The Right Should Embrace Remote Work
This up-for-grabs block of voters is a natural fit for the right
Remote work is deeply popular among a number of professionals. Many businesses have tried to force “return to office” on their employees, and these attempts have not gone over well.
Tactically, there’s a massive voting block up for grabs. Find any article about companies pushing a ‘return to office’ policy, and check the comments. There’s real feeling there. Yet no party has said they will promote remote work. Why is that?
Clearly, left wing politicians are not at all interested in empowering people to do anything that would give them the ability to say no to their elders and betters. Democrats are the party of mask mandates, DEI training, and other policies at work that have nothing to do with getting the actual job done. Freedom means cutting off your child’s genitals or killing your baby, or having other people validate your delusions. Anything else just might be fascist. Mandating employees do their work in specific places is right in line with the typical left-wing way of thinking: because people are programmable robots, they can just be told how to operate. The idea that individuals autonomously choosing their own path produces better group outcomes than control by a group of experts is a form of racism.
On top of all this, Democratic politicians are the party of big cities, which would stand to lose significantly if remote work became normalized, rather than being a temporary bonus of the COVID era.
Donald Trump promising an end to payroll taxes for remote employees could easily secure him enough votes to put the election beyond the margin of fraud.
But is this merely a tactical plan divorced from the core values of the right? Doesn’t the right also oppose the kind of policy choices that do social engineering? Wouldn’t a policy of, say, eliminating payroll taxes for remote employees be exerting a heavy hand on the market? Indeed, some right wing leaders like Elon Musk have come out strongly against remote work. This is a massive strategic mistake.
An increase in the norm of remote white collar work is a natural cause for the right, because it fits better with our vision of the how the future ought to be.
The right should offer a vision of the future which is consistent with all of human history: Strong, healthy individuals, loyal to ancient and storied families, living in richly connected communities, oriented in stable yet dynamic networks of trade, where that trade is ultimately subservient to thriving families and communities - not in charge of them.
Remote work makes this vision much more possible than it is today!
If we, as a species, are still learning how to live with industrial society, the premise of ‘most white collar workers work from anywhere’ is essential to retaining ties to the past, which are necessarily familial and geographically specific.
Remote Work is Better for Families
Remote work is eugenic.
Remote work allows stay-at-home mothers to have more children in a larger house, because the commute stops being an issue. Remote work also allows highly successful white collar men to father large families. Try having more than a few kids in eastern Megalopolis or the Bay Area California. It’s not doable.
Do you want to make being a stay-at-home mom glamorous? Make sure it comes with a nice house, plenty of space for the kids, and the ability to volunteer at school, maybe even earn a decent paycheck on the side as an engineer working remotely for 20 hours a week.
Remote work is also better at keeping extended families intact. It’s absurd to imagine healthy families, looking out for each other, when everyone lives an airplane flight away. Face time is no substitute for face time. No internet experience compares to baking cookies with grandma.
As parents age, nursing homes and bureaucracies make a mockery of the term ‘care’. They do the best they can, but there’s a reason monkeys chose the mommy made of terrycloth, even though she had no milk. No one wants to die in a nursing home, and no loyal daughter would hand care of her parents off to a system of machines and disinterested box checkers if she had a better option. Pills are a terrible substitute for presence. The way we treat our elders is a disgrace, and it’s driven because elite families don’t stay together, because economic opportunity continually selects for mobility.
For people without generational wealth, economics is a matter of survival. The current structure of the economy - where all labor competes globally - pits survival against family stability. No wonder survival wins out. Perhaps this was necessary when we had an industrial society but no internet. It is no longer necessary.
The basis of civilization, of all our wealth, is the inter-generational transfer of knowledge and wisdom. Material wealth is a downstream consequence of spiritual wealth, which can only be laboriously transmitted from one generation to the next in person. The internet is just not suited for this.
