Or we could live in a sane world where you're paid for all the time you spend at the behest of your employer and let people live where they want.

"Just quit your job" / "Just move" is the absurd thing.

All that is in reality is employers subsidising people's decision to live somewhere with an outrageous commute (ie generally far away from urban centres). People who chose to live in urban centres close to where they're likely to work with shorter travel times are now being effectively penalised for making a responsible decision.

Alternatively we could force employers to pay for commutes but allow them to factor that into hiring decisions. If I have to pay you as if you worked 60 hours because you have a ridiculous 2 hour each way commute I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead.

> penalised for making a responsible decision

You're applying a lot of judgement there. I too base all my life decisions on whether they're good for my employer.

> I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead

That and the time you no longer waste from a long commute sounds pretty good for the urbanite so it evens out.

"Just pay your employee to drive 3 hours" is equally absurd. Or what if I decide to take a greyhound or amtrak even longer, please pay me to sleep! You also have the choice of not taking the job, or not moving away from your job so its hardly a fair comparison.

You're thinking about this like an engineer instead of a human and not applying any sort of reasonableness test. You can take as long as you want to get to work but you'll be paid for a reasonable commute time and distance just like how mileage reimbursement and per diem works.

You think in the world of business travel someone hasn't already thought about this?

But that's not how it would go.

The moment you make commute a cost for the employer they're going to start discriminating based on your commute. You don't live within 5 minutes of the job? Go find another job.

Or better yet - employer offered housing! You don't want to live on the workplace-campus? Sorry! We need somebody to buy from all the businesses we contracted for our workplace campus.

So then you don't actually get paid based on how long your commute is and the people stuck commuting 3 hours a day go uncompensated for the time because a 3 hour commute isn't reasonable -- which was the original point.

For simplicity we could just abstract that average commute and other factors(some days being busy or slow, some days having challenging/easy tasks, cost of living, etc.) and wrap that all up in a single compensation. Maybe call it a wage or salary, and then let workers choose the job with the best "wage" for their specific scenario.

But how are you supposed to set price controls on wages if some jobs are easy and right near where you live and others are hard and far away from affordable rents? Wouldn't the calculation have so many variables in it with such subjective valuation that only the person themselves could decide if it was worth it?

Where I choose to live, and therefore the length of my commute, is at the behest of me, not me employer.