Haven't read the book, but have read the original article. I think Graeber noticed some important trends (the rise of administrative work, the underwhelming red

Haven't read the book, but have read the original article. I think Graeber noticed some important trends (the rise of administrative work, the underwhelming reduction in total work hours in the US) and then tried to pull them down two the individual, story telling level. Unfortunately, framing these as BS jobs is vitriolic, not useful, and frankly incorrect. A lot of these jobs and trends are not BS within the greater context in which we live, but are reflective our changed technologies and social demands. For a very vivid example, take a soldier (admittedly, a "goon" in the authors parlance). In 1900, the most effective individual soldier was likely armed with a repeating rifle. In 1965, an individual soldier (or small team) could fire a nuclear armed rocket. The change in effectiveness was massive, but necessitated massive changes in the workforce structure from "productive (or destructive, for individual soldiers) to "administrative" roles. This was done not only to support the creation of the weapon but to ensure it a) was placed at the utmost position of effectiveness and b) ensure it was never used at all. I'm rather happy the jobs in b in particular existed. The same could be imagined of a mining worker- where there once were hundreds of men with pickaxes and dynamite, there are now just a few driving very large machines to do the work, but with a substantially more people in the backend ensuring that these capital assets are used effectively, designed well, and are safe. That's not to say there aren't some extremely suspicious trends (the massive growth in the health administration seems to me the most problematic), but for the most part describing individual "jobs" as BS is incorrect.