Choose a house with 1 extra room, courtesy of your WFH savings.

You’re not totally off-base there

An itemized cost paid straight by your employer will have the effect of encouraging them to waste less of your time with a commute.

When WFH is an option. Where it isn’t (eg, the sandwich dude)…

They might try to hire locally, might pay for moving expenses, might keep you out of rush hour traffic, might be worried about keeping you late such that now you’re driving on overtime, might actually align their concerns with the planet’s by reducing all the oil going literally up in flames to transport people around to do knowledge work in a cubicle.

I have a really hard time seeing this actually happening in practice, especially on low-level jobs. Or people who live with their family (of whom others work elsewhere). Or when you say “hire locally” I say “can’t get a damn job in my field because I don’t live nearby and moving would take my wife away from her job”