This paper uses a substantially different (and in my opinion useless) definition of bullshit. People feel useful if their work contributes towards achieving ob

This paper uses a substantially different (and in my opinion useless) definition of bullshit. People feel useful if their work contributes towards achieving objectives. If you're on a ship taking on water, bailing out that water is incredibly useful. On the other hand a security guard who hasn't had to deal with an incident in years probably feels quite useless. Meaningfully contributing however requires that objective to be one that needs doing. If the ship is only taking on water because some basic maintenance has been neglected, that doesn't make it any less important to bail out the water, but it's BS that you have to in the first place. While the security guard may never do anything productive, simply being available on the off chance there is an incident is a major and indispensable reduction of risk for the organization which depending on circumstances, may very well not be able to operate without it; certainly not BS at all. Most people do work hard to deal with the problems they face day in and day out. That doesn't mean the problem should have existed in the first place, and Graeber correctly defines a bullshit job in such a way that a very much not-bullshit employee can nevertheless find themself in the soul crushing position of working a bullshit job. Any alternative definition where that soul crushing situation isn't possible completely misses the point of his research.