Those of who are not young will remember, in the 1980s and 1990s, how American workers were told that their job losses, especially in manufacturing, were due to technological changes and that these workers therefore needed to Embrace Technological Change for the Good of the Economy. Just suck it up and take it like champions workers!

Oddly enough, embracing technological change never seems to be applied to landlords or CEOs, who continue to insist on dragging employees back to the office full-time (or nearly full time). Yes, landlords are getting hammered because workers are staying home more often, resulting in even more office vacancies (I write “even more” because this is a problem that, in many places, goes back at least a decade, and was only exacerbated by the pandemic). But landlords need to Embrace Change and take the economic loss: that’s just how things work out. Maybe a jobs training program for landlords would help?

Likewise, CEOs need to understand there is an opportunity here, if they would only Embrace Technological Change: they would need less office space, which saves money. Of course, they would have fewer face to face meetings, which are integral parts of their jobs (regardless of whether all those meetings actually do anything useful). Also, they would have fewer opportunities to harass their younger HAWTER employees, sexually or otherwise. But we all must make sacrifices, amirite?

In all seriousness, we have the technology to work mostly* remote, and smart CEOs will figure this out, while the dumb ones will fail. As to the welfare of the rentier capitalists, well, they’re fucking rentier capitalists, so who fucking cares. Besides, the (business) rents are too damn high**, anyway.

Embrace Technological Change!

*I think totally remote can be bad, but mostly remote is likely optimal for the majority of desk workers.

**Of course, this also leads to inflated property tax revenues for local governments, which is largely what all the fuss is about, the bullshit about ‘idea bubblers’ notwithstanding.