a few people in a house share, or just a family in a standard family house, then yes remote working is not always going to be a bonus.
I can't imagine living in a home where every member doesn't have their own quiet/study/work space. I say this as someone who has lived most of his life in apartment buildings where that was a bit challenging, but definitely not impossible. I guess maybe if you are used to living your life outside of the house an just visit to eat and sleep you feel differently, but that's the beauty of WFH - you get to pick what best works for you.
Very much this, but I've been lucky and riden the house price increases well to end up in a largeish place - but even then if I didn't have a garden office it would be hard.
Two friends if mine move to the nearest city and got a small one bed as they both do a lot out of the flat - theatre, movies, bars, sports etc - so the house was really a place to sleep and shower, plus eat and relax a little.
Home working for them meant losing space in their kitchen/livingroom/dining room - and having one of them work from the bed room.
Inner city UK flats are often very small, and still relatively expensive.
This. FFS who wants to stay home to live and work!?!?
I don’t understand WFH.
the right way is to have better public transport and cheaper housing, not secluded lives.
I agree with you that better public transportation and cheaper housing would be a respectable path towards a better society in general.
However, please don't state that "the right way is to have... not secluded lives." Some of us absolutely enjoy the seclusion, especially this WFH Alaskan.
“You do enjoy it…just like alcoholics enjoy alcohol.” I mean, assuming I’m reading this correctly, seriously? Let people enjoy their choices, and without pulling questionable comparisons out of thin air. Especially when we aren’t given complete context, as with parent. Don’t take one sentence and then turn around and say, “doesn’t sound healthy”.
The entire zeitgeist is that people are more and more isolated and lack a support network.
We can put 2 and 2 together and figure out that physical isolation in environment where people live far apart from each other and drive everywhere is... isolating?
And by the way, there are studies that show that even for introverts, socialization (even forced!) is ultimately good.
We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of nowhere. We were born in caves filled with our tribesfolk, dozens and dozens of people living together in small spaces.
Also, who said anything about alcoholics? Alcohol is just bad for you. Anything except for very small amounts has a ton of bad side effects. It's just "grandfathered in" (just like tobacco) and seen as socially acceptable.
> We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of nowhere.
You seem to be implying that people's social lives revolve around work. A lot of us prefer to spend that effort on family, friends, and community during the other 72 hours of the week we are free instead.
I'm 43. Doing things with coworkers isn't even remotely appealing as it was 20 years ago, because at the end of the day they are coworkers and not friends (usually).
Who says remote work means you have to stay home all the time? Stay home to work and make sure you leave at least once, ideally two or three times a day!
In the morning for a walk or workout or coffee break.
At lunch just to breath some air.
At 5PM[1] sharp laptops closed to reconnect with some of your favorite humans, not necessarily the same ones you live with.
[1]: or whatever hard stop you craft for yourself.
Remember that "pandemic remote work" is not at all normal remote work. I have a social life outside of my coworkers. I can work from places that aren't my home office - a cafe, a coworking space, whatever - even if it's just a couple hours to get out of the house.
This. Even before the pandemic, when I had to waste two hours a day, every day, to go sit my butt in my employer's chair, all my "social life" was strictly with people other than my coworkers.
So being able to get those two hours back, even if not all of them but every other day, is a net gain for me. I can go for a walk, lift some weights, space out on the couch, whatever. It's also much easier to not always eat the same plastic lunch every day, or have to prepare things that are easy to reheat in a microwave.
If you compare the economic costs of public transport and “cheaper” housing to WFH’s requirement of an internet connection, it’s much more cost effective to work from home. Now we could say that face-to-face interaction outweighs these costs economically, but you’d need the data, and at least in terms of commuting you’ll never beat the ecological footprint of not going anywhere.
Because "home", for me, while I've been working remotely since 1994, has been Indiana, to Puerto Rico, to Budapest. I go when I want, do a little schedule juggling maybe. And now I live in the tropics in the jungle on a mountain coffee farm - the best place to spend a global pandemic - and I still have an income.
People aren't going to get better public transport or cheaper housing in the USA. I want to stay home and live and work. I've done it once before over a decade ago and doing it now as a result of the pandemic and I love it.
This only makes sense if you were born and raised in San Francisco, Seattle, Milan, London, Dublin, Munchen, Berlin, Amsterdam or some other big tech city.
In my current house, my commute would be 1 hour each way if I wasn't working from home. I'd be leaving early and getting home late. I'd have no time with my wife, son, pets. No time for housework/extra projects. I did this commute prior to having a kid and it worked then, but it wouldn't work now.