Only slow afternoons fishing with Grandpa, roughousing with Uncle Eric, hearing stories from Grandma, and babysitting your cousins while Aunt Amy spends time with her girlfriends can create properly integrated men and women. Only neighborhoods full of boys who grew up fighting each other, and who now act together as football coaches, boy scout den leaders, and chess coaches can generate the stable, safe background necessary to protect children from the predators of today. Most of the wolves now wear sheep clothing. Only men who grew up fighting each other can protect each each other’s kids from the full-spectrum pedophilia coming out of every screen hooked up to a ranking algorithm.
Only groups of women who, having known each other their whole lives, aren’t consumed with petty status squabbles and instead nurture and support each other, can feel fulfilled in their relationships with each other. Only women who feel deeply economically secure, protected by strong men, whom they simultaneously admire and - at some level - fear, can feel sexually fulfilled. An endless parade of men who don’t respect you, don’t provide for you, and don’t inspire you - that just won’t do the trick. Neither will a man who’s consistently unsure of himself and his ability to provide.
Men who know their livelihoods are secured by their competence, and valued on a global marketplace for labor will be more present and competent, both as lovers and as fathers. Remote work makes it easier for parents to assistant-coach their kids sports teams, teaching them resilience and emotional regulation. The net effect of this is to create healthier, more vibrant communities.
Remote Work is Better for Communities
The left is an urban coalition, the right is more rural. Our civilization is in decline right now because the urban coalition has the vast majority of power - particularly cultural power. It is using this cultural power to commit suicide, by turning towards an illusion that flatters the intellect while rejecting reality.
Remote work has the potential to be a tectonic shift in the political landscape, but only if we let it.
Dense urban living doesn’t work with the reputation mechanisms that have worked throughout history to promote prosocial behavior. Cities have never, in human history, been anything but demographic sinks. They’ve always required rural areas to sustain their populations - not just the daily supplies of food carted in, but the supplies of human beings, because cities are generally more focused on creativity and ideas than they are sustaining the human population.
When elite white collar workers have the option to go back home, communities can actually mean something. Children can grow up knowing that their Dad has known their friend’s dads, since he was a kid. Tradition can mean something, when families have been living in the same neighborhood for a century. Game theory makes it very clear that one-shot games of prisoners dilemma do not go well, but the optimal strategy changes dramatically when the game becomes iterated: now, reputation matters. Reputation works far better when people plan to stay in their neighborhoods and communities for long periods of time.
The basis of all material wealth is long term investment. The intergenerational transfer of wisdom is the ultimate form of long term investment. That spiritual wealth creates the virtue in human beings necessary to do the work, guided by prudence to create material wealth. Humans, being relentlessly K-selected, invest heavily in our offspring. If we will be there long term, we will invest far more in our communities. Long term investment requires and thrives from stable environments.
People are far more likely to make investments in their communities when they know the people in those communities and expect to know them for decades. You’re never going to have a sense of community in an apartment complex, because the apartment complex is obviously a temporary, transient setup. Democrats, over the last century have turned america into a massive apartment complex. Republicans have told us they’d stop this process but have obviously failed, lacking a compelling alternative or the means to make it happen.
We have that option now: remote, white collar work, leading to local elites that contribute heavily to the communities they were born in. Remote work not only leads to healthier families arranged in healthier communities - remote work will lead to more vibrant trade networks.
Remote Work is Better for Free Enterprise
The best way to protect freedom is to expand material prosperity to as many people as possible. Support for free, voluntary exchange will be far more common among people who see the value in it. For people to see value in free exchange they have to be able to participate in liquid labor markets.
The relationship between labor and capital is obviously important. But what does a healthy relationship look like? The left says these two worldviews are ‘in tension’ and general claims to be ‘helping labor’. A look at the reality of their approach says this is nonsense.
The real tension is not between labor and capital - which ought to be properly integrated in every human mind, as the relationship between effort and wisdom. The true tension is between parasitism and voluntary productive collaboration. It is the same tension as that between virtue and vice. Short term, anonymous relationships lead to the viability of defect-strategies: parasites.
The left’s vision here has been to say that we will ‘strengthen labor’ - but clearly, workers have lost, and has been losing for decades. Union leaders, of course, are doing just fine. This should be evidence that they’ve drawn the conceptual boundaries in the wrong place.
