8 ms·

I don't agree with the conclusion. We can scale down our economies and still maintain production of essentials by ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody nee

I don't agree with the conclusion. We can scale down our economies and still maintain production of essentials by ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Starting with an overblown healthcare admin system in the US, IMHO, but also including less inflammatory non-essential things like yet another range of plastic toys and luxury perfumes and and and. Essentially in this scenario, we should take this as an opportunity to prune all Bullshit Jobs [1] and focus on things securing social, mental, and healthcare subsistence. Oh and maybe just don't move troops all around the planet to fuck up other people's place. It wasn't a good idea before, (both during the 1918 influenza wave and after that) and it's certainly not a good idea now. Save that money and manpower, put it to use for something constructive for a change. There you go, I guess I just pissed on every holy cow this crowd has. You know where the downvote button is. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

skrebbel 7y ago
> There you go, I guess I just pissed on every holy cow this crowd has. You know where the downvote button is. Your comment would've been stronger without this line.
TuringTest 7y ago
> ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Until we have a system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive, those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people.
- netsharc 7y ago
  The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    The real bullshit is the idea of debt in the first place. There is no debt. There's only the use of "debt" and "lending" as a thinly disguised pretext for feudal tribute used for political advantage. If we don't work through this it's going to kill us as a species. Doing strategically useful stuff that generates invention and opportunity instead of making plastic toys that end up in landfill is a different but not entirely unrelated problem.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      The fact that we have collectively chosen to prioritise designing, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and selling, the volume of plastic bullshit that we do, surely says something about us that warrants deep collective reflection.
  - 101404 7y ago
    UBI could be possible in a closed society, but not if you are open for uncontrolled influx of people from outside your society. Because the offer "get free money" is just too good. There was the choice what to focus on, and we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration. Fair choice, but the consequence is that UBI won't work anymore.
    - cyphar 7y ago
      > we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration The US definitely has an immigration policy. Not to mention that no serious politician today (despite what some media outlets may claim) is running on a platform of open borders.
    - tomp 7y ago
      That's why I've been arguing for a while that open immigration into Europe is unfeasible... EU countries already have forms of UBI, in the sense of strong social safety net, (mostly) free medicine, etc. Open immigration might be easier on the US as it provides less unconditional benefits to its residents.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  The Wikipedia reference OP provided claims Universal Basic Income as a solution.
- titzer 7y ago
  > those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people. IMHO, even as a recovering laissez-faire libertarian type, the real reason for those jobs is to create funnels of money to the top of society to make a very tiny fraction of the population obscenely wealthy. The bigger scale and the glitzier the funnel, the bigger the fountain of cash for the execs to splash around amongst them. Billionaires are a mathematical anomaly, and those busywork jobs are their payment for us not decapitating the bastards like it's 1789, coupled with an absolutely stunning propaganda blitz that hoodwinked us mere techie upper-middle classers into believing they earned it, deserved it, worked hard for it. It's a lie; a lifetime is not long enough to learn 120,000 lifetimes worth of wealth, and I don't give a shit how many warehouses or webpages your minions make. (sorry, this whole thing isn't directed at you; more like the Bezoses of the world).
- reportgunner 7y ago
  Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Give them work in production of things people need or delivering things people need. > system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive How could such a system work? Wouldn't that motivate everyone to stop being productive ?
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    A right to life is not a right to a comfortable life. I'm not arguing either way, but most people would still work to make their lives better. I'm assuming OP means something like a universal basic income, which I don't know what to think about.
freepor 7y ago
But the countries where almost everyone is participating in the production of essentials, and nobody is doing Bullshit Jobs, are the poorest in the world with the lowest life expectancies.
- Gehinnn 7y ago
  I think bullshit jobs are the consequence of a developed country, not the source.
kortilla 7y ago
> You know where the downvote button is. Don’t do this. It makes for boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your post was otherwise filled with pretty bog-standard leftist stuff that does just fine on HN.
- pengaru 7y ago
  > Don’t do this. It makes for boring reading. Your post was otherwise filled with pretty bog-standard leftist stuff that does just fine on HN. Speaking of boring reading...
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
Are you proposing a centrally planned economy, or how do you intend to ensure that people work only in allowable jobs and produce only acceptable products and services?
- TuringTest 7y ago
  There's an alternative model: that people who do nothing productive don't work at all in producing silly products and services, and they can spend their time doing things they enjoy instead. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    Who would choose to spend time working though if they could do whatever they wanted instead without cost?