Is the term "improve relationships" even appropriate as a "goal" when children are involved? As a 12-17 year old, there was nothing more awesome than having the house to myself, no parents. Relationships were better, as lower contact hours means less harassment and less use of each other as an emotional punching bag.
However, contact hours are desirable for actual child rearing outcomes. Lingusitic development in the early years = has a huge impact on vocabulary development with college-educated parents and for older kids discipline... two brothers grew up being watched like a hawk by my mom. Two younger ones grew up as latchkey kids once she went back to work. Outcomes were quite different.
> Is the term "improve relationships" even appropriate as a "goal" when children are involved? … lower contact hours means less harassment and less use of each other as an emotional punching bag.
I’m really sorry this was your childhood. I can heavily relate, as I grew up feeling the same way.
Now, 20+ years and two adult children later, I can say that the best thing I ever did as a parent was make building and improving my relationship with my children my top goal and priority from day one.
They’ve never been my emotional punching bags, or my emotional support animals. I’ve always had my eye on where we are now—them being adults. This is the period I have been intentionally building toward since I was changing diapers.
It means I focused on treating and considering them as their own unique and independent people since before they knew it. My childhood modeled what I absolutely did not want to repeat with my children. This meant I was responsible for modeling how to truly listen, respect, and support their thoughts and decisions; for creating a safe environment; for explaining myself clearly when necessary so they could understand me as a person, without resorting to “because I’m the parent”; and, most importantly, for apologizing when I was the one in the wrong.
I’ve done a lot differently than I experienced growing up, and unless my sons are lying to me (which they don’t do), it’s made all the difference compared to the relationships they see among my parents and extended family.
For most of their childhood, I worked from home. I believe it is part of why I built such a good and healthy relationship that’s now the foundation of all three of us being adults—not least of all because when I screwed up, I could apologize and use all that time to improve the relationship by resolving my mistakes, modeling the respect and love they deserved, and building a better future.
Alternatively, because of the expectation that partners will not be around 24/7, people may have been selecting sub-optimal partners. If remote work becomes the norm your standards for a long term partner may become higher as you need to ensure you do not get tired of being around them.
Interesting point. Would it reduce the "individualism" present in the US? I've always found it interesting how much companies market individualism (specially fashion companies). More intense individualism also makes it harder to find another person who can be tolerated due to their individualism.
Exactly this is the reason, but I'll go even further and say that no corporation will advertise something "green" that might require actual effort on their part. The clear fact is that environmental impact is almost entirely the fault of corporations. Advertising for consumers to do anything to impact this is distracting them from the real issue: the corporations advertising to them.
It is for this reason that you will never find anything that makes sense advertised as green or efficient. Corporations are things that exist solely to exploit: nothing in their core impulses moves them to be kind or understanding. Anything that makes it seem otherwise must be regarded with suspicion.
In my experiencing greenwashing is just as likely to be used to shame normal consumer behavior into reducing costs for businesses (do you really want those plastic utensils with your takeout? Do you really need to use that much water in your hotel room? Do you really need fresh towels every day?) as it is to actually help the environment.
Most of the time corporations claim to be doing something in a carbon-neutral way it's because they are purchasing offsets where you just have to believe that they are actually computing the carbon costs appropriately and the offsets are "real" anyway.
At its core, "reduce" generally benefits both the environment and the bottom line. Additionally, many employees wish their company was more environmental, but cannot make their case unless it aligns with the business.
A slight rewording of your point highlights the opportunity: change happens when business and environmental needs align. This means, the people's best (only) play is to craft policies and institutions that align business incentives with environmental goals (e.g. emission cap 'n trade, grants, etc.). For example, a central repository of public holistic impact assessments could force PR teams to focus on real impact over trivial greenwashing campaigns.
While the national level gets the most focus, local/state governments can move move faster and serve as models for larger change.
This is it right here. There’s been an enormous amount of blame shifting onto consumers, who have almost nothing to do with environmental impacts, as if not using plastic straws could have any impact whatsoever. This is intentional on the part of government as it confuses voters into thinking the problem has been solved or is a moral failing.
Our leaders know full well that consumers and corporations have no power to act on this themselves. They will suck up any resources presented to them in the lowest energy configuration. Capitalism demands it. Regulation and governance is the only solution to tragedy of the commons. All else is noise being created by leaders who have been bought and paid for.
