3 ms·

Anthropologists David Graeber, has addressed this and offered the explanation with the observation that we as a society produce what he calls bullshit jobs. Alm

Anthropologists David Graeber, has addressed this and offered the explanation with the observation that we as a society produce what he calls bullshit jobs. Almost 40% of Brits in a surveyed acknowledged that their job wasn't needed. People believing in effective markets would of course protest and claim such enormous inefficiency can't possibly exist. Somebody will simply start a company without bullshit jobs. However I think there is a good explanation why this doesn't happen: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/why-do-bullshit-jobs-exist-4f579eaa5964 https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/why-do-bullshit-jobs-exist-4f5... In short, in any complex organization bullshit work will start accruing and there is no good mechanism to week out such jobs, because the people doing those jobs will have zero incentive to tell their managers that their job in pointless and not needed. I've tried researching this on reddit and seen that a lot of work people do could have been automated. The people doing those jobs also frequently see this. However they have no economic incentive to do so. This has lead me to contemplate that guaranteed minimum income has merits, because it would remove the disincentive to make yourself redundant, to some extent. Of course not in the case where your bullshit jobs is very highly paid, which is frequently the case.

pdfernhout 9y ago
You might find this essay by Bob Black of interest on "The Aboltiion of Work": https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.or... "... It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes. ..." We might ask ourselves what "leading economic indicators" might look like when this was happening...
- jernfrost 9y ago
  Thans for the suggestions. I have contemplated this as well. It always puzzled me at work as a software developer how we had more sales people than developers. It just seems wrong that we have more people hired to sell the software than make it. Then you got all the guys doing marketing in addition and the ones managing all these people. You end up with a lot of stuff surrounding the core value creation. A lot of this is really just need because we live in a free market economy where we need to sell stuff to people. We can't just give it to them if they need it. OTOH how would be allocated resources effectively if we did not have the market. The soviet approach seems to have been a big failure. Although I suppose wit the internet, computer, crypto currencies etc, there might be other ways of organizing labour and allocating resources. At least I wish people would acknowledge something is fundamentally wrong with how we organize society today. Unless we do it is hard to pour resources into finding alternative ways of doing things.
rumcajz 9y ago
My take on the problem (predates Graeber's book though): http://250bpm.com/blog:44 http://250bpm.com/blog:44 TL;DR: Firms are not people and can't strive for efficiency. Only individuals can. Once the financial incentives of individuals are misaligned with the financial incentives of the firm, the firm is going to lose (and pay for useless jobs).
- jernfrost 9y ago
  I liked a lot your analogy with altruism. Wish I had thought of that one myself ;-) I probably disagree with the notion that people actively seek to create bullshit work for themselves, initially. I think a lot of bullshit jobs is something people realize they are doing after the fact when it is hard to change careers or find another job. They then engage in a sort of cover up operation to avoid losing that bullshit job. Of course there are a lot of bullshit jobs which exist due to regulations and red tape. People might seek a lot of bullshit jobs simply because they have high status and pay. E.g. it is well paid to be a lawyer and high status, despite the fact that a lot of lawyer work, is just bullshit. I also think everybody could have been employed despite removing bullshit jobs, it is just that people would simply need to work a lot fewer hours. This assumes of course a gradual change. If we removed all bullshit jobs tomorrow, there would for structural reasons be a lot of people who can't change to other activities easily. I also think that a lot of bullshit work, isn't 100% bullshit. There are perhaps 10 hours worth of work to be done each week. However workers have no incentive to expose that, because otherwise they could not excuse the pay they get. Also people are proud and don't want to look like they are lazy or working less than others. So in a sense people end up doing bullshit to simply not look worse. So part of the solution is also to stop valuing work so dam high. We have a tendency to glorify work. I personally think people would end up doing useful things for the most part if given the choice. People are unnecessarily concerned with others being lazy.
  - rumcajz 9y ago
    > I probably disagree with the notion that people actively seek to create bullshit work for themselves, initially. It's a matter of rationalization IMO. You have no job. Then you get an offer. The job seems to suck and be useless so you come up with reasons why it matters. That way you can both put food on the table and keep self-esteem. > So part of the solution is also to stop valuing work so dam high. That may be already happening: "Beginning in 1973, the GSS showed a card to the person being interviewed and asked, “Would you please look at this card and tell me which one thing on this list you would most prefer in a job?” The card had these choices: * High income * No danger of being fired * Chances for advancement * Working hours are short; lots of free time * Work important and gives a feeling of accomplishment "After the subject gave his first priority, the interviewer ascertained which were his second, third, fourth, and last priorities. The item was given in almost every survey from 1973 through 1994. Then the GSS dropped it for the next twelve years, perhaps because the answers had been so consistent. Among prime-age whites, the most popular first choice was always work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment,” getting an average of 58 percent of the votes in each decade. The two least-chosen first choices were always short work hours (averaging 4 percent) and no danger of being fired (6 percent). "In 2006, the GSS resurrected the question, and the results were startling. The 58 percent that had always voted first place to work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment” was down to 43 percent. First-place votes for short working hours more than doubled to 9 percent. “No danger of being fired” doubled to 12 percent, with another 13 percent ranking it in second place.

