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http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never mater

http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers. So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be). But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones. These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

jnordwick 10y ago
You can't debate nutters. "professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers" are clearly not bullshit jobs. They are precisely how products and resources are allocated, produced, and sold. That entire bottom paragraph from finance to health services are vastly important in an advanced economy. He seems to want us to go back to being farmers. What a quack.
- eyelidlessness 10y ago
  > You can't debate nutters. But you sure can make snide remarks!
- TaylorAlexander 10y ago
  Calling David Graeber a quack is to miss the mark entirely. He's an accomplished author and anthropologist with a critically acclaimed book on the history of debt and economic systems. He calls those jobs bullshit jobs because he has a (historically informed) vision of an economy that works better without them. He rags on people who write marketing copy, for example, because their job is basically to sell something you otherwise wouldn't buy. It could be argued that, in a more efficient economy, people wouldn't be selling things people don't want to buy. Similarly, he sees managers as a way to compel people to do work they wouldn't otherwise do, and thus sees those jobs as bullshit. It's true that he thinks very differently from you, but that doesn't make him a quack.
  - jnordwick 10y ago
    > Similarly, he sees managers as a way to compel people to do work they wouldn't otherwise do, and thus sees those jobs as bullshit. See a quack. Most of us in the real world know that managers, no matter how much we despise them or even if we are of the many that thing most manager suck, we know their job is to organize those underneath then. A number of these manager-less companies in the last year have had to introduce managers because they actually do server a purpose: managing! He was a prof of Antropology at Yale before leaving. He is most famous for being a Wobblie, anarchist activist, and one of the heads of the Occupy Wallstreet group (I still have memories of walking by them every day and had no problem having a slice while watching the entertainment). The irony of that statement is that Mr Graeber probably did many managerial types of jobs in his life (like being a manager over grad students, and managing part of OWS), without it strictly being called a manager. if it sounds like a duck...
    - eyelidlessness 10y ago
      First I ever heard of anyone alive at the same time as me being famous for being a wob!
jhoechtl 10y ago
> Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. Marketing did the choice for us. And instead of using all the available communication tools, like FB Messanger, WhatsApp for our benefit, we post cats and meals.

jnordwick 10y ago

You can't debate nutters. "professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers" are clearly not bullshit jobs. They are precisely how products and resources are allocated, produced, and sold. That entire bottom paragraph from finance to health services are vastly important in an advanced economy. He seems to want us to go back to being farmers. What a quack.

eyelidlessness 10y ago
> You can't debate nutters. But you sure can make snide remarks!
TaylorAlexander 10y ago
Calling David Graeber a quack is to miss the mark entirely. He's an accomplished author and anthropologist with a critically acclaimed book on the history of debt and economic systems. He calls those jobs bullshit jobs because he has a (historically informed) vision of an economy that works better without them. He rags on people who write marketing copy, for example, because their job is basically to sell something you otherwise wouldn't buy. It could be argued that, in a more efficient economy, people wouldn't be selling things people don't want to buy. Similarly, he sees managers as a way to compel people to do work they wouldn't otherwise do, and thus sees those jobs as bullshit. It's true that he thinks very differently from you, but that doesn't make him a quack.
- jnordwick 10y ago
  > Similarly, he sees managers as a way to compel people to do work they wouldn't otherwise do, and thus sees those jobs as bullshit. See a quack. Most of us in the real world know that managers, no matter how much we despise them or even if we are of the many that thing most manager suck, we know their job is to organize those underneath then. A number of these manager-less companies in the last year have had to introduce managers because they actually do server a purpose: managing! He was a prof of Antropology at Yale before leaving. He is most famous for being a Wobblie, anarchist activist, and one of the heads of the Occupy Wallstreet group (I still have memories of walking by them every day and had no problem having a slice while watching the entertainment). The irony of that statement is that Mr Graeber probably did many managerial types of jobs in his life (like being a manager over grad students, and managing part of OWS), without it strictly being called a manager. if it sounds like a duck...
  - eyelidlessness 10y ago
    First I ever heard of anyone alive at the same time as me being famous for being a wob!

jhoechtl 10y ago

> Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. Marketing did the choice for us. And instead of using all the available communication tools, like FB Messanger, WhatsApp for our benefit, we post cats and meals.