    - jnwatson 7y ago
      Anybody that wants more money. You know, the same reason that folks look for promotions: more responsibility for more money.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      I believe the idea is to provide financial incentives to work.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      It's not without cost, you lose the additional income you'd get from working. People making $1,000/month expend extra effort to make more than that when the effort to make $1,000/month is nonzero, so I have no problem thinking people with any kind of opportunity will do so when the effort to make $1,000/month is zero, as they will have a lot more available unexpended effort.
      - ALittleLight 7y ago
Majestic121 7y ago
Anti-consumerism, anti-militarism and focusing on social security is not as rebel and edgy as you seem to think it is. If you get downvoted, it's probably more due to the childish tone of your comment rather than for your opinions
- tasogare 7y ago
  OP doesn't advocate anti-militarism, it's advocate to keep army at home. This is two very different things. A country can keep a top-notch army while not invading another country every decade. Japan is the best example of that, with its use of military largely restricted by the constitution.
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism "Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values." If you keep your army at home you're not really using it aggressively to expand national interests.
  - DCKing 7y ago
    Not an American, but the United States and its allies - and actually probably even most of its enemies - derive enormous economic value and peace from its military control of the world, which it achieves by its navy controlling the world seas and general striking power of its armed forces [0]. The United States determines the "world order" by being the remaining world's superpower (China is only beginning to challenge the US, and mostly at a regional level). Like it or not, the U.S. armed forces underpin the world's current economic system and its relative peace. The prosperity as a result of America's control is called Pax Americana [1]. Some might consider the U.S.' powers undesirable, but I'm not arguing in favor of the general desirability of Pax Americana here. I'm just saying: keep in mind that "keeping U.S. forces at home" and significant scaling back of the foundation of Pax Americana is not desirable from both an economic perspective (for nearly everyone) or military perspective (for probably everyone). Don't get me wrong - Pax Americana will end at some point, but it's in the best interest for everyone that this will be a mostly gradual change. For all Americans or non-Americans, it's not desirable that the U.S. withdraws its global army for any reason, including this calamity [2]. - [0]: Nukes aside, the United States army has the sheer striking force to obliterate any other armed force world wide. In a "U.S. versus the rest of the world combined" scenario, the U.S. would still have a good chance of winning. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana [2]: Not the point of my post, but I don't believe this would even be a reasonable calamity for the U.S. to withdraw its armed forces for at all - outside of a small percentage of reshuffling things. Not playing down the trouble we're in at all, but we should also be making an effort to make a relative return to normalcy well within this year / within a couple of months. This is what's already being done in China.
wwweston 7y ago
> scaling back shit that nobody needs. Do we know what nobody needs, for real? Sure, there might be some low-hanging fruit, but this seems like an area where Chesterton's fence would apply in spades, lest our judgments age as well as Rick Perry talking about the Department of Energy. And there's also the fact that it's demand for non-essential things that employs the large portion of people who moved out of farming and other necessities because we got good enough at production that they didn't need to be there. We might be able figure out how to fund productive things that incentives don't automatically align for, but this sounds trickier than it might seem at first glance.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  Given the lack of any incentives to prioritize productive work and useful products over feel-good products, it would actually be strange to discover that the economy is actually only producing useful items.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Indeed. In particular, one of the biggest and richest industries exists primarily to artificially induce demand for things that aren't needed.
- scotty79 7y ago
  > Do we know what nobody needs, for real? Fashion, advertising. You probably know the few. Free market under covid pressure will tell us what was the unnecessary crap that was basically just excuse to pay people so they can live.
lordnacho 7y ago
I think you're right that is is an opportunity to think about what we really need done in society, but the implications are simply enormous. One concrete thing that will come into focus, especially in this US election year, is the healthcare system. If the virus overwhelms the capacity in the US, it will be constantly in the news. There's no better use of the attention than to have that debate about how healthcare should be done. About the BS jobs, yes, there's undoubtedly a lot of those. I think the only way they go is if the crisis hits the economy so hard that many businesses collapse and are rebuilt, without those jobs. This would be a catastrophe for an awful lot of people. Now, one thing that might prove to be the difference between business going down and not is government intervention. So it's going to be interesting what level of aid is offered. My sense is the government will try to save as many businesses as possible, not taking the chance to clean out the mess left from two decades of excessively cheap money.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  One perspective is that we will continue on pretty much as we have been, replete with bullshit jobs, manicured lawns, and consumption to excess, because those are the only choices we know how to make.
- scotty79 7y ago
