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> bullshit employment has come to serve in places like the U.S. and Britain as a disguised, half-baked version of the dole The incredible thing is that this ha

> bullshit employment has come to serve in places like the U.S. and Britain as a disguised, half-baked version of the dole The incredible thing is that this happened without being a master plan of any government or even a cultural meme (an ideal like recycling, minority rights, literacy). No one sat in a meeting room in the 1950s and said, "Well, we're going to have massive unemployment in the decades to come, so let's start creating lots of meaningless jobs." It just happened. Gradually and without anyone noticing. Amazing.

wil421 8y ago
Do you realize what kind of jobs don’t exist due to computers? You would have teams of people doing complex calculations or accounting. Milkman, elevator operator, and Linotype operator are a few that employed a lot of people.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  But the “computer age” also created a ton of bullshit jobs that shouldn’t exist. If anything, milkmen, elevator & linotype operators provided actual value. What does “social media analytics” provide?
  - kristianc 8y ago
    > What does “social media analytics” provide? How many jobs do you think “social media analytics” actually creates? Probably not a 'ton'.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      No, but thanks to our hyper specialisation there are a ton of those types of job.
    - dnzm 8y ago
      Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually _was_ a ton.
      - Noumenon72 8y ago
        After all, a ton of people is only 14 people.
anecdata 8y ago
Well, this sort of "self-assembly" is partly founded within the scaffolding of division of duty as a means of quality assurance, that serves as a process of checks and balances within business practices. Conversations, about obsolete personnel, become awkward verrry quickly, so to shift attention away from the massive elephant in the room, compromises must be struck. The middle of the 20th century killed enough people to fill many multiple cities. All of that awkward disintigration of civility was the friction of people getting their fingers caught in the doors on the wrong side of the air locks, as the space ship fired up its jets. People know that gobs and gobs of money filter through hands and fan out in distribution channels, so the real game isn't to sequester it all, but to properly skim incredible amounts of it, without raising eyebrows. Then, after a lagoon of reserves opens up all the essential opportunities to reinforce the system as it is, levers and control surfaces appear, and anyone without their hands on the affordances for operating guidance are basically shit out of luck in terms of bucking the system while it's healthy and strong. It didn't just happen. Operators intervened.
api 8y ago
That is how most things happen. They emerge from evolutionary pressures, game theoretic dynamics, or just as emergent properties of the rule set in operation. The result looks like a conspiracy but in reality it's driven by the furious mad piping of the blind idiot gods of evolution, economics, and complex systems.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  This is a terrifying yet also strangely comforting philosophy.
- zentiggr 8y ago
  Lovecraftian Economics... just saying that makes me shudder a little but I see it, can't unsee it.
  - api 8y ago
    Steve Jobs once quipped that conspiracy theory is optimistic. It assumes that someone somewhere has some idea what is happening and can actually steer the ship.
jingleheimer 8y ago
The great depression, which was a period of high unemployment, was still fresh in the minds of many during the 1950s. The theory of the time was that WWII is what fixed the economy. Many people sat in many rooms trying to figure out how to achieve the 'wealth' effect of war without all of the destruction. Creating useless jobs was a common idea.
- zentiggr 8y ago
  Let's finish that thought process, roll out UBI, and generally let people figure out what they can do outside of those space filling WPA jobs. Everyone not beholden to a company for their living wage now gets off the treadmill of "keep employed" for its own sake.
  - jsoc815 8y ago
    Let's finish that thought process, roll out UBI... I've never quite understood how UBI fixes the 'problem'. Can you (someone) explain why current prices wouldn't simply adjust to reflect the introduction of the 'helicopter money'? Isn't this the very issue found w/ exploding U.S. tertiary education costs? Thanks...
    - zentiggr 8y ago
      Close cousins to the "bullshit" jobs in the OP are the "gotta" jobs that no one really chooses to do but they have to earn money to live on. UBI is a compelling way to get lots of people out of that "gotta" hole and enable a much wider range of options and opportunities. Perhaps not a complete fix but certainly a helpful step.
      - jsoc815 8y ago
        > UBI is a compelling way to get lots of people out of that "gotta" hole Right, can you say more about why this is "compelling"? What I'm pointing out is that the 'savvy' business people will likely view the introduction of the UBI money into the economy as a reason to raise/adjust prices, i.e. inflation. Having spent (too) much time speaking w/economists and the occasional central banker, who regularly debate the merits of QE (effectively targeted at the asset-rich) vs. "helicopter money", I'm not sure that society wouldn't end up right where it is now based on what I mentioned above about the 'savvy' business people. If you're interested, someone broached the 'UBI/helicopter money' issue w/ Bernanke a couple of weeks ago as part of a broader conversation. I've linked to the video in another thread.[1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274399
arethuza 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education and the introduction of tuition fees was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole.
- isostatic 8y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education The increase in numbers going to higher education reduced those available in the workplace. Rather than everyone aged 16-65 being available for work (say 50 million), half of those ages 16-22 went to university, meaning about 2-3 million were taken out of the pool of available people. > and the introduction of tuition fees Tuition, when Labour first introduced it, was charged upfront - albeit at £1700 a year (in today's money). When they tripped it in 2005, to £4300 a year, it started being repaid on every penny over £18k (in today's money). However this came from the same repayment as the cost of living loans, which meant the treasury only got a return on the tuition when the graduate was earning a decent wage when they were much older (if tuition was £100k or £0k, you paid the treasury the same amount per year until you'd repaid your £20k of cost-of-living loans) When Cameron changed them to £10k a year (in today's money) in 2012, the repayment threshold was higher - if you unless you earn an average of £40k (median salary is £27k) you don't pay a penny back in tuition. Since Labour introduced the 2005 tuition increase, tuition has been a graduate tax in all but name. > was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole. The number of unskilled jobs will only decrease in the future. However undergraduate degrees isn't the solution. While jobs on a supermarket checkout vanish, and jobs assessing insurance claims, an even legal jobs, electricians and plumbers aren't going to be automated away any time soon. A big problem is that there is still a mentality that you need a degree to do a job of a given level - even if you're age 40. My own company seem to be doing well here, we employ apprentices at age 18, and giving them a lot of training and some university based education, and at the end they come out as a qualified broadcast engineer, with a degree. They've had 3 years of real world experience, but also have the piece of paper which serves as an insurance for obsolete companies in the future who won't look at a CV which doesn't have 'bsc' at the top.

