
Billionaires Want People Back to Work. Employees Aren’t So Sure - aaronbrethorst
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-25/billionaires-want-people-back-to-work-workers-aren-t-so-sure
======
cushychicken
What if, at the tail end of all this, a bunch of people find that they've
tried remote work and decided: "Hey - this fucking _rules!_ " In part because
they've realized that they can complete their core work duties in less time,
with less distractions, and zero commuting.

Maybe - _just maybe_ \- this could be the unplug that helps people prioritize
the things that they enjoy over their work.

I recognize that's a viewpoint that represents immense privilege. I'm in a job
where I'm capable of working remotely. But it'd be a neat thing for people
like me to be able to leverage.

~~~
JshWright
I think it's likely the exact opposite will happen. People are being thrown
into seriously sub-optimal remote working experiences, and their productivity
is likely to suffer for it. This will result in companies being less likely to
consider remote working a viable path.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Forced working from home while during a pandemic. It's nothing like working
from home under more normal circumstances.

~~~
freeqaz
If productivity turns out to be similar (or better) despite this handicap, I'd
be genuinely curious to see how companies respond!

I'm personally very pro-remote (have worked remote at corporate gigs before)
and it'd be great to see more companies adopting it. There are some seriously
big benefits and, if the tooling keeps improving, I think it could be a real
competitive advantage for companies.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If productivity turns out to be similar (or better) despite this handicap,
> I 'd be genuinely curious to see how companies respond!_

It won't. That's the problem. Being forced to do WFH unprepaerd + kids
suddenly home + being in an actual pandemic, worried about the future, your
family and yourself = productivity disaster. And it unfortunately will end up
emotionally associated with WFH.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Also, I suspect many companies are going to see reduced turnover, and as a
result are likely to shy away from anything that _may_ have contributed,
including WFH.

------
317070
I'm using my quarantine time to read Piketty's "Capital in the 21st century".
I'm actually pretty sure I'm _not_ going back to work if it risks my health.

And it is obvious that the rentiers of our economy want the non-rentiers to go
back to work. The rentiers actually have little to lose. The article states
they might get sick, but if we're being realistic, they are very well
sheltered against the collapse of the healthcare system when they would,
unlike the rest of us.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Appropriate disaster reading :-). Others have pointed out how the black plague
killed off a lot of serfs and really put a dent in feudalism because of it. It
is all well and good to own a thousand hectares of land but without the serfs
to work it, its just a nice park to go walking in.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Trouble is, that nowadays the serfs are in China. In the Middle Ages, servants
would flee a lord that was too harsh. The Church and the towns with their
rising merchant class would be another way out.

Instead we have healthcare tied to the job and the tech hiring cartel. Where
is the revolution?

~~~
ChuckMcM
I see a number of serfs driving around my town partaking in the "gig" economy.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Moving from Deliveroo to Uber isn't an improvement, is it? You'll get shafted
either way, but you can choose the colour of the shaft!

------
vvanders
Usually they don't say the quiet part out loud, and yet here we are.

We're incredibly fortunate in tech that we can do a large portion of work
remotely, many people aren't so lucky. One would think that we'd value life
above profit but lately that doesn't appear to be the case.

~~~
nostromo
You’re lucky today. Tomorrow isn’t so clear.

Ad spends are dropping and dropping fast. Amazon is a retailer. Apple sells
luxury goods. Cloud and Microsoft are dependent on big spends from enterprise.

All of this is at risk. Tech isn’t independent of the Main Street economy.

~~~
chickenpotpie
Nothing is independent from the economy, but somethings are less elastic.
Apple might also be doing better than others right now because they have a
ridiculously large cash reserve and can probably wait this out.

------
munk-a
As soon as the CEOs and Board Members are willing to shake the hand of
everyone coming back into the building we can resume work.

The rich aren't going to be exposed to risks like the working folk whether
they're at the office or not due to their normal distancing.

------
praptak
"For the rich it's like the trolley problem but the most important thing is
saving the trolley."

~~~
thedance
Not even the trolley, just the shareholders of the trolley company (and not
even all of them, just the preferred class).

------
twitch-chat
There's a reason I like Mark Cuban. I'm glad he spoke against this insanity.
For a billionaire, he's always taken great care of his players.

~~~
cortesoft
Except for the whole sexual harassment scandal a couple of years ago...

------
H8crilA
Elon Musk wanted employees to stay in the factory, working, while he himself
ran into hiding. He doesn't want to be stopped, even if it means people will
die on the way:

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4333698-tesla-elon-musk-
win...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4333698-tesla-elon-musk-wins-again)

------
huangc10
Risk vs. Reward. It's truly sad for those who can't work remotely and have to
soon choose between risking their lives (or family members for that matter)
vs. getting paid. Now that the stimulus is to be passed soon, I also wonder
how many people would voluntarily quit and just file for unemployment. So many
uncertainties ahead...