Yes, certain classes of work will inevitably require people to show up in some specific place: plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, construction workers, manufacturing technicians, doctors, nurses, and landscapers all will need to be present to do their work. Elon Musk is right about this. He says it would be unfair to these people for white collar workers to work remotely.
I think it’s worth asking, however, where do these service employees want to live? In one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan? A rented million-dollar two-bedroom house in New Jersey with a 1 hour commute on a train? Or their own home, in rural Tennessee, right by family, outside major areas with lots of customers, commuting in a pickup truck through the woods they played in as children?
If the country is dotted with clusters of white collar workers, who can work from anywhere, they will provide a steady stream of work for localized blue collar workers. They will form trust relationships which are essential to the long-term game playing necessary for economic vibrancy. These trust relationships will also transmit wisdom and experience between domains that are increasingly disconnected from each other. How much of the insanity of the last half century has been a function of the disconnect between workers who decide where and how to allocate physical resources, and the people who literally have boots on the ground?
It should be no surprise that when some intellectuals become lost in nonsense symbols, a general mentality of anti-intellectualism takes root. People will take the experts a lot more seriously when they experts aren’t peddling obvious nonsense, and are instead, valuable contributing members of the local community.
White collar and blue collar employees living together will create a far healthier synthesis between labor and capital, between ideas and the reality that they must reflect, if they are to be healthy.
When remote work is the norm for white collar employees, the economy will be more able to shift dynamically in response to changing conditions. The friction of moving your entire family poses a huge barrier to white collar employees changing jobs or starting businesses of their own. And there is that small matter of communities and extended families having more ability to stay together.
But is it really OK to engineer the tax code to push a specific way of living? Isn’t that how the left thinks?
Let’s get real here: there’s no way around that. It’s inevitable that governments will steer the society in a particular direction. The only question is, which direction is that?
Social Engineering is Inevitable
The idea that government shouldn’t engineer specific social outcomes stems from the assumption that is is possible.
Clearly, it isn’t.
The system of governance we have now is so heavy with laws and regulations and incentives, it is insane to imagine that these policies can somehow be ‘neutral’ with respect to how people live their lives. Right now, the incentive structures created through law and policy are destroying families, destroying communities, and enriching networks of graft and corruption.
The right wing alternative can’t be to stand back and do nothing.
We have to offer an alternative vision, and that alternative vision has to be timeless. It’s not complicated! Healthy individuals, loyal to ancient families, rooted in connected communities, arranged in dynamic networks of trade. The linchpin to making this all work in modernity is remote work for white collar employees, because they can act as the bridge between a globally dynamic trade network and a locally stable community.
It is absurd to imagine that we aren’t increasing the probability of some way of living with all of these laws and policies. The only question is, which one? It’s completely unrealistic to imagine that we can all at once roll back the massive regulatory state which governs so many aspects of human life. As much as I would like to do this. It would not be remotely prudent to do this all at once.
Yes, the way we are living is totally unsustainable. We depend heavily on debts, both material and spiritual, and we cannot replace our own populations without mass migration. Clearly, we need some massive change.
Which is likely to go better: a sudden shock change? Or a gradual, rolling change, brought about by a tectonic demographic shift that begins to select for stable, loyal communities, strong families, and the ability of some employees to find work anywhere, leading towards reliable sources of demand for the service jobs that will always require in person presence?
An age of chaos is here. It’s only going to get worse, likely until the demographics improve, which will take a quarter century at minimum.
We badly need leaders who can make and own their own choices. What will not produce leaders is a class of employees who conform with policies they think are stupid and a waste of time, but keep their mouth shut because there’s no incentive to push back against the administrative apparatus, either federally or within your own job.
We need leaders. We need people who make their decisions based upon what they think is good for them and their communities. Employees can’t be those people. Not unless they have the tremendous job security that comes from a vibrant labor market, where large numbers of potential employers are interested in hiring them. Without the ability and willingness to tell your boss his plan is stupid, you can’t be a free Man.
Tightly Controlled Employees can’t be Leaders.
