Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few.

Inertia, perhaps. We certainly have been seeing reports of digital nomads growing over the last decade, but major shocks can be useful in speeding up transitions. Likely very few CEOs previously imagined how robust the remote work infrastructure had become, and certainly didn't have obvious incentive to implement all the tools until now.

> Markets are not optimized for quality of life. It's one variable of many in a system evolved to coerce the many to benefit the few.

You need enough buy in from enough companies to actually have a competitive market for remote work. I think things were moving in that direction but slowly (as things tend to do) - COVID just accelerated the trend.