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Why Aren’t We All Telecommuting?

-Andrew Grossman

May 8, 2009

Various solutions have been offered to lower the amount of CO2 that is spewed into

the atmosphere by the American automobile. Since the majority of automobile miles are logged

in commuting to and from work, most of these solutions pertain to rush hour traffic. Here is a

compendium of proposals, from smallest economic shift to biggest economic shift:

1. Incentivize and/or force all drivers to buy high mph cars.

1. 2. Divert financing from road maintenance to public transportation. Build more

subway and bus lines and then incentivize and/or force commuters to use them.

3. Incentivize and/or force commuters to abandon their suburban homes and move

to the city where they work. (This assumes that places of employment will

continue to locate themselves in cities, despite escalating tax rates.) Then, since

this mass relocation to cities would cause apartment rents to skyrocket, relocate

the urban poor to the abandoned suburban homes.

4. Incentivize and/or force commuters to abandon their suburban homes and move to

city. Then, since suburban homes are inherently energy inefficient, bulldoze them. Have

all the population live within the confines of a small number of mega-metropolises which

can be easily serviced by mass transportation.

5. Return to a subsistence farming agrarian economy. Outlaw the internal combustion engine.

Outlaw imported or exported products. Incentivize and/or force people to go back to

growing their own food, making their own clothes and learning how to entertain themselves

without electronics.

What if we just use the internet and stay at home? The internet and individual company intranets have

the following capabilities: communication pathways (these can be used for every possible business

communication: consumer outreach for market research, business to business, in-house business

communication, product launch promotions, webinars, business meetings, etc); unlimited and secure

document storage; employee productivity monitoring. Which one of the reasons for employees to get

together under one roof are not handled just as well from remote home locations? Even standing around

the water cooler talking about last night's game came be handled in a virtual fashion.

It is not just individuals, but also countries, that are becoming more and more specialized in a global

economy. The manufacturing sector in the United States is not in danger of completely being exported, but

it has been diminished. The suburban to downtown commuter traffic is largely made up of white collar

workers. As we apply the existing capabilities of online networks to structuring telecommuting jobs, we

will quickly see that the answer to lowering CO2 emissions, not to mention lowering blood pressure for

workers who inch along in traffic for four hours a day, is sitting right at home.

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