wil421 8y ago

Do you realize what kind of jobs don’t exist due to computers? You would have teams of people doing complex calculations or accounting. Milkman, elevator operator, and Linotype operator are a few that employed a lot of people.

Rjevski 8y ago
But the “computer age” also created a ton of bullshit jobs that shouldn’t exist. If anything, milkmen, elevator & linotype operators provided actual value. What does “social media analytics” provide?
- kristianc 8y ago
  > What does “social media analytics” provide? How many jobs do you think “social media analytics” actually creates? Probably not a 'ton'.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    No, but thanks to our hyper specialisation there are a ton of those types of job.
  - dnzm 8y ago
    Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually _was_ a ton.
    - Noumenon72 8y ago
      After all, a ton of people is only 14 people.

anecdata 8y ago

Well, this sort of "self-assembly" is partly founded within the scaffolding of division of duty as a means of quality assurance, that serves as a process of checks and balances within business practices. Conversations, about obsolete personnel, become awkward verrry quickly, so to shift attention away from the massive elephant in the room, compromises must be struck. The middle of the 20th century killed enough people to fill many multiple cities. All of that awkward disintigration of civility was the friction of people getting their fingers caught in the doors on the wrong side of the air locks, as the space ship fired up its jets. People know that gobs and gobs of money filter through hands and fan out in distribution channels, so the real game isn't to sequester it all, but to properly skim incredible amounts of it, without raising eyebrows. Then, after a lagoon of reserves opens up all the essential opportunities to reinforce the system as it is, levers and control surfaces appear, and anyone without their hands on the affordances for operating guidance are basically shit out of luck in terms of bucking the system while it's healthy and strong. It didn't just happen. Operators intervened.

api 8y ago

That is how most things happen. They emerge from evolutionary pressures, game theoretic dynamics, or just as emergent properties of the rule set in operation. The result looks like a conspiracy but in reality it's driven by the furious mad piping of the blind idiot gods of evolution, economics, and complex systems.