  > About the BS jobs, yes, there's undoubtedly a lot of those. I think the only way they go is if the crisis hits the economy so hard that many businesses collapse and are rebuilt, without those jobs. Maybe this will help to introduce basic income and to finally part with the silly notion that to survive you need an excuse of having some job even if that job is manufacturing products and services people don't really need and tricking them into buying those.
crispinb 7y ago
There are so many overloaded reasons to scale back the disastrous global 'economy' (not least of which is that we either do it at a time of our choosing, or ecosystem collapses will eventually do it for us), that the pandemic is almost redundant as motivation. So I'm sympathetic to your notion. On the other hand, I suspect heavily propagandised blinkers are even harder to shift during a crisis than in more stable times. Fearful people are driven to protect what they have, and are apt to react violently to do so. The "normal" global economy is a catastrophe, but we'll have to return to it (if such is possible) for some time at least.
WilliamEdward 7y ago
I was just reading this book on Bullshit Jobs https://www.loniya.org/storage/pdf/1535752644.pdf https://www.loniya.org/storage/pdf/1535752644.pdf It's an excellent introduction into the problems of capitalism for those not particularly interested in communism and just trying to get their feet wet.
jnwatson 7y ago
You’re essentially asking for the end of capitalism, and a restructuring of the economy we haven’t seen since the Great Leap Forward and the Maha Lout Ploh. The bullshit jobs are mostly the good jobs right now. The travel, restaurant, and entertainment industries are filled with non-bullshit jobs that are going away in the next week. In other words, you’re asking for half the world to get a different job.
jstummbillig 7y ago
I have zero strong feelings about anything you wrote, no holy cows, no anything else – but I do despise downvote-martyrdom. Please, let's not make this place reddit.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ;)
  - jstummbillig 7y ago
    I did not comment on the voting on a comment. I commented on the content of a comment.
simonh 7y ago
First off, that book is terrible and most of those jobs are perfectly valid. However lets assume we 'eliminate all the bullshit jobs', what do those people do, go home and self-isolate until there's a safe cheap vaccine? No, in this theoretical ideal perfect world you are proposing we conjured into existence in a matter of months, they would take up productive jobs. So they would be going to work, meeting people, socialising and spreading the virus just as much as they were before. It's no the same problem.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  The Wikipedia reference OP provided suggests Universal Basic Income as the solution. I believe the argument is that UBI could be conjured in to existence.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    With what money? The US population is 327 million. $1,000 * 12 * 327,000,000,000 = $3,924,000,000,000 Collected US tax revenue for 2019 was $3.46 trillion. Even if you could afford it in terms of money, it still wouldn't change anything, because you still have the same amount of goods available.
    - simonh 7y ago
      The problem isn't really the amount of goods, we have sufficient resources to meet everyone's basic needs. The problem is liquidity as commerce collapses and pay cheques for many people dwindle or disappear in the short to medium term. UBI would for most people be offset by increases in payroll taxes, so for the majority it would be a small overall change in income, up for some and down for others, dramatically buffering the cost compared to your calculation. Overall I'm a UBI skeptic, I don't see any way it could herald in a utopia of freedom some of it's proponents imagine. That's wishful thinking, but as an emergency measure to help people through a severe crisis like this it might make sense.
robocat 7y ago
> scaling back shit that nobody needs The “shit” nobody needs is the main point of living: music, art, science, sharing, pets; the crap you desire versus the essentials. If we only got what we needed to survive (food, shelter) that would be a pointless and depressing life.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  > music, art, science, sharing, pets; I don’t believe anybody is seriously arguing against any of those things.
  - new2628 7y ago
    OK, just to take the bait: I think pets are a net negative to the world.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
  > that would be a pointless and depressing life. The point of social distancing and quarantine measures now, is the choice between a hard time for the next few months, even to the point of it being "pointless and depressing"; and death.
- growlist 7y ago
  Oh come on! Hundreds of minor variations on the 'round blobby SUV with redundant angular surface forms' style; thousands of different variations on 'fat and water emulsified together with a dash of scent' for making your skin softer; fifty gorillion different types of shampoo - 'Because you're worth it!'. I'm all for a Hayek/Friedman approach to the markets, but I think even they would consider above trivialities in comparison with things like a supportive family, spiritual nourishment, a shared culture, social stability, etc. etc. The market needs to be kept in perspective. If all of that (illusory) choice was vastly attenuated tomorrow, people would quickly adapt.
  - robocat 7y ago
    No-one should be deciding for others what should be important. If I were a dictator, maybe I would think pets are pointless. Another person may think science is pointless. I think the vast majority of what people want is wasteful, but who am I to tell others what their priorities should be?
jariel 7y ago
None of this really has anything to do with solving the problem. Living in permanent social distancing, waiting to die from 3rd or 4th infection ... is not a humane way to live.
- majewsky 7y ago
  It does have something to do with the problem, though it's more adjacent than spot-on. Think about the dense crowds on airports, for example. How many of those people actually have to use an airplane to get where they need to be? I bet a lot of those are flying to a business meeting that could have been a telco or a chat instead. Or if their job turns out to be a bullshit job, the meeting would be entirely pointless.
onion2k 7y ago
scaling back shit that nobody needs That's half of Silicon Valley gone then.