The modern edition of the feminine mystique would state the obvious: women have been brainwashed by magazines and pop culture to focus too much on careers, at the cost of what they really want, but have been told to see as dirty and wrong: fulfillment as Mothers. This is, of course, a far more shocking thing to say today, than it was when Friedan claimed the inverse 70 years ago, because the stolid culture of the 1950’s was more open minded than white-collar elites are today.
We are nation of cowards. Of course we are ruled by tyrants. Yet perhaps that cowardice is just a matter of economic prudence.
What kind of man answers the phone whenever his employer dings him, even for some nonsense that will resolve itself? What kind of man submits to inane policies instead of pushing back against foolish top down mandates that kill productivity? A modern man does: a pale approximation of true manhood. What kind of woman puts her children in the care of a rotating cast of disinterested strangers for hours on end? A modern woman does this. Modern, persons - no longer men and women - are generally speaking anxious and unhappy because their material security depends on their willingness to comply with instructions.
Yes, a few elite leaders - like, say, Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy - can really drive businesses to succeed. They can demand long hours from their employees, and they can get incredible things accomplished. But let’s be clear: most leaders are nowhere near that skilled. Most leaders, to be honest, suck. Most “leaders” are unable to delegate, unwilling to own their failures, can’t lead by example, and have no real vision. Most ‘leaders’ are administrators if systems they do not own.
If you’re Musk or Ramaswamy, this should be obvious to you: you’re in an elite class of human beings, and if there were hundreds of people like you in every generation, the world would be very different.
You both see the problem of an overgrown administrative state very clearly. Yet there’s no functional difference between the administrative bureaucracy of the federal government, and the overhead departments found inside all major corporations. Every business leader I talk to laments that their employees don’t care or have the same level of drive that they do. Yet many of these same leaders have made it clear, they could never work for anyone else.
What would it look like if you had lots of employees who were holding back from you, because they don’t have your confidence that they could stand on their own if you let them go, due to the major impact that would have on their families? What if the rank and file who continually unperformed are only doing the rational thing given the economic incentives as at play, chiefly the absence of a deeply liquid market for their labor?
If you only had one customer, and all your revenue came from it, and you were contractually prevented from getting more customers - would you try to innovate? Would you take risks? Or would you focus on keeping that one customer happy?
You can’t have your employees be dynamic go-getters if they’re optimizing for not losing their jobs. If you went employees to be more engaged and more entrepreneurial, you’ve got to eliminate the fear that a wrong move will cost them their income. You can’t have success without serious risk taking, and you can’t have risk taking without the chance of it going badly. If you want more engaged employees, dynamic labor markets, plus delegated agency and an aggressive policy of firing under performing leaders will do that far more than anything you personally could offer.
In ‘the Radicalism of the american revolution’, Gordon Wood argued that the American Revolution took the fundamental shape it did because of the large number of self-employed persons. Look at how the explosive growth of progressive ideology came hand-in-hand with urbanization and the increase in mass employment. You can’t have a nation of Men and Women, leading themselves and nurturing their families, when financial security requires endless compliance with top-down mandates.
America simply doesn’t work as a nation of employees - unless the labor market offers massive demand for each skilled white collar worker, which then translates into higher, predictable demand for skilled service workers who can reliably own their own small businesses.
Using tax policy to subsidize remote work will strengthen families, enrich local communities, make the economy better able to adapt to changing conditions, and open the torrent of wisdom, available to us from our ancestors, if only we have the patience to slow down and listen. That ability to slow down, to stop, to just be, sit quietly - it’s far more available when you aren’t commuting two hours a day, and you know if your employer does something that you disagree with, you can always find a better employer.
This is the future the right should offer.
Donald Trump should commit to this, and then the election will be his.
Though I'm centrist leaning left, I think you make many good points in this piece. It's generally the Left that wants to improve things in society, but pretty consistently their methods and plans for this are clunky, simplistic, and maladaptive, so ultimately generate backlash and fail. Remote work is simple enough to promote a lot of benefits without requiring some elaborate kludge.