That doesn’t excuse fairly blatantly fallacious reasoning. Of course everyone has a stake in it, and that stake is best served by examining the truth, not justifying the answer you find most appropriate. Worst-case reasoning serves a purpose, but it must be identified as such, and taken for what it is.
Cite? I could with just as much justification (i.e. very little) claim that “environmentalists” tend to be the pessimists, and that real oil engineers are the realists. Not very productive either way. The answer is not going to be arrived at by arbitrarily assigning labels to people, then conducting a popularity contest. The truth is in the data, and the data doesn’t support any conclusion so simplistic as oil production peaking in 2010 (the latest of many such predictions).
Gotta disagree. GenericAmericanWorker sitting on a couch has the following advantages over an GenericIndianWorker in Bangalore:
[ol]
[li]GAW can communicate better in American English[/li][li]GAW understands the culture better[/li][li]GAW likes to be awake during the hours everyone else in the company is awake[/li][li]GAW is able to attend meetings, team-building events, and other on-site things[/li][/ol]
Telecommuting, especially “limited” telecommuting where the employee still drives in to the office on certain days or to attend company functions, works much better from my couch then from Bangalore.
Actually you make some good points that I overlooked in my haste. Definitely though my company has retrenched. There used to be forms you could fill out to request TC privileges, but no more. This sort of thing is so frustrating. As someone said, we’re not deliberately pissing away all this energy, but mostly using it to get to work and back. TC would be a way to deeply reduce the amount of fuel we spend commuting, but the bosses don’t want it.
[/aside] I’m reminded of a funny Dilbert strip where Wally, the short llittle engineer, asks the pointy haired boss if he can telecomute.
Wally: Can I work from home one day a week?
PHB: How will I know you’re working?
Wally: How do you know I’m working when I’m here?
PHB: I know you’re unhappy, and that’s the same thing as work.
Wally: What if I invent a really uncomfortable hat to wear when I’m working at home?
PHB: It has to be really uncomfortable, or it isn’t work.
And the last panel shows Wally working from home wearing a hat that looks like a big C-clamp, and thinking to himself, “The joke’s on him! It isn’t all that uncomfortable!”
3 pages in two days? Man, some of my rants are getting popular (if I exclude the one locked by Lynn, but that’s because most of my post was deleted by an errant hamster). But amazingly enough, this was directed solely at my shit-for-brains co-workers who live in New Jersey and commute to Manhattan, then proceed to whine at me for hours each day about how expensive their life has become.
For all you asstards who want to inflict physical harm on me: you’re welcome to track me down on my island and get bitch-slapped for your efforts. You don’t even need a passport. I’m the one with new wheels
For the anti-Canadian cuntwipes: the government in the true north strong and free runs a surplus, is paying off debt and diverts gas taxes to roadwork. That means if it wants, it’s got a lot more room to drive fuel prices down. (Man, dontcha love theoreticals?) Oh, and it was the U.S. govt that just passed the largest energy bill in history that does sweet-fuck-all for you, the average commuter, since the cowardly Gang of 500 didn’t want to demand more fuel efficiency from car manufacturers, and instead decided to give oil producers a great big ol’ tax break that you’ll never see. Maybe you should revolt.
Ah! Are you a fellow bicycle commuter, Barbarian? Where I live during the summer, it is extremely difficult to get around without a car (though I can use my bicycle for errands around town), but where I go to school, my existence is blissfully car-free. I can’t wait to move out there for the long term.
Seriously, for those of you who are fortunate enough to live within 2 or 3 miles from work - why on earth are you driving at all? You don’t even need a bicycle - that distance is walkable in temperatures down to the single digits! When I am going to school, I have an eleven mile commute to work. I usually ride the whole way in, combine with a bus to get home. In the winter, I usually take the bus two ways, but that still leaves about three miles of riding each way. It’s a lot of fun, actually.
I am personally amazed by the complaints about gas prices because people think they’re being ripped off. Ripped off!? $2.59 a gallon does NOT reflect the true cost of driving your vehicle. Gasoline prices are heavily subsidized in this country. I think that Canadians and Europeans have every right to tell American drivers to STFU, given that their governments are absorbing a considerably smaller portion of the price of oil. Yeah, it sucks to see prices unexpectedly double in such a short period of time, but we should be counting ourselves as extremely fortunate (well, I see it as more of a curse) to be paying so little. Besides which, it is fairly simple for most of us to find ways to reduce the amount of oil we consume. Why aren’t more people doing it? I guess it’s easier to bitch.