Agreed on that odd trade-off. I'm assuming an implicit love of extra space? Definitely not really rationally compared.
Even odder are the insistence on public transit or similar. I share the preference, but if time is valuable, a personal car or small car pool would almost certainly cut time.
Again, I used to bike about 3 hours a day. I can't really blame that on the job, though.
(Obviously not everyone could choose to live closer without driving up the prices even more in the short-term, but the value of money-vs-commute compared to money-vs-remote doesn't seem directly comparable to many people.)