~~~
messick
Since you can’t get unemployment after voluntarily quitting, the answer to
that question is exactly zero.

~~~
huangc10
Health and safety reasons is one reason you can quit and still get
unemployment. I think Coronavirus falls into this category but I might be
wrong.

------
lend000
There are a lot of factors at play here, and it's highly unlikely anyone has
enough information to know the exact optimum response.

From a pure health perspective, physical isolation is taxing both physically
and mentally. Not everyone has a home gym; is 6 months of sedentary behavior
going to cause more cardiovascular complications than coronavirus in the same
at-risk groups?

Economics also has health and well-being effects for the many people.

When we flatten the curve, we extend the length of sedentary behavior but
reduce the number of people turned away from the hospital. However, as a
previous article [0] describes, if we end up turning 90% of people away
anyway, because the virus is just too contagious to control, will sedentary
people have weakened immune systems or encounter other complications at a rate
that challenges the benefit?

As another person who doesn't really know: if I were the feds, I would be
using this time to mass manufacture masks and testing for every single
American to wear daily, and once those were produced and delivered, reactivate
significant parts of the economy, with voluntary precautions.

The mask culture in Japan may be contributing to the slower spread. It will go
down as a great gaffe all the people who shamed others from not wearing masks
in the western world.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598009)

~~~
heavyset_go
> _is 6 months of sedentary behavior going to cause more cardiovascular
> complications than coronavirus in the same at-risk groups?_

Every shelter in place order allows people to leave their homes to exercise,
and there are plenty of exercises you can do indoors.

------
apl002
Only the fortunate who have nest eggs saved up can say 'I'm not sure I'm ready
to go back yet.' They quoted 1 server like he speaks for everyone.

tell that to the people who have families and been furloughed for 2 months or
more. Here in Vegas I dont know one person who doesnt want work to start
tomorrow.

this article reeks of so much privilege its insane. The billionaires will
still be billionaires if nothing happened for over a year.

The rest of us without the opportunity to have nest eggs will be in poverty.

------
qwerty456127
Although I don't care much about billionaires (I care about the thousands of
people they employ though), I'm pretty concerned about small businesses. Many
local non-network non-franchise businesses go bankrupt these days.

------
fallingfrog
Maybe this will be the moment when we realize that we actually don’t need
billionaires or the whole rentier class at all? That we could all be working
half the hours for the same standard of living without them? That we are
effectively just serfs toiling at their pleasure?

------
benbenolson
Seems like a pretty straightforward reason: billionaires have lots of people
working under them, and they understandably want those people to work again
for financial reasons. Definitely not a good idea to go back to work now,
though; hopefully this quarantine brings people (socially, emotionally, not
physically) together, and hopefully it lasts as long as is necessary.

------
AgentOrange1234
Wow, back button hijacked for an ad. Haven’t seen that in awhile. What an
annoying site.

------
pengaru
No shit, it's not like we have no slave-owners today for lack of want, either.

~~~
scotty79
Own and rent are two side of the same coin.

We have no slaves today because renting turned out to be cheaper than owning
with advancement of infrastructure and technology.

We still use convicts as slaves. It's worth it only if someone else (in case
of convicts, the government) covers the cost of ownership.

~~~
pengaru
> We have no slaves today because renting turned out to be cheaper than owning
> with advancement of infrastructure and technology.

Nonsense, I have an embarrassing number of acquaintances who've admitted to
wanting slaves and that they'd have them if it weren't illegal.

It's important to keep in mind that there's no shortage of people who'd be
slave owners if only it were legal.

What you see in the prison system is a modern variant but only accessible to
very few. Conventional slavery was damn near ubiquitous, accessible to many.

We have no slaves because it's illegal.

~~~
viklove
> Conventional slavery was damn near ubiquitous, accessible to many.

[citation needed]

~~~
pengaru
For starters, in the early 1700s over 40% of NYC households enslaved people,
not even in the south.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Colonial_America)

~~~
viklove
I don't know how true that is, considering the link used as a citation for the
claim is dead:
[https://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/slavery_in_new_york](https://www.thenation.com/doc/20051107/slavery_in_new_york)

My biggest question is how a "household" is defined. Does it only count
landowners? Landowners are significantly wealthier than the average citizen,
so of course they would be able to afford more than most.

Also, are you aware that the population of NYC was under 10,000 until 1710? So
even according to that stat, 4,000 people in one of the wealthiest cities in
the country owned slaves. It doesn't seem like evidence that conclusively
proves your point.

Got any other sources?

~~~
pengaru
Frankly I find this subject far too depressing to read about for your needs.