skrebbel 7y ago

> There you go, I guess I just pissed on every holy cow this crowd has. You know where the downvote button is. Your comment would've been stronger without this line.

TuringTest 7y ago

> ``drumroll`` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Until we have a system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive, those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people.

netsharc 7y ago
The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  The real bullshit is the idea of debt in the first place. There is no debt. There's only the use of "debt" and "lending" as a thinly disguised pretext for feudal tribute used for political advantage. If we don't work through this it's going to kill us as a species. Doing strategically useful stuff that generates invention and opportunity instead of making plastic toys that end up in landfill is a different but not entirely unrelated problem.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    The fact that we have collectively chosen to prioritise designing, manufacturing, distributing, promoting, and selling, the volume of plastic bullshit that we do, surely says something about us that warrants deep collective reflection.
- 101404 7y ago
  UBI could be possible in a closed society, but not if you are open for uncontrolled influx of people from outside your society. Because the offer "get free money" is just too good. There was the choice what to focus on, and we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration. Fair choice, but the consequence is that UBI won't work anymore.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    > we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration The US definitely has an immigration policy. Not to mention that no serious politician today (despite what some media outlets may claim) is running on a platform of open borders.
  - tomp 7y ago
    That's why I've been arguing for a while that open immigration into Europe is unfeasible... EU countries already have forms of UBI, in the sense of strong social safety net, (mostly) free medicine, etc. Open immigration might be easier on the US as it provides less unconditional benefits to its residents.
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
The Wikipedia reference OP provided claims Universal Basic Income as a solution.
titzer 7y ago
> those busyworks are used to justify giving food, shelter and healthcare to those people. IMHO, even as a recovering laissez-faire libertarian type, the real reason for those jobs is to create funnels of money to the top of society to make a very tiny fraction of the population obscenely wealthy. The bigger scale and the glitzier the funnel, the bigger the fountain of cash for the execs to splash around amongst them. Billionaires are a mathematical anomaly, and those busywork jobs are their payment for us not decapitating the bastards like it's 1789, coupled with an absolutely stunning propaganda blitz that hoodwinked us mere techie upper-middle classers into believing they earned it, deserved it, worked hard for it. It's a lie; a lifetime is not long enough to learn 120,000 lifetimes worth of wealth, and I don't give a shit how many warehouses or webpages your minions make. (sorry, this whole thing isn't directed at you; more like the Bezoses of the world).
reportgunner 7y ago
Maybe, but what do you do with people whose livelihood depend on those superfluous bullshit jobs? Give them work in production of things people need or delivering things people need. > system that guarantees a right to life even if you do nothing productive How could such a system work? Wouldn't that motivate everyone to stop being productive ?
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  A right to life is not a right to a comfortable life. I'm not arguing either way, but most people would still work to make their lives better. I'm assuming OP means something like a universal basic income, which I don't know what to think about.

