Elon Musk misses the mark on WFH

As everyone knows by now, Donald Trump has won the election and appointed billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to lead DOGE: the Department of Government Efficiency. Thank God (quite literally)! Any person with the slightest amount of wisdom can clearly understand how wildly out of control the Federal bureaucracy has become. I don't have any doubt that Ramaswamy and Musk will be able to utilize their proven skills in cost-cutting to bring about much good to a nation that is on the verge of collapsing due in large part to its out-of-control (once again, quite literally) spending.

But there's one area that Musk, filled with common grace as he is, severely misses the mark: working from home. He, and many others like him, confuse "going to work" with going into a physical location. Many overall sensible people seem to have jumped on this bandwagon:

Setting aside Musk's strange and indefensible position that working from a home office is immoral (!), his commitment to forcing workers to come into a physical office will backfire and create more inefficiencies and waste:

Performance can increase up to 13 percent by working from home

A study by Standford of 16,000 workers over 9 months found that working from home increase productivity by 13%. This increase in performance was due to more calls per minute attributed to a quieter more convenient working environment and working more minutes per shift because of fewer breaks and sick days.

In this same study workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and attrition rates were cut by 50%.

Working Remotely Can Increase Productivity up to 77%

77% of those who work remotely at least a few times per month show increased productivity, with 30% doing more work in less time and 24% doing more work in the same period of time according to a survey by ConnectSolutions. (https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/)

The Bible teaches us wisdom that sets us free from this illogical and unhelpful thinking: "If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed" (Eccl 10:10). Tools are a gift from God. They allow us to be more productive. Some jobs require you to be in a certain location: a farmer cannot farm without physically being on the ground, a factory worker cannot build a Tesla without being in the factory, a surgeon cannot operate unless he is in the operating room. But many office workers can do the exact same thing from home, saving time from sitting in traffic, feeling better from eating home-cooked food, and wasting less time walking to and from a restroom halfway across the building . This is sharpening the edge of the tools that are available to us.

Elon Musk says he is all about technological advances to create efficiency, like self-driving cars and reusable rockets. But yet he also claims computer workers have to physically be in an office to be maximally productive on a computer? Only the Lord can read minds, but with such a glaring inconsistency, one might think his desire for people to physically commute to buildings could have something to do with the fact that he owns a large car company (1 Tim 6:10). DOGE, we have a once in a century opportunity here. Let's concern ourselves with actual productivity and efficiency, not with physical work locations based on autonomous opinions of what is immoral.