Jedi72 8y ago
This is a terrifying yet also strangely comforting philosophy.
zentiggr 8y ago
Lovecraftian Economics... just saying that makes me shudder a little but I see it, can't unsee it.
- api 8y ago
  Steve Jobs once quipped that conspiracy theory is optimistic. It assumes that someone somewhere has some idea what is happening and can actually steer the ship.

jingleheimer 8y ago

The great depression, which was a period of high unemployment, was still fresh in the minds of many during the 1950s. The theory of the time was that WWII is what fixed the economy. Many people sat in many rooms trying to figure out how to achieve the 'wealth' effect of war without all of the destruction. Creating useless jobs was a common idea.

zentiggr 8y ago
Let's finish that thought process, roll out UBI, and generally let people figure out what they can do outside of those space filling WPA jobs. Everyone not beholden to a company for their living wage now gets off the treadmill of "keep employed" for its own sake.
- jsoc815 8y ago
  Let's finish that thought process, roll out UBI... I've never quite understood how UBI fixes the 'problem'. Can you (someone) explain why current prices wouldn't simply adjust to reflect the introduction of the 'helicopter money'? Isn't this the very issue found w/ exploding U.S. tertiary education costs? Thanks...
  - zentiggr 8y ago
    Close cousins to the "bullshit" jobs in the OP are the "gotta" jobs that no one really chooses to do but they have to earn money to live on. UBI is a compelling way to get lots of people out of that "gotta" hole and enable a much wider range of options and opportunities. Perhaps not a complete fix but certainly a helpful step.
    - jsoc815 8y ago
      > UBI is a compelling way to get lots of people out of that "gotta" hole Right, can you say more about why this is "compelling"? What I'm pointing out is that the 'savvy' business people will likely view the introduction of the UBI money into the economy as a reason to raise/adjust prices, i.e. inflation. Having spent (too) much time speaking w/economists and the occasional central banker, who regularly debate the merits of QE (effectively targeted at the asset-rich) vs. "helicopter money", I'm not sure that society wouldn't end up right where it is now based on what I mentioned above about the 'savvy' business people. If you're interested, someone broached the 'UBI/helicopter money' issue w/ Bernanke a couple of weeks ago as part of a broader conversation. I've linked to the video in another thread.[1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274399

arethuza 8y ago

I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education and the introduction of tuition fees was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole.

isostatic 8y ago
> I'm pretty sure that in the UK the massive increase in higher education The increase in numbers going to higher education reduced those available in the workplace. Rather than everyone aged 16-65 being available for work (say 50 million), half of those ages 16-22 went to university, meaning about 2-3 million were taken out of the pool of available people. > and the introduction of tuition fees Tuition, when Labour first introduced it, was charged upfront - albeit at £1700 a year (in today's money). When they tripped it in 2005, to £4300 a year, it started being repaid on every penny over £18k (in today's money). However this came from the same repayment as the cost of living loans, which meant the treasury only got a return on the tuition when the graduate was earning a decent wage when they were much older (if tuition was £100k or £0k, you paid the treasury the same amount per year until you'd repaid your £20k of cost-of-living loans) When Cameron changed them to £10k a year (in today's money) in 2012, the repayment threshold was higher - if you unless you earn an average of £40k (median salary is £27k) you don't pay a penny back in tuition. Since Labour introduced the 2005 tuition increase, tuition has been a graduate tax in all but name. > was intended to keep unemployment down and get people to take on the financial burden of keeping themselves off the dole. The number of unskilled jobs will only decrease in the future. However undergraduate degrees isn't the solution. While jobs on a supermarket checkout vanish, and jobs assessing insurance claims, an even legal jobs, electricians and plumbers aren't going to be automated away any time soon. A big problem is that there is still a mentality that you need a degree to do a job of a given level - even if you're age 40. My own company seem to be doing well here, we employ apprentices at age 18, and giving them a lot of training and some university based education, and at the end they come out as a qualified broadcast engineer, with a degree. They've had 3 years of real world experience, but also have the piece of paper which serves as an insurance for obsolete companies in the future who won't look at a CV which doesn't have 'bsc' at the top.