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I disagree entirely with the thesis of "bullshit jobs". Unless it's a government job or mandated by regulations, someone is paying for a task to be done volunta
by seibelj 5y ago
I disagree entirely with the thesis of "bullshit jobs". Unless it's a government job or mandated by regulations, someone is paying for a task to be done voluntarily. Therefore it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker. I have never stumbled on a single job that wasn't government-required labor that had no purpose whatsoever, and furthermore the laborer wasn't able to quit.
- withinboredom 5y agoSure you can quit. But often these “bs jobs” are a form of scope creep so you face the thought that eventually, it may change.
- seibelj 5y agoCan you provide an example of a bullshit job?
- xracy 5y agoDid you read the article?
- seibelj 5y agoYes! However, as stated in the article, earning currency or items in videogames and reselling them have been around since the earliest days of online gaming. Plus these people are entrepreneurs working for themselves. I'm really not getting the link.
- xracy 5y ago"In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work." I would treat a bullshit job as any job/living that requires you to do useless work. How do you define "useless work"?
- all2well 5y agoSomething like Axie Infinity just seems _incredibly_ cynical. I sometimes joke that stuff like professional sports are just financial instruments, which only incidentally involve a ball of some sort. Play-to-earn and many crypto schemes seem to self-consciously be minimal veils to rope in people who otherwise wouldn't care about financial products.
- ViViDboarder 5y agoBecause it doesn’t provide any value. The game developers created an artificial demand by making a particular aspect of the game so unenjoyable that some people would pay others to do it. They could, instead, just offer people the better experience uniformly and deliver more value to their users. In this way, the demand and output is entirely artificial. The author here describes the main difference this new model and older games where similar economies developed is that this is considered a primary feature of the game and people are entering it for the purpose of grinding for cash. I remember many of the other games described such as RuneScape, Second Life, WoW, etc. where people sold in game currency or profiles, but they weren’t advertised as economic opportunities, but as games you play for entertainment. VCs weren’t investing in them for this purpose either.
- renewiltord 5y agoThe wikipedia article has examples from David Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- sam_lowry_ 5y agoHere is the original publication of the essay: https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ I have anecdotal evidence that it took financial circles by storm. One very well known CEO in the financial industry even wrote a book inspired by David Graeber a few years later.
- cochne 5y agoI'm not totally convinced after looking at that. "duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;" Is duct taping code never optimal?
- jakear 5y agoSome examples: receptionists, administrative assistances, quality control officers, compliance officers, and maintainers of bloated legacy software systems. I disagree that any of these jobs are “bullshit”. I think the most bullshit of all the jobs on that page is that author’s, who wastes society’s time listening to him complain about things he has no experience with.
- originalvichy 5y agoRead excerpts of his book or his essays on the topic. You might be suprised.
- seibelj 5y agoI read his writing, and I also read his Debt book and found it unimpressive and unconvincing.
- originalvichy 5y agoIf you read his book from cover to cover and found nothing that you would count even close to a bullshit job then alright I guess. You probably wouldn’t get hired to optimize resource usage and cut down redundancies in a private enterprise anytime soon.
- moneywoes 5y agoFor example?
- Aunche 5y agoI've read his essays, but not his books. Graeber does what every popular nonfiction writer does. He starts with a provocative conclusion, and cherrypicks data to support it. Bullshit Jobs is particularly bad in this aspect. https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullshit-jobs-thesis-may-be-well-bullshit https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullsh...
- sam_lowry_ 5y agoYou are linking to a critique. Here is the original essay: https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
- beaconstudios 5y agoSo if I paid you a salary to dig a hole and fill it up again, ad infinitum, that job would have inherent value just because I'm paying you to do it? If so, welcome aboard.
- seibelj 5y agoWhat company is paying to do this?
- beaconstudios 5y agoI'll pay you to do it. I'll incorporate a company and then pay you through that if it feels more legit that way.
- pietrovismara 5y agoI'm more than willing to pay tickets to watch that guy dig a hole perpetually and learn what a bullshit job is. Let's do it.
- xwdv 5y agoGraveyards.
- vntok 5y agoWhich have you visited that dig and fill the same hole over and over again?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y agoMy problem with the bullshit jobs thesis is the "inherent value." There are plenty of jobs that have little societal value, but provide plenty of value to the person employing the person. For example, plenty of jurisdictions give large tax breaks to farms, so it is reasonably common for developers holding land to turn their land into a "farm." One fellow I heard of put 6 cows on a plot of development land and paid someone to drop hay off for the cows as the land had next to no grass, as it was under development. No real value is being generated from the cows. The output of 6 poorly fed and housed beef cows is well under the money paid to the cow carer and for the hay and for the damage caused by the cows to the neighbourhood when they escaped. But the developer saved 80K a year in various property tax after all expenses were considered.
- DarylZero 5y agoI found his bullshit jobs article to be terrible and unconvincing, and many of the things he said about jobs just inaccurate. But I think your objection is not very strong and his thesis can be rescued from it. > it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker I think a lot of jobs really are "bullshit jobs," not because they have no value to the payer, but because they have negative value to the economy overall. For an extreme example, some people are willing to pay to have witnesses murdered so that they can continue committing crimes without legal repercussions. Or, some people are doing jobs that are purely for positional advantage and that are even "cancelled out" by other people in other companies doing another job. Advertisers seeking to take over market share from competing companies. Or, some extractive industries may be more beneficially halted because of negative externalities; but those who benefit from the extraction will still hire people.
- felix318 5y agoYou can create a job whose only function is to increase your cost and consequently allow you to charge more for your product or service. It doesn’t work if you do it on your own, but it does work if you can get the government to force your competitors to do it too. If you pay close attention, you will find that most government regulations that affect whole industries are actually the result of lobbying by the industries themselves. This is clearly visible in finance but it happens for almost any industry where there are powerful players. No one wants to increase their productivity without a corresponding increase in revenue - this includes corporations as well as individuals. Bullshit jobs need to be created to maintain high prices in face of constant downward pressure.