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The Hitchiker's Guide already had a rant about useless jobs like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers. While I don't necessarily agree with hairdressers being

by lores 2y ago

The Hitchiker's Guide already had a rant about useless jobs like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers. While I don't necessarily agree with hairdressers being useless, I feel like much of the economy is selling stuff no one really needs to solve problems no one really has in order to justify one's employment, and that share is increasing as automation scales the useful things with proportionately less effort. That's just the software section of it. Other sectors can bundle the useless into a product you need to buy as a whole, like cars or TVs, one-purpose software has no bundling.

relaxing 2y ago
The point of that rant was the culture that got rid of the telephone sanitizers was subsequently wiped out by communicable disease. A lesson we still struggle with…
- lores 2y ago
  I take it as just a joke, not as Douglas Adams pointing out no job is useless, because management consultants were included too and I can't see him think THEY are useful, but it's possible.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    My takeaway was the people who would decide entire swaths of society were useless were also idiots.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      Whoever decided to downvote a thread on the Hitchhikers Guide of all things rather than join the conversation is an embarrassment to the profession.
alehlopeh 2y ago
No one needs hairdressers? How do you figure?
- pixxel 2y ago
  [dead]
- saghm 2y ago
  As someone who spent most of my life with short hair but only started growing it longer in the past few years, I suspect that a lot of people who haven't had long hair drastically underestimate how much work goes into keeping it healthy and neat.
  - UncleEntity 2y ago
    Nah, just stop shaving as well and people compliment you on the commitment to the beard. Added bonus for the Unabomber vibe.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    More importantly, if somebody wants to pay a hairdresser, what business is it of anybody else whether they "need" it or not?
- lores 2y ago
  I'm saying I don't agree with it! (and I say that despite not having had my hair cut since the pandemic)
- 9rx 2y ago
  Need vs desire. A buzzcut, which is easy to give yourself, is all you need. Of course, it is understandable why you might desire a different style that is beyond your own capabilities. All jobs fulfill something desirable for someone, but they aren't necessarily needed.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  My mom was the first in her family to pay for haircuts. Before that either your mom did your hair, or your mom's friend came over and did hers. I didn't get a paid haircut until junior high. So people don't need them in the way they don't need automatic dishwashing machines to have clean dishes.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
I see automation scaling the less useful things, while the stuff we really need (on site trades, healthcare, child care, farming, etc) is having a hard time scaling.
- lores 2y ago
  Oh, yes, some stuff scales badly for sure, but for example farming scales hugely! Medieval societies required 80-90% farmers in Western Europe, it's now somewhere around 1-2%.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. Also, that 1% to 2% is for grains and other stuff that can be easily harvested with large machines, which is awesome, but the delicate fruits and vegetables and nuts from more tropical places seem to be far above 1% to 2%.
    - 9rx 2y ago
      > Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. By headcount, but I am not sure that tells the whole story. After all, a retiree who owns farmland, but lets another farmer do the work, can still be legally considered a farmer himself. I suspect even the average farmer working in the fields is spending considerably less time there than he would have in the past. And that's with most farmers not even using the latest and greatest technology. If we imagine a world where only the highest capacity state-of-the-art machines are put to use, a lot of the farmers would struggle to find any work to do.
    - bmicraft 2y ago
      > Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. Completely autonomous farming vehicles have only been a thing for a few years and not been universally adopted yet (partly due to the high cost). I suspect there are still some ways to go here.
    - seec 2y ago
      You are confounding what's necessary for our survival from what people may want/desire. Fruit/vegetables as we know today are largely unnecessary and a luxury we have learned to love. In fact, most of the love for it comes from rich people posturing about it because they have both the means to buy them and time to process them. When you look at them objectively, they are extremely bad from an effort to payoff point of view, making them purely pleasure/status driven food. If you clock back just a hundred years you will realize that most fruits/veggies were not even well known (at least not in their modern form) and not something to worry about. The pizzas with tomato sauce were created because basically nobody wanted this weird unknown fruit coming from the new world. Brussel sprouts so bitter that most people could not even digest them properly and they were truly disgusting to eat (basically food poisoning). I could go on and on but the fact is vegetable and fruits are something we do purely for pleasure, we have improved the farming efficiency on many of them but it hardly matters for most of them because more supply doesn't mean the surplus will necessarily get eaten (you need to have people both richer and with more time for that). In fact, the whole "organic" thing is something related to this fact, it's rich people who wanted to raise the stakes for purchasing veggies because it has become "too cheap" with imports (thanks to low wage cost in exporting countries). The proper farming that actually feeds the world has already scaled beyond the point where it's reasonable to try and squeeze more out of it. In fact, the problem has become to manage the thing economically because over supplying makes some extremely large operations with big fixed costs a gamble.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
I think other people see that as well and they see that it's no longer sustainable. I feel like that is, in part, what is driving the current political climate in the U.S.
hanon126 2y ago
[flagged]
seec 2y ago
Hairdresser are extremely useful even from just a utility standpoint (no going for any fancy cut) because that is something that is extremely hard to do yourself (almost impossible if you don't want basic army cut in fact). I don't know how one can come up with such nonsense as hairdresser being a bullshit job. What's next, cooks? There are indeed plenty of bullshit jobs, but they are systemically the bureaucratic paper pushers that has all the power in today's society (both in monetary terms and political terms), because they have some sort of diploma (which is mostly a way to show allegiance to the regime). Those people are demonstrably dumber than many of the people doing actually useful jobs (often less paid with none of the advantage of the bureaucrats) but they hold most of the power collectively, and they are not giving it up.