You only have to look at the relative scarcity of EV L2 chargers at Disney properties to see this first hand. How many Earth Day commercials have they run over the years? But a few bucks to support their own customers is too much?
> and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable areas)
Without other changes, this would not happen (in the US at least). The default would be every more cookie-cutter suburban sprawl, with the cul-de-sac-y construction of these neighborhoods creating a more labrynthian, difficult-to-walk place to live.
Until there is more mixed-use zoning in the US, with high enough density to justify frequent public transit arrival times, WFH would only save the car and infra wear-and-tear (and pollution level) from commuting, but it would not necessarily create a "third place" automatically.
I disagree, yes zoning changes could be needed, but the presence of more daytime workers at home in suburban areas creates new opportunities for restaurants, coffee shops, and other conveniences that cater to those workers.
I mean yes and. There's an entire industry of restaurants that cater to providing food to workers in business districts. They move to where the people are. I don't think suburban neighborhoods having hyperlocal businesses would ever be considered a bad thing.
The restaurants are there and successful because of the density, though. The falafel shop around the corner from three multi-storey office buildings can't afford to have a location in every suburb that formerly sent workers to the business district.
There's existing evidence for this: how many restaurants do you see in standalone office parks? A few perhaps, but nothing like what's downtown.
If you have a parking lot you don't have to have a location in every suburb. People will just drive over from neighboring suburbs when they want falafel.
This is also why you don't see restaurants by office parks - if you want to serve the business lunch crowd, it's better to be by something like a Costco with a big parking lot that's mostly empty on weekdays instead of an office park that's all parked-up at lunchtime. Even absent parking-lot efficiencies, it's probably just optimal to be equidistant from all the office parks instead of next to one.
That's the challenge you face, really - out in the suburbs most people would rather drive 12 minutes than walk 7. I think people just see walking as a way to be cold and struggle to carry heavy things, so fuck it.
So more small businesses by people living in the area would be encouraged (think small mom-and-pop shops) rather than multinational chain restaurants. It’s a good thing.
Modern "mixed use" visions are sterile garbage born out of a well to do upper middle class filter bubble. The kind of hubris it takes to make these people think they can have just the parts of the economy they like would make a soviet central planner blush. It's like thinking steak "just shows up" in a supermarket but for macroeconomics.
You will need all of those "unsightly" B2B businesses to underpin the restaurants, consumer retail, etc, etc, that you do want. And unless we invent teleportation the cost of distance is going to put a cap on how far the B2B businesses are from the customers they serve so they are going to need to be somewhat local too.
I'm okay with the current suburban model in many ways. For me it would make a difference is dedicated bike lanes. I walk for exercise my neighborhood and the labyrinth is a welcome pattern to reduce boredom.
Public transit will never work for me except under very rare circumstances. For what it's worth, I hate wasting my time traveling and cars are the only things fast enough make going anywhere vaguely tolerable. Amazon lets me avoid a lot of driving.
I get that you want to change things in the world but the only way to do it is not to say "it should be…" But find out what public office you need to hold, run the campaign, win the seat and then start trying to change from there. Then I can tell you from experience that you have to start local like planning board or zoning Board of appeals. Gain the trust of the people on the board listen to what people want. Once they feel heard they will hear you. If you go in guns blazing, everyone including potential allies will dig in their heels and say fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Yes I've served on municipal boards and I have been told FU. Learned my lesson and then had my ideas heard. I didn't live there long enough to affect change but I learned a lot about local politics
I don't want to discount that you're largely content with the the suburbs as they're built today - that's fine and there's nothing wrong with enjoying it. I do want to point out that from my point of view living in a really dense area, some of the reasoning is contradictory.
> I walk for exercise in my neighborhood
> Public transit will never work for me ... I hate wasting my time traveling and cars are the only things fast enough to make going anywhere vaguely tolerable
The suburban model doesn't allow people to live close to any of the places they go. I too dislike wasting my time traveling, but I don't have to: I can walk five or ten minutes to the grocery store, dentist, park, restaurants, etc. I end up walking a lot over the course of a week, and personally I also bike to further destinations (a lot more people would here too if there were protected bike lanes like you mentioned you want). My travel time _is_ my exercise time - no need to spend time on extra walks to accomplish that, and there's interesting things around me when I go from place to place. The subway or commuter rail can take me further away faster than a car when I need to go somewhere distant.
But I'm lucky I can afford to live in a part of Chicago that hasn't been totally disinvested in over the last half century, like a lot of the city has. The state didn't pave a highway through the middle of it like they did to other - mostly black and brown - parts of the city to convenience suburban drivers.
