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>>The question is, are we getting more out of it? This really is the question, quite literally, in economics. That's basically what economics studies. The out

>>The question is, are we getting more out of it? This really is the question, quite literally, in economics. That's basically what economics studies. The outputs of a car factory are easy to measure. How many cars came out? We can quibble over quality, but quantity is most of the game and that is measurable. Administration is harder to measure. David Graeber, in his provocateur style, concluded that they are more efficient in the sense that they produce a lot more paperwork... which is their output. Economists would consider this nonsensical as paperwork itself doesn't benefit anyone and can't be considered an output. He wasn't an economist though.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
> Economists would consider this nonsensical as paperwork itself doesn't benefit anyone and can't be considered an output. He wasn't an economist though. Or they would observe that wages are paid to produce it and estimate it's worth based on the total wages and total pages of paperwork. It's a very blind method, but it makes a certain sort of sense.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  ..effectively they do do this. The baseline assumption is generally that "prices are correct" and that the value of such paperwork is worth more than the salary to whoever pays for it. When theorizing though, economists don't consider the paperwork itself an output. If that administrator works for a car company, it's considered to be a contribution towards outputting cars.
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    To be honest I generally trust anthropologists to deliver more insight at the more human level that administrators work at, economic theory makes most sense only in the special circumstances where a large group of people are trying to be coldly calculating within a market setting. Most people just try to escape bureaucracy, so good empirical measurement is about all I currently hope to get from economists.
    - dalbasal 6y ago
      Economics, like a lot of "social sciences" tends to get caught up in hammer-nail problems. But uniquely, economics is highly influential on politics and was at the heart of cold war philosophical battles between the US & USSR. This hardened heads.
    - pas 6y ago
      Different aspects. It's quite possible that most jobs are low-value bullshit (as observed by anthropologists) while at the same time they have non-zero contribution to the economy, because there's a market for whatever output they happen to produce (as observed by economists). And both seem to be very much true. After all the economy is not just made of cars, but there are paintings, and festivals, and there are people who pay to travel to other places just to see that place with their own eyes, and it's also charity, and it's also insurance, finance, and other meta-services, and whatever humans prefer more than keeping their money in their wallet (or in ETFs). Add to all this the good old agent-principal problem, and we can quickly see why there are bullshit jobs. Because lot of decision makers (especially when the responsibility is diffused) opt to organize work in a way that helps themselves by helping those who are close to them. (Eg. nepotism, cronyism, but also the watered down versions of them too, when someone just gets a bullshit job.) Furthermore, it's a testament to how much economic surplus is produced nowadays that so many relatively low-output jobs can be sustained. Aaand, there's also one other important point considering these seemingly do-nothing paper-pusher jobs. They are (knowledge and know-how) buffers for organizations against fluctuation. They provide stable (hand off) points for more productive more fast moving folks. (Literally, if someone changes positions inside an or between organization(s) they need someone to tell them about the boring details. And since reading all the thousands of documents produced each year is very useless, it's economical to have people keep stuff in their head.) Could it be done better? Sure. That's what startups try to do, to "disrupt" the old inefficient network of work. But as they grow they too face the same problems (though of course usually on a different level).

SiempreViernes 6y ago

> Economists would consider this nonsensical as paperwork itself doesn't benefit anyone and can't be considered an output. He wasn't an economist though. Or they would observe that wages are paid to produce it and estimate it's worth based on the total wages and total pages of paperwork. It's a very blind method, but it makes a certain sort of sense.

dalbasal 6y ago
..effectively they do do this. The baseline assumption is generally that "prices are correct" and that the value of such paperwork is worth more than the salary to whoever pays for it. When theorizing though, economists don't consider the paperwork itself an output. If that administrator works for a car company, it's considered to be a contribution towards outputting cars.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  To be honest I generally trust anthropologists to deliver more insight at the more human level that administrators work at, economic theory makes most sense only in the special circumstances where a large group of people are trying to be coldly calculating within a market setting. Most people just try to escape bureaucracy, so good empirical measurement is about all I currently hope to get from economists.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Economics, like a lot of "social sciences" tends to get caught up in hammer-nail problems. But uniquely, economics is highly influential on politics and was at the heart of cold war philosophical battles between the US & USSR. This hardened heads.
  - pas 6y ago
    Different aspects. It's quite possible that most jobs are low-value bullshit (as observed by anthropologists) while at the same time they have non-zero contribution to the economy, because there's a market for whatever output they happen to produce (as observed by economists). And both seem to be very much true. After all the economy is not just made of cars, but there are paintings, and festivals, and there are people who pay to travel to other places just to see that place with their own eyes, and it's also charity, and it's also insurance, finance, and other meta-services, and whatever humans prefer more than keeping their money in their wallet (or in ETFs). Add to all this the good old agent-principal problem, and we can quickly see why there are bullshit jobs. Because lot of decision makers (especially when the responsibility is diffused) opt to organize work in a way that helps themselves by helping those who are close to them. (Eg. nepotism, cronyism, but also the watered down versions of them too, when someone just gets a bullshit job.) Furthermore, it's a testament to how much economic surplus is produced nowadays that so many relatively low-output jobs can be sustained. Aaand, there's also one other important point considering these seemingly do-nothing paper-pusher jobs. They are (knowledge and know-how) buffers for organizations against fluctuation. They provide stable (hand off) points for more productive more fast moving folks. (Literally, if someone changes positions inside an or between organization(s) they need someone to tell them about the boring details. And since reading all the thousands of documents produced each year is very useless, it's economical to have people keep stuff in their head.) Could it be done better? Sure. That's what startups try to do, to "disrupt" the old inefficient network of work. But as they grow they too face the same problems (though of course usually on a different level).