What a great illustration of the perversion of #capitalism: someone who owns two restaurants in downtown Minneapolis is asking Target to force thousands of employees to spend literal pieces of their lifespan every day (and polluting and adding to traffic and wearing down/depreciating their cars in the process) to #commute#returnToOffice#RTO so that their restaurant business model continues to be profitable.
The #remoteWork#flexibleWork revolution is likely unstoppable: thanks to three years of lockdowns, workers now know that rote commuting is a waste of time. Flexible and remote work allows more work-life balance and costs everyone less to produce the same output.
The forces against remote work are almost entirely #reactionary: a desire to return to the Old Ways, to Manage By Walking Around, to go back to the Old Business Models, to save Commercial Real Estate; in other words, to save old capital.
(Article title is clickbait, so I wont’t repeat it)
Just to be clear: workers who do #remoteWork#flexibleWork still spend money; they just spend it differently.
No one has a right to have their business model preserved. Just as coal miners have to move on when solar became cheaper than coal, small businesses who are dependent on workers commuting to a central office need to do something else, or go bankrupt. That’s how it works.
Interestingly, the remote work revolution highlights how broken US cities have become. The reason small business downtown suffer when workers don’t commute is because nobody lives near where they work. When commuting stops, downtowns turn into ghost towns.
Remote work shows that mixed-use, high density, walkable neighborhoods are once again the most resilient pattern for city-building, because people actually live there. They simply repurpose spaces to adapt to changing times.
I’ve always been suspicious of “won’t someone think of the small businesses” because it seems to be the commercial real estate landlords and their politicians saying it
@scottmatter To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy for small businesses. But when they start demanding literal pieces of daily human sacrifice so they can keep making money, that’s where I draw the line.
But yeah, “won’t someone think of the small business owners” is 99% astroturfing by giant real estate/developer companies.
@drahardja So how exactly are small businesses "demanding literal pieces of daily human sacrifice?" Mom and pop businesses aren't in any kind of position to demand anything.
@scottmatter oh thanks, got it. I didn’t see the top of the thread. My bad.
It’s referencing a story about Minneapolis. A quote from someone with two restaurants is being used to frame the article with a restaurateur point of view.
I don’t think that should be used to make this a small businesses doing antisocial things conversation. Most of the truly small ones have either already evolved or they’re moved on. Mom and pop shops are pretty close to living that way even in the best of times.
> To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy for small businesses. But when they start demanding literal pieces of daily human sacrifice so they can keep making money, that’s where I draw the line.
I am using their demand for commuting as a feature that distinguishes them from the usual small businesses. I’m not painting all small businesses with a broad brush; I’m doing the opposite.
@drahardja thanks for clarifying. It seemed like you were conflating cities being broken with small businesses making demands. I chalk it up to the challenges of writing on the fly with a character limit over you.
Cities (and self-absorbed CEOs) are going to do their darndest to get people to commute daily again, but I suspect it’s not going to work. The moment the market tips in favor of the employee, I think you will see #remoteWork#flexibleWork become a primary factor when employees choose their next job.
IMO the Commercial Real Estate apocalypse is inevitable, because there are enough employers (typically small to mid-sized companies) who do not have real estate investments, who will soak up workers when the fear of inflation lifts again. People will leave their jobs to reclaim their time. They will take a smaller salary and relocate to a more affordable city. Companies will eventually stop renewing their office leases because it’s cheaper to go remote.
City leaders can’t prevent CRE collapse by mandating commuting. Short of throwing bags of money (whose money?) at workers, all things being equal, people would prefer to have their lives back than commute.
@drahardja Meanwhile, many of San Francisco's neighborhoods are recovering nicely. Many of those work at home folks still live in the city, and many of them go to neighborhood restaurants and shops. City downtowns need to adapt to house more residents - more like European cities. To quote a famous author, "specialization is for insects".
Yes, transit is a public good that should be heavily subsidized. The more we can induce people to use transit instead of cars, the better off all of us will be.
@drahardja I’m hoping against hope that downtown San Francisco becomes vibrant through housing, with walkable neighborhoods and corner stores, restaurants, and shops of all kinds, not massive buildings that already emptied by 6pm in the best of times and now stand barely occupied most hours.
@JasonAnthonyGuy SF is such a weird place. Everything is crammed into 47 square miles, human density is through the roof at 17,000 people per square mile, but yet…people refuse to build dense, mixed-use neighborhoods, choosing instead between neighborhoods with only single-family homes, or business parks and malls. NIMBYs often refuse to build either of them, but somehow it’s easier for developers to build another office tower than multi-story housing.
@drahardja I recently moved into a detached SFH in SF, but after spending ten days in Shanghai recently, I’m missing the high rise/dense living/everything at your door lifestyle I had there and in New York.
I’d gladly move downtown into a highrise if they rethought Market street and surrounding areas.
@drahardja Wow. So much LOL at “Target: do your part” quote. Like, you’re asking a company to force hundreds of people into giving up their flexibility and work/life balance all to save their business.
So selfish and self-absorbed. Kudos to Target for not giving into that noise.
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