The Elite's War on Remote Work Has Nothing to Do with Productivity

Every year, CEOs demand more employees return to the office. Mainstream news outlets run stories calling remote workers lazy.

They say it’s about productivity.

It’s not.

David Graeber's essay on bullshit jobs blew the myth of office productivity wide open several years ago. The elites have been promising us shorter work weeks for more than a century now. We have the technology to make it happen. As we speak, they're bragging about their new AI minions.

Anyone who has ever worked in an office knows it’s one of the least productive spaces you could imagine. Most of us can finish our jobs in a few hours. We spend the rest of the time pretending to work. Nonetheless, corporate media have spent the last two years pushing the narrative that remote work makes you less productive, even when several studies have shown the opposite. A recent Stanford study found that remote or hybrid workers are just as productive, more content, and less likely to quit. A review of evidence in The Economist concurs. When remote work hurts productivity, it’s because companies don’t give their employees the resources they need, and in some cases put obstacles in their way. They want it to fail.

Many of us have embraced remote work because it liberates us from distractions and unproductive meetings, often hailed as the cornerstones of “office culture.” It especially benefits those of us on the spectrum, who need a quiet place where we can focus. Clearly, it’s not a settled debate.

In fact, many outlets finally came clean last year and reported that a big chunk of companies might simply be using office return mandates as an excuse to lay off employees and “restructure” their workforce.

So, what's really going on?

It’s about real estate.

There's an office real estate apocalypse unfolding. Corporate landlords currently hold $1.2 trillion in loans on office towers all over the country. In some cases, these are the same jerks who've been buying up all the houses and driving up prices on residential real estate, too. When the pandemic hit, these landlords did something even dumber. As The Financial Times states, they took advantage of “nearly free money” from the Federal Reserve to buy up “trophy office buildings.” Now that everyone is embracing remote work, they can’t lease that office space to anyone. They have a bunch of zombie office towers. They can’t do anything with them.

Some of these commercial real estate owners are trying to turn their empty buildings into apartments and restaurants, but it’s an expensive overhaul. Not every zombie office building makes a great apartment.

They’re stuck.

Anywhere from 12 to 20 percent of office space remains vacant. It’s worse than the 2008 recession. If these landlords can’t find a way to make money off their corporate real estate soon, they’re going to start defaulting on their loans. The landlords will go bankrupt, and banks will wind up with giant office towers they can’t sell. More than $1 trillion will go poof.

According to a piece in the Harvard Business Review, the $1 trillion will come due between now and 2026. That explains why CEOs keep making these edicts, and newspapers keep trying to trash remote work. As the piece explains, “The damage could metastasize into a full-blown financial crisis if scores or even hundreds of small and midsize commercial banks fail simultaneously.”

Elites bought up these trophy office towers based on the bad assumption that workers would rush back to offices. They also didn’t factor in skyrocketing energy costs or labor shortages, all driven by their own mistakes. You see, millions of workers are dead or disabled by the virus they wanted to ignore.

Delinquency rates have already started going up.

The Federal Reserve’s misguided war on inflation has made everything even worse over the last couple of years. By raising interest rates, they’ve motivated more companies to ditch their office leases. Now commercial real estate is in a death spiral that could tank the economy (again).

The Fed has started to cut interest rates. According to another recent piece in Fortune, that’s not going to stop the crash.

The fears went away during the first part of 2024 because of the frenzy over AI investing. Now they’re coming back. A piece in Forbes is predicting a major collapse for the same reasons, citing a Columbia University economist who foresees a minimum wipeout of $644 billion, and possibly up to $1.5 trillion. Even if it doesn’t trigger a total meltdown, it’s going to be painful.

Rich people hate losing money.

There’s more bad news.

Major cities have spent the last several decades catering to these corporate landlords. Now their entire downtowns rely on workers for commerce. We’re talking about all those restaurants and coffee shops that serve breakfast and lunch to white-collar workers, and all the bars where people used to go and complain about work before they spent an hour commuting home.

These cities also depend on property taxes from overpriced commercial real estate. When nobody wants those buildings, their value plummets. New York alone has lost $453 billion in office real estate. Across the U.S., office buildings have shed anywhere from 40 to 80 percent of their value.

Talk to anyone who works in commercial real estate. Even well into 2024, office buildings in major cities are half empty.

So, we have a problem.

Once again, the elite have gotten themselves into big trouble. They want the rest of us to bail them out. If they don't want our tax money, they want us to give up our freedom and autonomy. They want us to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of capitalism to protect their fortunes.

They don't care how productive we are. They don't care how creative we are. They definitely don't care about our health.

They only care about one thing, forcing warm bodies back into office buildings to stop the commercial real estate apocalypse. If they can’t fill those zombie towers, they have to trim their budgets with stealth layoffs.

That's it.