freepor 7y ago

But the countries where almost everyone is participating in the production of essentials, and nobody is doing Bullshit Jobs, are the poorest in the world with the lowest life expectancies.

Gehinnn 7y ago
I think bullshit jobs are the consequence of a developed country, not the source.

kortilla 7y ago

> You know where the downvote button is. Don’t do this. It makes for boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your post was otherwise filled with pretty bog-standard leftist stuff that does just fine on HN.

pengaru 7y ago
> Don’t do this. It makes for boring reading. Your post was otherwise filled with pretty bog-standard leftist stuff that does just fine on HN. Speaking of boring reading...

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

Are you proposing a centrally planned economy, or how do you intend to ensure that people work only in allowable jobs and produce only acceptable products and services?

TuringTest 7y ago
There's an alternative model: that people who do nothing productive don't work at all in producing silly products and services, and they can spend their time doing things they enjoy instead. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  Who would choose to spend time working though if they could do whatever they wanted instead without cost?
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    Anybody that wants more money. You know, the same reason that folks look for promotions: more responsibility for more money.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    I believe the idea is to provide financial incentives to work.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    It's not without cost, you lose the additional income you'd get from working. People making $1,000/month expend extra effort to make more than that when the effort to make $1,000/month is nonzero, so I have no problem thinking people with any kind of opportunity will do so when the effort to make $1,000/month is zero, as they will have a lot more available unexpended effort.
    - ALittleLight 7y ago

Majestic121 7y ago

Anti-consumerism, anti-militarism and focusing on social security is not as rebel and edgy as you seem to think it is. If you get downvoted, it's probably more due to the childish tone of your comment rather than for your opinions

tasogare 7y ago
OP doesn't advocate anti-militarism, it's advocate to keep army at home. This is two very different things. A country can keep a top-notch army while not invading another country every decade. Japan is the best example of that, with its use of military largely restricted by the constitution.
- austhrow743 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism "Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values." If you keep your army at home you're not really using it aggressively to expand national interests.
- DCKing 7y ago
  Not an American, but the United States and its allies - and actually probably even most of its enemies - derive enormous economic value and peace from its military control of the world, which it achieves by its navy controlling the world seas and general striking power of its armed forces [0]. The United States determines the "world order" by being the remaining world's superpower (China is only beginning to challenge the US, and mostly at a regional level). Like it or not, the U.S. armed forces underpin the world's current economic system and its relative peace. The prosperity as a result of America's control is called Pax Americana [1]. Some might consider the U.S.' powers undesirable, but I'm not arguing in favor of the general desirability of Pax Americana here. I'm just saying: keep in mind that "keeping U.S. forces at home" and significant scaling back of the foundation of Pax Americana is not desirable from both an economic perspective (for nearly everyone) or military perspective (for probably everyone). Don't get me wrong - Pax Americana will end at some point, but it's in the best interest for everyone that this will be a mostly gradual change. For all Americans or non-Americans, it's not desirable that the U.S. withdraws its global army for any reason, including this calamity [2]. - [0]: Nukes aside, the United States army has the sheer striking force to obliterate any other armed force world wide. In a "U.S. versus the rest of the world combined" scenario, the U.S. would still have a good chance of winning. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana [2]: Not the point of my post, but I don't believe this would even be a reasonable calamity for the U.S. to withdraw its armed forces for at all - outside of a small percentage of reshuffling things. Not playing down the trouble we're in at all, but we should also be making an effort to make a relative return to normalcy well within this year / within a couple of months. This is what's already being done in China.

