Comments by "Tony L" (@tlangdon12) on "Do the people who work in the City of London add value?" video.

As someone who has worked in the City in a hybrid set-up, I can confirm that working in an office with your colleagues is very much more productive when engaged in project work.
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@VinceLammas I agree with you. And so that society can understand, manage and prevent the great harms that indistries can inflict, we need experts in those industries to be working within the regulators. Much as the tax authorities are always chasing to close the loopholes that allow tax evasion, regulators need to be able to keep up with the new ways that industries invent to do more harms.
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To call the workers in the City that are superflous "middle management" is to completely misunderstand both "middle management" and these superflous roles in the city. Middle Management is a productive job - work needs to be organised and planned. Some of the superflous roles in the city will be middle management, but most will not be. Most will be ordinary workers who report to middle management.
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I'm happy to have some diversity as to how local government is arranged.
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@OneAndOnlyMe I think this is Richard's fundamental point - there is value to some people in the activity of the city, but there is part of this activity that is not valuable to society. I think he is implicitly asking the question "Should we allow this activity to continue, or should we regulate so that it does not?" To my mind, any discussion has to engage the people who 'require' the services - if society doesn't persuade them that they should not 'require' these services, if they cannot buy them in London, they will buy them in New York, or Frankfurt or Tokyo.
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