The suburban model that works just fine for you comes at a cost to society. We need to reckon with that and build more places where people aren't forced to drive for their day-to-day necessities and desires.
You assume that the places I go are close to where I could live. Work from home so no travel there, supermarket is a mile away but I can't bike there because the roads are shit and the only time I go is usually after hours before the store closes and biking the dark is even more dangerous. Everything else I go to in my life is not very often and at least a 20 minute drive away.
My walking is to get me away from urban noise and people. My recreation takes me to places like get away from urban noise and people.
I find your travel time report interesting. I believe it that for where you go, it works. But I did a test with places I would go to in the Chicago area and none of them accessible by public transit and are typically an hour to an hour and 1/2 drive away (state parks). I test travel time by Google maps and driving is almost always significantly faster.
Yes I am glad that parts of Chicago were spared the insanity of interstate highways into urban spaces. It makes no sense doing that. Interstates should bypass urban centers. Although we should probably look at history as to what might happen. I suggest looking at what happened to urban centers that lost the competition for rail lines back in the late 1800s.
Another interesting experiment would be to map out the impact of replacing highways with train lines and full switching yards etc. that carry the same load of passengers and freight in the same timeframe.
I agree with you that we do need to work out a way to minimize costs of human existence both suburban and urban. We also need to fully account for all the externalities for both living spaces. We also need to reckon with there are country mice and city mice. We have very different values and very different physical tolerances in our living space.
We also need to look beyond the dichotomy of driving or walking but instead consider neighborhood delivery services for food and other ordered goods. see: https://www.businessinsider.com/lifvs-grocery-store-sweden-u.... I found this article interesting because I got a chance to see firsthand urban and rural Sweden and Finland this summer. Both places have food deserts of a sort. I don't fully grok it yet but it looks like people are comfortable with having only one or two vendors for a given item in a small store with a relatively small selection. There didn't seem to be the same "obsession" we have with getting a better price.
You're correct, people generally aren't too bothered if there are only a couple of choices, either of shops (e.g. two supermarkets) or products (two types of cereal bar).
I wouldn't in any way call it a food desert though. All the normal food for the region is available, the rest is just luxuries.
(And to the general point, people owning cars but mostly using them for recreation would still be a huge reduction in traffic, noise and pollution. That's not unusual for European city-dwellers, who often own one car and use it once or twice a week.)
Aren't suburban neighborhoods actually bad for the environment though. Also the lack population density makes it hard to support the infrastructure costs for a large area with fewer people.
It's complicated, so yes because the reasons you state but in a world where significantly fewer people commute it becomes less of an issue and so it's a matter of changing the things we can change.
So yes, wouldn't it be great people lived in denser environments? Oh yeah, but that's not the choice we're making today. The choice we're making is given that lots of people live a 20-60 minute drive from their jobs would we rather they commute into work or work remotely?
The incentive for living in a dense environment is that you get to use common infrastructure for power, water, sewage, health care etc, rather than running your own septic tank and so on.
Even suburbia isn't dense enough to support those things
I’ve lived in both the city and suburbia and suburbia not only had those things, but those things were better in suburbia.
Now eventually you do get into that problem in rural areas or areas that can’t be densely inhabited (like the mountains), but there’s no fundamental reason people can’t live in five-bedroom mansions and have access to services.
septic tanks?? You're talking about rural America. Not suburbs. The only suburbs I've seen with septic tanks were in neighborhoods sitting below the main sewer line. Because shit can't run uphill. Power and water? Do you know a single suburb not connected to the power grid or doesn't have running water? Do you live in the 1800s?
I think the GP's implication is that maintaining these things at low density is unaffordable, although I haven't looked for any figures to see if there's any truth in this.
Fortunately with modern technology, you can run your own composting waste disposal, water from rainwater or aquifer, electricity via solar panels and batteries and the entire package is surprising affordable. That is to say cheaper than in urban 2000 square-foot condo.
That is an incentive for somebody else who likes to tell other people how to live. Not for me. I bought a house in suburbia. My basement is filled with home lab, workshop (wood and 3D printing), indoor garden (wintertime leafy greens and starters for the spring), my partner's art studio in place to store telescopes.
Our yard has rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, apple trees. We are re-wilding the lawn to help encourage local insects and birds. I am working on my neighbors to shield their outdoor lights so that nocturnal creatures aren't messed up as much by nighttime lighting.
