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This article completely fails to demonstrate that Fake Work exists in any meaningful quantity. I could just as easily have written an article titled "Phlogisto

This article completely fails to demonstrate that Fake Work exists in any meaningful quantity. I could just as easily have written an article titled "Phlogiston is Destroying America". How do you distinguish Fake Work from Real Work? There are some plausible tests presented, but they all concern a lack of understanding about the nature of the work on the worker's part. This lack of understanding is lamentable, but it does not mean that the work is Fake. For all of these questions below, it's easy to imagine a ditch-digger asking them, even assuming the ditch-digger is doing Real Work: > How is this even productive? > Is this really what they are having me do? > What is the purpose of this? > I can’t believe how inefficient this is! There has to be a better way. A lot of work sucks. If it were pleasant, you probably wouldn't require a salary to do it. Also, there are a lot of tasks that are easily questioned at a micro- or individual level, but that make sense as policy at an organizational level. This article is pure fluff, offering feel-good "insight" but nothing concrete in terms of identifying real problems or solutions. I can certainly acknowledge that "busywork" or "Fake Work" exists, but I am not convinced it is a major problem at a national level.

cma 16y ago
The real flaw is that he focuses on fake work involved in servicing the bureaucracy itself (useless reports, etc.) when in actually the end product is just as likely to be fake work, due to positional externalities. Many (perhaps the majority of) products beyond basic subsistence are (in whole or in part) meant to provide status. Increasing the status of one person roughly proportionately decreases the status of another, rendering that product more or less useless from a societal point of view. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen puts forth a compelling argument along these lines.
evizaer 16y ago
I had the same response. The way the article is written stinks of vagueness, imprecision, and general overgenerality. Meaning evaporates under the intense heat of simplification and excessive abstraction. The author does nothing more than suggest that wasted time is a bad thing--which is obviously tautological. It certainly makes us and the writer, who are external to "fake work" and clearly superior, feel good about ourselves. We can see this evil that most of the inferior idiots/sheeple/morons/minions/lackeys/middle-managers/people-from-the-wrong-country are outrageously blind to. There's not much going on aside from ego-stroking in the article. (And yes, you could probably say the same about THIS post if you really wanted to get into it. I think it's important, though, to isolate articles trying to say concretely meaningful things from articles that are just here to make us feel good about ourselves at the expense of some indistinct others.)

cma 16y ago

The real flaw is that he focuses on fake work involved in servicing the bureaucracy itself (useless reports, etc.) when in actually the end product is just as likely to be fake work, due to positional externalities. Many (perhaps the majority of) products beyond basic subsistence are (in whole or in part) meant to provide status. Increasing the status of one person roughly proportionately decreases the status of another, rendering that product more or less useless from a societal point of view. The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen puts forth a compelling argument along these lines.

evizaer 16y ago

I had the same response. The way the article is written stinks of vagueness, imprecision, and general overgenerality. Meaning evaporates under the intense heat of simplification and excessive abstraction. The author does nothing more than suggest that wasted time is a bad thing--which is obviously tautological. It certainly makes us and the writer, who are external to "fake work" and clearly superior, feel good about ourselves. We can see this evil that most of the inferior idiots/sheeple/morons/minions/lackeys/middle-managers/people-from-the-wrong-country are outrageously blind to. There's not much going on aside from ego-stroking in the article. (And yes, you could probably say the same about THIS post if you really wanted to get into it. I think it's important, though, to isolate articles trying to say concretely meaningful things from articles that are just here to make us feel good about ourselves at the expense of some indistinct others.)