wwweston 7y ago

> scaling back shit that nobody needs. Do we know what nobody needs, for real? Sure, there might be some low-hanging fruit, but this seems like an area where Chesterton's fence would apply in spades, lest our judgments age as well as Rick Perry talking about the Department of Energy. And there's also the fact that it's demand for non-essential things that employs the large portion of people who moved out of farming and other necessities because we got good enough at production that they didn't need to be there. We might be able figure out how to fund productive things that incentives don't automatically align for, but this sounds trickier than it might seem at first glance.

tsimionescu 7y ago
Given the lack of any incentives to prioritize productive work and useful products over feel-good products, it would actually be strange to discover that the economy is actually only producing useful items.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Indeed. In particular, one of the biggest and richest industries exists primarily to artificially induce demand for things that aren't needed.
scotty79 7y ago
> Do we know what nobody needs, for real? Fashion, advertising. You probably know the few. Free market under covid pressure will tell us what was the unnecessary crap that was basically just excuse to pay people so they can live.

lordnacho 7y ago

I think you're right that is is an opportunity to think about what we really need done in society, but the implications are simply enormous. One concrete thing that will come into focus, especially in this US election year, is the healthcare system. If the virus overwhelms the capacity in the US, it will be constantly in the news. There's no better use of the attention than to have that debate about how healthcare should be done. About the BS jobs, yes, there's undoubtedly a lot of those. I think the only way they go is if the crisis hits the economy so hard that many businesses collapse and are rebuilt, without those jobs. This would be a catastrophe for an awful lot of people. Now, one thing that might prove to be the difference between business going down and not is government intervention. So it's going to be interesting what level of aid is offered. My sense is the government will try to save as many businesses as possible, not taking the chance to clean out the mess left from two decades of excessively cheap money.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
One perspective is that we will continue on pretty much as we have been, replete with bullshit jobs, manicured lawns, and consumption to excess, because those are the only choices we know how to make.
scotty79 7y ago
> About the BS jobs, yes, there's undoubtedly a lot of those. I think the only way they go is if the crisis hits the economy so hard that many businesses collapse and are rebuilt, without those jobs. Maybe this will help to introduce basic income and to finally part with the silly notion that to survive you need an excuse of having some job even if that job is manufacturing products and services people don't really need and tricking them into buying those.

crispinb 7y ago

There are so many overloaded reasons to scale back the disastrous global 'economy' (not least of which is that we either do it at a time of our choosing, or ecosystem collapses will eventually do it for us), that the pandemic is almost redundant as motivation. So I'm sympathetic to your notion. On the other hand, I suspect heavily propagandised blinkers are even harder to shift during a crisis than in more stable times. Fearful people are driven to protect what they have, and are apt to react violently to do so. The "normal" global economy is a catastrophe, but we'll have to return to it (if such is possible) for some time at least.