by lores 2y ago

relaxing 2y ago

The point of that rant was the culture that got rid of the telephone sanitizers was subsequently wiped out by communicable disease. A lesson we still struggle with…

lores 2y ago
I take it as just a joke, not as Douglas Adams pointing out no job is useless, because management consultants were included too and I can't see him think THEY are useful, but it's possible.
- relaxing 2y ago
  My takeaway was the people who would decide entire swaths of society were useless were also idiots.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    Whoever decided to downvote a thread on the Hitchhikers Guide of all things rather than join the conversation is an embarrassment to the profession.

alehlopeh 2y ago

No one needs hairdressers? How do you figure?

pixxel 2y ago
[dead]
saghm 2y ago
As someone who spent most of my life with short hair but only started growing it longer in the past few years, I suspect that a lot of people who haven't had long hair drastically underestimate how much work goes into keeping it healthy and neat.
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  Nah, just stop shaving as well and people compliment you on the commitment to the beard. Added bonus for the Unabomber vibe.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  More importantly, if somebody wants to pay a hairdresser, what business is it of anybody else whether they "need" it or not?
lores 2y ago
I'm saying I don't agree with it! (and I say that despite not having had my hair cut since the pandemic)
9rx 2y ago
Need vs desire. A buzzcut, which is easy to give yourself, is all you need. Of course, it is understandable why you might desire a different style that is beyond your own capabilities. All jobs fulfill something desirable for someone, but they aren't necessarily needed.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
My mom was the first in her family to pay for haircuts. Before that either your mom did your hair, or your mom's friend came over and did hers. I didn't get a paid haircut until junior high. So people don't need them in the way they don't need automatic dishwashing machines to have clean dishes.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

I see automation scaling the less useful things, while the stuff we really need (on site trades, healthcare, child care, farming, etc) is having a hard time scaling.

lores 2y ago
Oh, yes, some stuff scales badly for sure, but for example farming scales hugely! Medieval societies required 80-90% farmers in Western Europe, it's now somewhere around 1-2%.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. Also, that 1% to 2% is for grains and other stuff that can be easily harvested with large machines, which is awesome, but the delicate fruits and vegetables and nuts from more tropical places seem to be far above 1% to 2%.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    > Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. By headcount, but I am not sure that tells the whole story. After all, a retiree who owns farmland, but lets another farmer do the work, can still be legally considered a farmer himself. I suspect even the average farmer working in the fields is spending considerably less time there than he would have in the past. And that's with most farmers not even using the latest and greatest technology. If we imagine a world where only the highest capacity state-of-the-art machines are put to use, a lot of the farmers would struggle to find any work to do.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    > Yes, but we seem to have plateaued there. Completely autonomous farming vehicles have only been a thing for a few years and not been universally adopted yet (partly due to the high cost). I suspect there are still some ways to go here.
  - seec 2y ago
    You are confounding what's necessary for our survival from what people may want/desire. Fruit/vegetables as we know today are largely unnecessary and a luxury we have learned to love. In fact, most of the love for it comes from rich people posturing about it because they have both the means to buy them and time to process them. When you look at them objectively, they are extremely bad from an effort to payoff point of view, making them purely pleasure/status driven food. If you clock back just a hundred years you will realize that most fruits/veggies were not even well known (at least not in their modern form) and not something to worry about. The pizzas with tomato sauce were created because basically nobody wanted this weird unknown fruit coming from the new world. Brussel sprouts so bitter that most people could not even digest them properly and they were truly disgusting to eat (basically food poisoning). I could go on and on but the fact is vegetable and fruits are something we do purely for pleasure, we have improved the farming efficiency on many of them but it hardly matters for most of them because more supply doesn't mean the surplus will necessarily get eaten (you need to have people both richer and with more time for that). In fact, the whole "organic" thing is something related to this fact, it's rich people who wanted to raise the stakes for purchasing veggies because it has become "too cheap" with imports (thanks to low wage cost in exporting countries). The proper farming that actually feeds the world has already scaled beyond the point where it's reasonable to try and squeeze more out of it. In fact, the problem has become to manage the thing economically because over supplying makes some extremely large operations with big fixed costs a gamble.

HumblyTossed 2y ago

I think other people see that as well and they see that it's no longer sustainable. I feel like that is, in part, what is driving the current political climate in the U.S.

hanon126 2y ago

[flagged]

seec 2y ago

Hairdresser are extremely useful even from just a utility standpoint (no going for any fancy cut) because that is something that is extremely hard to do yourself (almost impossible if you don't want basic army cut in fact). I don't know how one can come up with such nonsense as hairdresser being a bullshit job. What's next, cooks? There are indeed plenty of bullshit jobs, but they are systemically the bureaucratic paper pushers that has all the power in today's society (both in monetary terms and political terms), because they have some sort of diploma (which is mostly a way to show allegiance to the regime). Those people are demonstrably dumber than many of the people doing actually useful jobs (often less paid with none of the advantage of the bureaucrats) but they hold most of the power collectively, and they are not giving it up.