h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Why do we commute? - A688395
Author: Ancient - U116014

Commuting takes up years of our lives so it is worth understanding. However, the conclusions drawn are indeed a little odd, but seem to hold together.

You pose an important economic and social question that has been an ongoing cause of much debate in the wider national sense as well as in Parliament and the major conurbations for a number of years. It is of concern to employers and employees alike. London and its Mayor think they have found the answer. In the long term they have not. They have forced many to the Underground and main railways. These will eventually 'clog up' again.
You are correct in suggesting that the answer is in 'remote working'. We have already had the start of the 'revolution' into online working from home, but on a minuscule scale that inadequately addresses the problem.
The only possible answer is for the greater majority of (any) city's office based operations to be scaled right down to those key managers and executives that need to be 'on site'. Only Government assistance in the form of grants and/or allowances to those individual firms in the city that are prepared to go down that particular road, by cutting their on site staffing by, say, 2/3rds or 3/4 of their present office desks, can bring about such a common sense answer.Many such firms, where this is possible with a little effort, planning, and managerial 'will',and which would, if adopted, alleviate much of the problem are: Insurance, banking, commercial firms, publishing firms, news agencies, shipping offices and the like, could feasibly work their commercial operations via computer from semi-rural locations. It is possible to monitor these employees on line to assess their performance and efficiency of shifting an adequate economic work load. People with physical or other problems should certainly not have to travel to work amongst 'pushy' and selfish commuters, which I am afraid means most of them! They would never get on the tube!

This is a good entry for PR, but requires the author to edit it for a number of spelling errors, misuse of certain words, and the odd grammatical mistake. We ALL make them; probably there are some in this reply, but they need to be addressed. This will enhance your argument and strengthen its conviction.

I don't think this is suitable for Peer Review which is for factual entries.

This would do better in The Forum or Ask H2G2.

And a lot of employers are deciding the answer is move the work to India where you can employ people for peanuts, and let another country worry about the transport problem.

Raising public transport costs in an effort to force more people to work from home is an extreme solution, so we'd like to see some more comments on what else would be needed to encourage remote working, as this is generally the choice of the company itself, rather than the employees. Will big businesses really care that their employees travel costs have gone up? Will they pay higher wages to compensate? What happens to all the local businesses that serve the incoming workforce? These are all issues that remote working raise.

Is this entry really about why we commute? Or is it about why we *shouldn't* commute? Some potential solutions on the end of the entry would really help.

Thanks for your feedback; whilst I think remote working is a good solution, I was really just looking at the issue of why we commute.

Why do we spend hours on trains? I know someone who travels from Bath to London. We commute to get to work, but why so far, and why are so many companies in such a small area. An economist, Hotelling, had some interesting theories in this area. Generally his theory was based around the consumer. I was looking at this from the supply side. One of the supply factors being the labour market. If you subsidies public transport then you cause an increase in this supply, and hence have an effect on economy in an area. I can see from the feed back that I’m not getting this across.

When I get a little more time I’ll have another go.

You are out of date Ancient. If you read Anatole Kaletsky, a political columnist at The Times, you would now be aware that we all look at the economy and its problems from the perspective of demand. In both the USA and UK the government policies are judged and controlled by the use of economic measures that work through a demand economy. Industry has modified itself since the Thatcher era into what Kaletsky calls 'Demand Management platform companies'. These are now spread worldwide. By these methods both Britain and the US have 'exported' the 'boom and bust' cycles in their economies to the economies of Asia, Korea and China and the third world generally. You need to look from a demand perspective in relation to your question. Britain is now the third richest economy on the basis of these Demand Economy measures.
It is a very interdependent 'market' in any city. People live outside, say, London because they prefer to live in pleasant green surroundings, and in any case, the properties in the city and its environs are prohibitively expensive. Many need to travel into London because the jobs are there and not where they choose to live. Anyone who has a real solution to these seemingly intractable questions stands to make a fortune. As I said in my previous posting, with telephones, computers, faxes, and home working the problem may be much less acute, if it isn't eliminated. That is the only way forward at present.

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Economics is an interesting subject where one persons demand is another’s supply. I like some of Anatole Kaletsky writings, but I do not accept your polarisation of his views. I do not think he would agree with you interpretation that every thing *should* be viewed from “perspective of demand”. Economics has always and will always be about the marginal balance between supply and demand. The study of this equilibrium, or indeed lack of it, pretty much defines that basic economic problem.

I notice that you have an interest in remote working, but this is a possible solution to a problem – to a problem that does not exist, because millions of people do commute, and do it every day. Perhaps as technology improves one day the question will simply go away. The answer to the question of why we commute isn’t because XYZ has not happened, but rather something is occurring that is forcing the market out of equilibrium.

I have made a number of assumptions; firstly the market is out of equilibrium, secondly that even given the tendency for over growth, due to external economies, there is still probably a skewed market. I proposed that this is caused by public transport being forced to keep the price artificially low. It also stops new methods of transports. As proof I offered the fact that unsubsidised river ferries find it difficult to compete.

I do accept that I haven’t made this clear, as all the replies seem to want a solution, rather than just looking at the question – which is probably quite fitting for H2G2. One day I’ll have another crack at it.

What's the status of this one? Ancient, you still around?

The post above is the Author's last post.

HELL

I am still around just a bit busy at work at the moment.

Extremely busy, clearly. Fleamarket, anyone?

I'd say back to entry. If anyone's going to write an entry about commuting I doubt that they'd be able to use much of this one, and the purpose of the FM is for people to finish off entries that have potential.

Well, there's not much commuting done in Devon

I'll second back to entry then, and add it