WilliamEdward 7y ago

I was just reading this book on Bullshit Jobs https://www.loniya.org/storage/pdf/1535752644.pdf https://www.loniya.org/storage/pdf/1535752644.pdf It's an excellent introduction into the problems of capitalism for those not particularly interested in communism and just trying to get their feet wet.

jnwatson 7y ago

You’re essentially asking for the end of capitalism, and a restructuring of the economy we haven’t seen since the Great Leap Forward and the Maha Lout Ploh. The bullshit jobs are mostly the good jobs right now. The travel, restaurant, and entertainment industries are filled with non-bullshit jobs that are going away in the next week. In other words, you’re asking for half the world to get a different job.

jstummbillig 7y ago

I have zero strong feelings about anything you wrote, no holy cows, no anything else – but I do despise downvote-martyrdom. Please, let's not make this place reddit.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ;)
- jstummbillig 7y ago
  I did not comment on the voting on a comment. I commented on the content of a comment.

simonh 7y ago

First off, that book is terrible and most of those jobs are perfectly valid. However lets assume we 'eliminate all the bullshit jobs', what do those people do, go home and self-isolate until there's a safe cheap vaccine? No, in this theoretical ideal perfect world you are proposing we conjured into existence in a matter of months, they would take up productive jobs. So they would be going to work, meeting people, socialising and spreading the virus just as much as they were before. It's no the same problem.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
The Wikipedia reference OP provided suggests Universal Basic Income as the solution. I believe the argument is that UBI could be conjured in to existence.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  With what money? The US population is 327 million. $1,000 * 12 * 327,000,000,000 = $3,924,000,000,000 Collected US tax revenue for 2019 was $3.46 trillion. Even if you could afford it in terms of money, it still wouldn't change anything, because you still have the same amount of goods available.
  - simonh 7y ago
    The problem isn't really the amount of goods, we have sufficient resources to meet everyone's basic needs. The problem is liquidity as commerce collapses and pay cheques for many people dwindle or disappear in the short to medium term. UBI would for most people be offset by increases in payroll taxes, so for the majority it would be a small overall change in income, up for some and down for others, dramatically buffering the cost compared to your calculation. Overall I'm a UBI skeptic, I don't see any way it could herald in a utopia of freedom some of it's proponents imagine. That's wishful thinking, but as an emergency measure to help people through a severe crisis like this it might make sense.

robocat 7y ago

> scaling back shit that nobody needs The “shit” nobody needs is the main point of living: music, art, science, sharing, pets; the crap you desire versus the essentials. If we only got what we needed to survive (food, shelter) that would be a pointless and depressing life.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
> music, art, science, sharing, pets; I don’t believe anybody is seriously arguing against any of those things.
- new2628 7y ago
  OK, just to take the bait: I think pets are a net negative to the world.
SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
> that would be a pointless and depressing life. The point of social distancing and quarantine measures now, is the choice between a hard time for the next few months, even to the point of it being "pointless and depressing"; and death.
growlist 7y ago
Oh come on! Hundreds of minor variations on the 'round blobby SUV with redundant angular surface forms' style; thousands of different variations on 'fat and water emulsified together with a dash of scent' for making your skin softer; fifty gorillion different types of shampoo - 'Because you're worth it!'. I'm all for a Hayek/Friedman approach to the markets, but I think even they would consider above trivialities in comparison with things like a supportive family, spiritual nourishment, a shared culture, social stability, etc. etc. The market needs to be kept in perspective. If all of that (illusory) choice was vastly attenuated tomorrow, people would quickly adapt.
- robocat 7y ago
  No-one should be deciding for others what should be important. If I were a dictator, maybe I would think pets are pointless. Another person may think science is pointless. I think the vast majority of what people want is wasteful, but who am I to tell others what their priorities should be?

jariel 7y ago

None of this really has anything to do with solving the problem. Living in permanent social distancing, waiting to die from 3rd or 4th infection ... is not a humane way to live.

majewsky 7y ago
It does have something to do with the problem, though it's more adjacent than spot-on. Think about the dense crowds on airports, for example. How many of those people actually have to use an airplane to get where they need to be? I bet a lot of those are flying to a business meeting that could have been a telco or a chat instead. Or if their job turns out to be a bullshit job, the meeting would be entirely pointless.

onion2k 7y ago

scaling back shit that nobody needs That's half of Silicon Valley gone then.