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very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff. I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give s

by anm89 5y ago

very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff. I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.

BoysenberryPi 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?
- martythemaniak 5y ago
  I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it. There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In fact, if people focused on the value their so-called "bullshit" jobs provide other people, rather than on their own assessment of how meaningful their job is, they would likely end up much happier. It's an incredibly condescending and self-centered way to look at the world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - t-3 5y ago
    If the "bullshit" jobs were valuable to anyone, they wouldn't be bullshit, they would be highly coveted and celebrated positions.
- anm89 5y ago
  The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employee's perspective is one where the wage isn't worth it for the bullshit they have to put up with. In that case they should find a new one. If they can't, than putting up with that specific bullshit is still their best choice. If they keep showing up to work and taking that trade, apparently they don't think it's bullshit. And if the employer keeps thinking that the money is a good trade for their time, they apparently also don't think it's bullshit, otherwise they'd fire them. So if two people freely engage in the same trade of time for money everyday for years on end, then simply calling it bullshit isn't that profound. It starts to sound a lot like some way to intellectualize whining about not liking your job. So yeah, no amount of writing is going to save a totally broken premise.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both. Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit. There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.
    - biomcgary 5y ago
      Unfortunately, in some cases, the "value" is things like: keeping headcount up, not dealing with a problem employee.
      - anm89 5y ago
        Sure but if both parties freely decide to engage in this time money trad what do you propose to do? Do we want some congressional committee to sit around and decide which jobs are bullshit? I sure don't. It turns out the Nash equilibrium of the world is that some people have jobs that seem silly on the surface but end up being the optimal move for everyone involved. Out of all the problems in the world this seems like a weird one to fixate on.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Graeber didn't fixate on this. He saw it as a sad reflection of what the supposedly "best economic system in the history of man" had ended up creating in terms of meaningful work for actual human beings.
eightysixfour 5y ago
Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.
- crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
  What are some of these political changes?
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy. That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far: * I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage. * There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined. * There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair. * This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.

by anm89 5y ago

very interesting point. It seems to be a useful model for thinking about this stuff. I still think Bullshit Jobs was a terrible read but maybe I need to give some of his other stuff a shot.

BoysenberryPi 5y ago

Out of curiosity, what did you not like about Bullshit Jobs?

martythemaniak 5y ago
I thought "Debt" was absolutely fantastic and "Bullshit Jobs" was err.. complete bullshit. To best honest, the very premise of that view - that the only thing that matters is people's own opinions of their job - is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and it's probably downright harmful to people that adopt it. There are essential jobs that need doing regardless of the opinions of the workers who perform them. In fact, if people focused on the value their so-called "bullshit" jobs provide other people, rather than on their own assessment of how meaningful their job is, they would likely end up much happier. It's an incredibly condescending and self-centered way to look at the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- t-3 5y ago
  If the "bullshit" jobs were valuable to anyone, they wouldn't be bullshit, they would be highly coveted and celebrated positions.
anm89 5y ago
The whole premise is broken to me so the more he tries to dig in it just feels like deeper and deeper bs to me. Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. Jobs exist because the employer feels that the wage is a good trade for the person's time. The employee's perception of their contribution has essentially 0 importance in this interaction. A better definition of a bullshit job from the employee's perspective is one where the wage isn't worth it for the bullshit they have to put up with. In that case they should find a new one. If they can't, than putting up with that specific bullshit is still their best choice. If they keep showing up to work and taking that trade, apparently they don't think it's bullshit. And if the employer keeps thinking that the money is a good trade for their time, they apparently also don't think it's bullshit, otherwise they'd fire them. So if two people freely engage in the same trade of time for money everyday for years on end, then simply calling it bullshit isn't that profound. It starts to sound a lot like some way to intellectualize whining about not liking your job. So yeah, no amount of writing is going to save a totally broken premise.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Jobs don't exist for the employee, wages exist for the employee. This is a handwaving assertion. It happens to be strongly correlated with the way our society(ies) allocates labor, but is not something inherent to the labor/wage relationship. It's not hard to imagine a world in which people do things because those things matter to them, or are interesting to them, or both. Graeber didn't call them "Bullshit Jobs" because the jobs required dealing with bullshit, he called them "Bullshift Jobs" because the actual stated purpose of the job was at best deeply suspect and at worst, well, bullshit. There is a better fundamental critique of "Bullshit Jobs" which is a little more sophisticated, I think. That critique says that the reason people get confused about the meaning and importance of their job is that our economic system has grown too complex for them to really understand the role they play. The division of labor has reached such extreme levels that it is very difficult for many individuals to grasp how their "apparently meaningless aka bullshit" jobs could be contributing anything at all to the world. But their inability to understand or visualize this does not mean that their work is, in fact, meaningless or without value.
  - biomcgary 5y ago
    Unfortunately, in some cases, the "value" is things like: keeping headcount up, not dealing with a problem employee.
    - anm89 5y ago
      Sure but if both parties freely decide to engage in this time money trad what do you propose to do? Do we want some congressional committee to sit around and decide which jobs are bullshit? I sure don't. It turns out the Nash equilibrium of the world is that some people have jobs that seem silly on the surface but end up being the optimal move for everyone involved. Out of all the problems in the world this seems like a weird one to fixate on.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Graeber didn't fixate on this. He saw it as a sad reflection of what the supposedly "best economic system in the history of man" had ended up creating in terms of meaningful work for actual human beings.

eightysixfour 5y ago

Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.

crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
What are some of these political changes?
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy. That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far: * I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage. * There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined. * There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair. * This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.