I'm sure you're perfectly capable of google searches and reading about the
history of slavery on your own if you're so interested.

We were taught this in school, that it was a very common practice with little
to no barrier to entry in the early days, and wasn't even racially
discriminated until rebellions started. There are even well-documented records
of freed slaves becoming slave owners themselves, it was that trivially
accessible and generally accepted.

My point was that slavery was accessible to _many_ , contextually in contrast
to prisons today, context your quote omitted. Slaves you'd acquire in units as
small as an indentured servant, prisons are far more complex with substantial
barriers to entry. In an environment of legalized slavery any household could
easily get in on it, I can't even begin to imagine how I'd go about starting a
prison yet it's presumably legal for me to try.

~~~
viklove
> Frankly I find this subject far too depressing to read about for your needs.

That's what you're going with? So what evidence are you basing your belief of
of? Sounds like it's just a feeling.

------
claudeganon
And...flagged off the front page with amazing speed! Nothing to see here!

------
a3n
How can a billionaire stay rich if we don't go back to work?

Money doesn't grow on trees. It comes from our bodies.

~~~
asdff
They can just exist and not do anything. I can't imagine most billionaires
burn rate for daily expenses like food and essentials are beyond like 50k a
year, if that.

Proportionally to me, that would be like if I withdrew a dollar from my bank
account and lit it on fire once a year to cover all my necessities.

------
cat199
have heard these sorts of statements privately, but not publicly yet -
interesting that we're now hearing them from US elites just as the US _starts_
to seriously shutdown - makes me curious if other elites making the same sorts
of statments in other countries

~~~
acqq
From what I understand by trying to "read the signs between the lines" (which
means it can be somewhat off) one of the reasons Germany is reporting much
less deaths is some attitude there that only those who didn't have other
illnesses and died now are to be reported as Covid-19 deaths (there is even
some critique of Italy for reporting their immense surge of deaths as due to
Covid-19!).

Of course, the number of deaths that they can't report so will nevertheless go
up there too, but they will claim that they are so superior compared to those
Europeans southern from them, and they could propaganda their own population
that "it's not so dangerous" (by misreporting those with "other illnesses"
like hypertension etc) to go back to work as their country and health
infrastructure is so superior.

The German main advantage is most of their cities being relatively small, so
everything is "spread" more than in many countries, less chance for news like
in Spain or Italy where the army had to carry corpses because there are too
many. It will be more "a few here" and "a few there" etc.

I can't quote you some specific news, except some articles in French writing
about German view, that I remember reading recently (but haven't saved the
links) but at least, as one additional example, if I understood correctly,
something I've got delivered from somebody I know, there's some German doctor
for which is claimed that he is "epidemiologist" who gets more media presence
just recently, claiming that "it's not worse than flu" and that the number of
deaths in Italy and Spain is only "because they have bad hygiene." Of course
he ignores the fact that there was already a peak of flu season in Italy
around two months before, and that now there are there 50 _times_ more deaths
per week than then, and hygiene certainly didn't get worse 50 times in so
short time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F_ENG.png)

So stay tuned, if I get more info, and there's some possibility to comment, I
will... Or maybe some other person who reads the European news more carefully
(best more than one language) will be able to write more. But as this whole
topic is already flagged here, don't expect too much here.

------
a3n
I don't understand why this is flagged. I've been thinking about this conflict
since Trump said Easter.

~~~
munk-a
I'm disappointed in this flagging - there are very vocal calls from some
politicians and business folk to "get folks back to work". If we could flag
and mute those politicians for spreading dangerous misinformation using
unsupported claims that'd be great, but their words are out there and could
drastically effect all of our well being.

~~~
thedance
This site is the mouthpiece of billionaire VCs who owe their wealth to lots of
people buying into their system.

------
rahidz
>“The more people are infected, the more likely it is that Blankfein and other
billionaires will become infected as well.”

May be true, but at the same time

>Billionaires and other members of the elite have the luxury of social
distancing while making money.

~~~
ASalazarMX
Some of them also have dedicated medical facilities.

------
asdfman123
Okay, so if we let the infection rip, what's their plan to deal with the
massive wave of people suffocating on their own phlegm? Dig a trench?

~~~
TheBlight
I know this won't be a popular take but I haven't seen any compelling data to
indicate what we're dealing with is any more deadly than a cold. No one has
any idea how many people have been infected by this virus. It is assuredly
many many more than current tests have revealed as the only people being
tested are healthcare workers and at-risk individuals. I wouldn't be surprised
if over a million people in the U.S. have already had it, possibly many more.
That would imply a "massive wave" of people in need of intensive care isn't
coming. No more than come about during an ordinary wave of other
coronaviruses.

