>>Society will just pay in another way. There is no free lunch - iow my prior post.
>Just think of all those poor who used to make electric typewriters.
>Do you have one?

It is a false comparison, Nicholas with his cannonballs and you with your typewriters. I am not talking about how the world naturally changes and thus industries change and lifestyles change. Because of this lockdown millions of people are going to lose, or have already lost, their jobs and thousands of supporting business will go broke quickly. It is not an evolving business landscape where typewriters phased out and PCs phased in. It is a social/economic catastrophe.

You and Nicholas seem to think I am making a luddite argument which is nonsense. I am not suggesting industries do not come and go. This is something different. I wonder how we would feel if, instead of sitting at home telecommuting, our life’s work restaurant was now bankrupt or our taxi service was finished or our office cleaning business was over or our hotel laundry business was over or our food supply business is dead … or … or … or. It’s all very easy to sit in our home-offices patting ourselves on the back and be oh-so-clever calling out the "luddites" but millions of people’s lives are SOL through no fault of their own including any lack of foresight to industry trends.

What I have said is plain – society will spend huge amounts of money to fix the problems related to crowded cities one way or another. You like empty cities? Awesome, get ready for higher taxes and levies and other clever ways to extract the money from you to pay unemployment benefits and social support or face civil unrest and general chaos. Or pay to improve infrastructure, more trains/buses, build smart cities, as an on-going project, etc.

Let's also keep in mind that mega-cities like London, NY, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. do work for millions of people who *live* in those cities and do not live outside it in the suburbs and commute in. These cities are centers of immense wealth and work by and large very well. Millions are transported around them and work and live in them.

My point is simple – we’re going to pay, it’s only a question how and on what and how fast. I would prefer to go back to what it was and work towards building smart cities and imporve commute options rather than have this instant economic bombshell affecting millions. But we have what we have so let’s give a thought to those who have lost everything and cannot just “learn to code”.