I figured out once that for me to live comfortably with all of my hobbies/WFH, my partner and her son, I need approximately 2500 ft.² of living/working space. I have lived in shit-a-brick 1500 square-foot urban apartments and it means isolation, earplugs so I can't hear my neighbors, and high blood pressure. I dropped all my hobbies and did nothing but work because the urban space, was for me, the embodiment of depression.
Our neighborhood is dense enough for public infrastructure. Many rooftops around here have solar which is great for distributed power. Sadly my house is circa 1920 with the slate roof and there is no way on cover up that beautiful structure with solar panels.
There are ways to build suburbia they give people room to live where they live. You just need a different perspective.
I have come to terms with the fact that any form of human civilization is not sustainable. We take more then we return to the Gaia ecosystem. At best we can be in balance once human existence returned to a pre-technological, nasty, brutish, and short lifestyle.
Boomers are blamed because of younger generation ignorance. There is an almost a willful lack of understanding of historical events that boomers lived through that shaped their lives and their finances. Looking from a point of older age to younger generations, anyone with half a brain can see the stressors and forces making their lives difficult. Yet we also see the the same forces that shaped boomers doubling down on shaping you. While there are some bright spots of Gen Z pushing back on power structures and winning, those wins are skirmishes because those in power were caught by surprise. In the next conflict, history of social change over the past hundred and 20 years shows that the next conflict will not be won so easily.
From my perspective, the generational you need to take control of politics in your future and stop putting your hands over your eyes and saying you have no control. Get out there, run for office, learn how your constituents live in what's important to them.
Remember, if you do not get elected and take your seat at the table, you will be ignored and nothing will change in your favor. Don't count on others to fight your battles for you.
A dense environment also has a lot of daily destinations within walking distance. That's also very nice when one works from home— either working from home in my Brooklyn apartment, or working from home at my parents' house in a Midwestern streetcar suburb where restaurants/coffeeshops/grocery stores/parks/bars are also a pleasant walk away.
There is plenty of dense housing in prewar sections of Midwestern cities. Not as much as there used to be, unfortunately, but quite a bit, and available very affordably.
We need to learn that corporations care even less about the environment than they care about remote work. Invoking the environment to gain their support of remote work is just misunderstanding their priorities. The game is to make remote work attractive to them.
You think Elon Musk wants to hear your spiel about the environment? Or does he want you to get back into your office and work a 16 hour day?
If we want to get corporate america on the side of remote work, then we need to do it with dollars and cents. Not "indirect savings", not "improved morale", but concrete examples of how remote work is increasing their profit. (Even better, would be if it could increase their revenue as well. That would be a slam dunk.) We almost got there with the idea of lowering rent costs after the pandemic, but now it just seems that the idea of getting rid of office space in favor of remote work is getting a lot of push back. Maybe even backlash would be a better term.
>> Or does he want you to get back into your office and work a 16 hour day?
I'm OK with working 16 hour days on something that matters (obviously burn out needs to be kept in check - it can't be done forever). I realize that I might be "wired" differently than others as I care a bit less about work life balance and more about accomplishment (not proud of it). I see no reason why this can't be done at the beach house however. In fact, I'm convinced it would be better as commuting is a burnout accelerator.
Not sure how a 16 hour workday fits if you also need to sleep, shop, cook, clean, take care of the kids, keep in contact with your friends and family, and exercise.
I had a crunch delivery before we had kids, and it was hell. In the office by 9, leaving around 3 or even 4am. 'Luckily' the office paid for cabs and food and tried to make it as good as they good for us, but I didn't see friends, barely saw my wife and felt rotten at the weekends.
BUT, we delivered some amazing work, was well compensated, and otherwise rewarded by the company. Many of those who did the work are still there and still rate it as a place to be. It was a one off that we all swore off repeating, but I don't regret it or the work we delivered.
It's kind of depressing that greenwashing is so effective: see companies like ConocoPhillips getting stellar ESG ratings despite their business models.
Telecommuting could be absolutely massive for reduced emissions, could bring down urban house prices, improve inter-family relationships, and revitalized suburban neighborhoods (e.g. more walkable areas). Plus increase wealth to relatively poor rural areas.
Even some corporations are starting to realize that telecommuting isn't their enemy, but large ships move slowly, and recently we've been seeing a lot of "return to work" used as a way to conduct layoffs with lower negative PR/stock tanking. This isn't a byproduct but a goal of return-to-work (e.g. see Musk's text message conversation during Twitter-lawsuit discovery).