4 ms·

So 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, wel

So 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 ago
What company is paying to do this?
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  I'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 ago
    I'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 ago
  Graveyards.
  - vntok 5y ago
    Which have you visited that dig and fill the same hole over and over again?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 5y ago
My 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.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Yeah that's bullshit though - it's a warped incentive caused by social systems. In a healthy social system, these incentives to make money doing pointless bullshit should be minimised. David Graeber is an anarchist, and the whole bullshit jobs concept is a criticism of capitalism.
smugglerFlynn 5y ago
Just for the record, some of the examples Graeber uses include airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive, middle management, and corporate compliance officers. You can call these jobs “bullshit” if you rely on an oversimplified version of the world where perfect airlines, perfect employees, and automatically enforced laws exist. Unfortunately, that’s also the exact view I often see in tech, where people tend to devalue work of others because its value does not seem to be self-explanatory in the first 60 seconds they spend on analysis of the situation. In real life your lost baggage experience would suck without the person behind the airline desk, you org won’t be able to scale without middle management, and your business would suffer budget cuts due to legal fines because the only proper way to stay legally compliant today is (surprise!) to hire a compliance officer. Good luck inventing some imaginary perfect-world systems where those issues do not exist and do not require extra staff you label as “bullshit”. Any kind of system which is designed and managed by people will have flaws and will require extra jobs handling these flaws. These jobs are not bullshit, they are valuable because they allow the system to exist and stay efficient.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  David Graeber is an anarchist, his criticism of bullshit jobs is about sustaining the centralisation of power, not techbro idealism. There is no reason outside of power dynamics why airline desk staff need to exist to comfort disgruntled passengers, because the existence of disgruntled passengers who need to be shooed off is a consequence of the airline industry.
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    Don't assume vested interest, like techbros do. Graeber was an anthropologist, and the book builds on his work more than on his views.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      I don't doubt that, but being an anarchist doesn't mean you can't criticise authority from an objective position. If anything, critiquing authority and power might lead you to both write this book, and take an anarchist position.

So 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 ago

What company is paying to do this?

beaconstudios 5y ago
I'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 ago
  I'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 ago
Graveyards.
- vntok 5y ago
  Which have you visited that dig and fill the same hole over and over again?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MattGaiser 5y ago

My 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.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Yeah that's bullshit though - it's a warped incentive caused by social systems. In a healthy social system, these incentives to make money doing pointless bullshit should be minimised. David Graeber is an anarchist, and the whole bullshit jobs concept is a criticism of capitalism.

smugglerFlynn 5y ago

Just for the record, some of the examples Graeber uses include airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive, middle management, and corporate compliance officers. You can call these jobs “bullshit” if you rely on an oversimplified version of the world where perfect airlines, perfect employees, and automatically enforced laws exist. Unfortunately, that’s also the exact view I often see in tech, where people tend to devalue work of others because its value does not seem to be self-explanatory in the first 60 seconds they spend on analysis of the situation. In real life your lost baggage experience would suck without the person behind the airline desk, you org won’t be able to scale without middle management, and your business would suffer budget cuts due to legal fines because the only proper way to stay legally compliant today is (surprise!) to hire a compliance officer. Good luck inventing some imaginary perfect-world systems where those issues do not exist and do not require extra staff you label as “bullshit”. Any kind of system which is designed and managed by people will have flaws and will require extra jobs handling these flaws. These jobs are not bullshit, they are valuable because they allow the system to exist and stay efficient.

beaconstudios 5y ago
David Graeber is an anarchist, his criticism of bullshit jobs is about sustaining the centralisation of power, not techbro idealism. There is no reason outside of power dynamics why airline desk staff need to exist to comfort disgruntled passengers, because the existence of disgruntled passengers who need to be shooed off is a consequence of the airline industry.
- sam_lowry_ 5y ago
  Don't assume vested interest, like techbros do. Graeber was an anthropologist, and the book builds on his work more than on his views.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I don't doubt that, but being an anarchist doesn't mean you can't criticise authority from an objective position. If anything, critiquing authority and power might lead you to both write this book, and take an anarchist position.