~~~
yborg
So the dead piling up in Spain and Italy are apparently not compelling enough?
I can't recall a common cold overwhelming medical facilities and emptying
nursing homes like this. The thing that seems to elude the "it's just a cold"
school of thought is that this is a cold for which there exists zero
population immunity, unlike the existing coronavirus strains or even the flu.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Zero population immunity" especially includes medical staff. I don't recall
any cold season throughout which a country would be losing its doctors and
nurses.

------
Arwill
The reason why the Spanish flu hit so hard in 1918 is that countries were not
willing to quarantine people in fear that it would hurt their wartime
economies.

------
unnouinceput
Then those billionaires should pour some of their billions into research to
find a cure. Even one that is not perfect, like the one we have for HIV/AIDS
currently, should do the trick. A HIV positive going treatment still has the
virus but the plethora of drugs it takes daily stops AIDS from developing.
Just ask Magic Johnson, he's doing it for almost 3 decades now.

------
magma17
Some of us look after our employees.

~~~
munk-a
Yea, I mean a lot of businesses are terrible, but there are good cases as
well, including all those businesses that budgeted and paid for equipment to
allow their employees to remote once this became a clear issue in early March.

------
objektif
“No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to
take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all
America loves for your children and grandchildren?’” Patrick said. “If that’s
the exchange, I’m all in.”

This is from Dan Patrick, Texas Lt Gov. who doesn't want to sacrifice their
lives for S&P 500?

~~~
altoidaltoid
one way to fix the Social Security funding shortfalls...

------
kvee
This is a generally unpopular opinion, and I don't know that I agree with it,
but it does appear that the billionaires might be logically right from an
ethical perspective.

It might cost more QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to have an economic
recession the size of 2008 than to have millions die from COVID-19:
[https://medium.com/@benfinn/coronavirus-how-much-is-a-
life-w...](https://medium.com/@benfinn/coronavirus-how-much-is-a-life-
worth-854570873153)

~~~
cultus
You are making the very false assumption that we have a choice between deaths
and economic collapse. Like it or not, we are seeing faster growth rates than
Spain. With our awful response, we could be easily heading for 2+ million
deaths if hospitals get overloaded as expected. Workers will not show up
anyway because it is dangerous for them and their families (this is already
happening). This will cause the economy to collapse at least as bad.

Sacrificing grandma to Mammon is not the answer.

~~~
cbsmith
It cuts both ways though. Mortality rates from unemployment are no joke.

~~~
cultus
That's so plainly a much, much smaller cause of death. I'd encourage you to
examine evidence more in the future. Besides, mortality rates actually tend to
decline during recessions. While the causes of this are still debated, it has
been observed for a century [0].

Besides, as I was saying, we don't have a choice between deaths and collapse.
You get collapse and fewer deaths or collapse and more deaths. We are choosing
the former.

[0] [https://fortune.com/2019/01/25/economic-downturn-
mortality-r...](https://fortune.com/2019/01/25/economic-downturn-mortality-
rates/)

------
airstrike
> Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks, wants Americans to listen to
> epidemiologists instead. “Ignore anything someone like me might say,” Cuban
> wrote in an email. “Lives are at stake.”

</thread>

------
jerry1979
That's funny. Individually we don't have a lot of power, but when we work
together we have lots of power. If only we had some mechanism to bargain
collectively for our interests.

------
oulu2006
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone.

Billionaires are billionaires because of the extreme disproportionate gains by
the few at the expense of thousands/millions.

They're used to seeing the many slave away for their interests.

Not seeing that happening now is throwing their view of proper world order
into chaos and they're not used to be back in a position without control.

~~~
WalterBright
Any person or group in the US can start a worker cooperative and run it as
they see fit.

~~~
scotty79
Are they competitive if they don't exploit their workers like companies do?

~~~
WalterBright
The idea is to pay the workers out of the profits that would otherwise go to
the business owner. This doesn't increase the cost structure of the operation.

There's nothing non-capitalist or non-free-market about a worker collective.
There are no laws against it. Nobody will try to stop you. You don't need a
change in the government.

What are you waiting for?

~~~
scotty79
Company owner can always ditch burnt out workers which is efficient for the
company. I'm assuming it's not that easy in workers collective?

~~~
WalterBright
The workers can run the collective as they please.

~~~
scotty79
No they can't because they have their individual self-preservation instincts
that they can't disregard. Company owner can do that with ease.

------
unexaminedlife
I'm a little sad that I'm pointing this out but Trump is maybe the only
politician in the entire US with big enough balls to stand up to billionaires
(and really mean it) in this sort of situation if he wanted to.

------
jrobn
Maybe this virus will kill enough baby boomers to balance the social security
solvency and transfer wealth up a few generations.

I’d you don’t agree with me, than what makes what I said any different than
the Topic of this thread.