pdfernhout 9y ago

You might find this essay by Bob Black of interest on "The Aboltiion of Work": https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html https://web.archive.org/web/20161031034600/http://whywork.or... "... It is now possible to abolish work and replace it, insofar as it serves useful purposes, with a multitude of new kinds of free activities. To abolish work requires going at it from two directions, quantitative and qualitative. On the one hand, on the quantitative side, we have to cut down massively on the amount of work being done. At present most work is useless or worse and we should simply get rid of it. On the other hand -- and I think this is the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure -- we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that wouldn't make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other. I don't suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn't worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Twenty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done -- presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now -- would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes. ..." We might ask ourselves what "leading economic indicators" might look like when this was happening...

jernfrost 9y ago
Thans for the suggestions. I have contemplated this as well. It always puzzled me at work as a software developer how we had more sales people than developers. It just seems wrong that we have more people hired to sell the software than make it. Then you got all the guys doing marketing in addition and the ones managing all these people. You end up with a lot of stuff surrounding the core value creation. A lot of this is really just need because we live in a free market economy where we need to sell stuff to people. We can't just give it to them if they need it. OTOH how would be allocated resources effectively if we did not have the market. The soviet approach seems to have been a big failure. Although I suppose wit the internet, computer, crypto currencies etc, there might be other ways of organizing labour and allocating resources. At least I wish people would acknowledge something is fundamentally wrong with how we organize society today. Unless we do it is hard to pour resources into finding alternative ways of doing things.

rumcajz 9y ago

My take on the problem (predates Graeber's book though): http://250bpm.com/blog:44 http://250bpm.com/blog:44 TL;DR: Firms are not people and can't strive for efficiency. Only individuals can. Once the financial incentives of individuals are misaligned with the financial incentives of the firm, the firm is going to lose (and pay for useless jobs).

jernfrost 9y ago
I liked a lot your analogy with altruism. Wish I had thought of that one myself ;-) I probably disagree with the notion that people actively seek to create bullshit work for themselves, initially. I think a lot of bullshit jobs is something people realize they are doing after the fact when it is hard to change careers or find another job. They then engage in a sort of cover up operation to avoid losing that bullshit job. Of course there are a lot of bullshit jobs which exist due to regulations and red tape. People might seek a lot of bullshit jobs simply because they have high status and pay. E.g. it is well paid to be a lawyer and high status, despite the fact that a lot of lawyer work, is just bullshit. I also think everybody could have been employed despite removing bullshit jobs, it is just that people would simply need to work a lot fewer hours. This assumes of course a gradual change. If we removed all bullshit jobs tomorrow, there would for structural reasons be a lot of people who can't change to other activities easily. I also think that a lot of bullshit work, isn't 100% bullshit. There are perhaps 10 hours worth of work to be done each week. However workers have no incentive to expose that, because otherwise they could not excuse the pay they get. Also people are proud and don't want to look like they are lazy or working less than others. So in a sense people end up doing bullshit to simply not look worse. So part of the solution is also to stop valuing work so dam high. We have a tendency to glorify work. I personally think people would end up doing useful things for the most part if given the choice. People are unnecessarily concerned with others being lazy.
- rumcajz 9y ago
  > I probably disagree with the notion that people actively seek to create bullshit work for themselves, initially. It's a matter of rationalization IMO. You have no job. Then you get an offer. The job seems to suck and be useless so you come up with reasons why it matters. That way you can both put food on the table and keep self-esteem. > So part of the solution is also to stop valuing work so dam high. That may be already happening: "Beginning in 1973, the GSS showed a card to the person being interviewed and asked, “Would you please look at this card and tell me which one thing on this list you would most prefer in a job?” The card had these choices: * High income * No danger of being fired * Chances for advancement * Working hours are short; lots of free time * Work important and gives a feeling of accomplishment "After the subject gave his first priority, the interviewer ascertained which were his second, third, fourth, and last priorities. The item was given in almost every survey from 1973 through 1994. Then the GSS dropped it for the next twelve years, perhaps because the answers had been so consistent. Among prime-age whites, the most popular first choice was always work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment,” getting an average of 58 percent of the votes in each decade. The two least-chosen first choices were always short work hours (averaging 4 percent) and no danger of being fired (6 percent). "In 2006, the GSS resurrected the question, and the results were startling. The 58 percent that had always voted first place to work that “gives a feeling of accomplishment” was down to 43 percent. First-place votes for short working hours more than doubled to 9 percent. “No danger of being fired” doubled to 12 percent, with another 13 percent ranking it in second place.