> Now if you have another company whose employees believe in the company's mission, prioritize company success, don't see a necessary trade-off between work and lifestyle, and enjoy working with their teams in person

This is a nice image you've painted but this company doesn't exist except in the minds of some CEOs and startup founders.

You know what actually happens? A CEO announces RTO, people are outraged, everybody is looking at their options, those who manage to do it switch jobs immediately, those who can't do it at the next opportunity, the ones who are left are a combination of extroverts who finally can have endless interactions with those who want them and those who don't, and a bunch of disgruntled employees who don't give a fuck about your company because of the way you treated them.

Why would you prioritize company success in a world where the company has zero loyalty to you? You trade off your lifestyle in return for no equity and get made redundant at zero notice? Why would you do that?

> Most of your employees think of your company's success and their lifestyle as competing interests.

There are only so many hours in the day.

I think part of this is because most work today is not strictly "necessary to society". The basic needs of the population are provided by maybe 10% of the workforce now. So of course people see work as less important, because for most jobs at least - it IS less important.

> Essentially these are people who don't actually want to work and would be just as happy or happier on UBI.

As one of “these people”, I enjoy my job, but I can recognize the fact that it’s just a job. I’m amazed that you would classify people that don’t center their whole life around their job as people that would be just as happy without a job.

I have a lot of other hobbies. I definitely would not be happier if you just took one of them away and gave me money instead.

>I recall one of my German managers said: "The difference between workers today and the previous generation is that we lived to work, while they work to live."

I know 2 Boomers who have 8 figure networths and own their own businesses(manual work, think maintenance and installing stuff). They frequently take the opportunity to self congratulate("I worked so hard for 30 years") and complain about younger people("They don't work hard at all, always on their phone during their shift").

Can't say I was surprised when I found out that back when they started their businesses these fields were basically completely unregulated, that the regulations for these areas were in part lobbied by them(and by others like them) once they got off the ground and that both were sitting on juicy government contracts because the guy in charge of the finance department of the canton was in their unit during obligatory military service. And that's just the stuff I am aware of.

The point being: Older people really did live to work, but they never mention that their marginal rewards for extra work were much greater in most areas of the economy as compared to today.

It's adorable but my modern German car came plagued by software glitches, from a development team of 6000.