Huge amounts of the economy are not competitive markets, even ignoring state enterprises. For instance: large companies and monopolies can stand to sustain a l

Huge amounts of the economy are not competitive markets, even ignoring state enterprises. For instance: large companies and monopolies can stand to sustain a lot of "bullshit" as anticompetitive pressures and just economics of scale and generally just social inertia (e.g. "well competitor X might be cheaper but do they represent higher risk?") let them get away with inefficient practices. They have to do a lot of bullshit before this becomes a risk to them. Most companies have some elasticity on this also when what they can spend is not directly tied to their revenue and their competitive position in the market. I.e. they can raise more money than their competitive position might suggest through either loans or investment. Loans and investments cannot be perfectly efficient because there is always incomplete information when awarding finance. This may occur in some types of startups but it's true for many established companies as well. It's not necessarily the case either that bullshit jobs have to be stable in order to represent a large chunk of the labour market either. They may be wiped out by competitive pressures in one area only to open up in another. Charities/non-profits may also provide another place for bullshit jobs to hide. Not all charities are perfectly efficient and they do not operate competitively. In almost every corner of the economy there are inefficiencies where bullshit jobs can hide.