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It's an important function in a capitalist economy. Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life". That said, some advertising can be useful to inform co

It's an important function in a capitalist economy. Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life". That said, some advertising can be useful to inform consumers that a good exists, but convincing them they need it by synthesizing desires or fighting off competitors? Useless and socially detrimental.

dns_snek 8mo ago
> Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life". There's nothing inherent to socialism that would preclude advertising. It's an economic system where the means of production (capital) is owned by the workers or the state. In market socialism you still have worker cooperatives competing on the market.
Wilder7977 8mo ago
Plus, a core part of what qualifies as a bullshit job is that the person doing it feels that it's a bullshit job. The book is a half-serious anthropological essay, not an economic treaty.
- wolvesechoes 8mo ago
  Yeah, guy states that in multiple places, and yet here we are, with an impression that most people referencing the book apparently didn't read it.
  - bubblewand 8mo ago
    An odd tendency I’ve noticed about Graeber is that the more someone apparently dislikes his work, the more it will seem like they’re talking about totally different books from the ones I read.
    - groundzeros2015 8mo ago
      Because he uses private framings of concepts that are well understood. So if your first encounter is through Graeber you’re going to have friction with every other understanding. If you’ve read much else you will say “hold on a minute, what’s about …”
      - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
        > If you’ve read much else If you've read much else you should be able to engage with text properly, and construct charitable interpretations of author's claims or arguments.
        groundzeros2015 8mo ago
        Please read my comments here engaging with the ideas in the text and specifically your concern that bullshit jobs are just jobs that don’t feel important.
        wolvesechoes 8mo ago
        You have written bunch of comments regarding advertising, single comment criticizing Graeber for using concepts in uncommon way, and one reply to my comment that doesn't really connect with the content of that comment. Did I miss something?
        groundzeros2015 8mo ago
        Yes, David graeber talks a lot about the idea of bullshit jobs but fails to identify them concretely. As we see in this thread, whenever someone puts up an example, there is actually value he misses because he is unfamiliar with the workplace and business. The example used here was advertising. And then when we push on the example the fallback is to the subjective - feeling unfilled, definition. So I am still look for concrete examples of bullshit jobs to justify the original comment that AI will find efficiencies by letting us throw these away. Got any? You are an expert on the text so I’m hoping you can identify one.
  - groundzeros2015 8mo ago
    > And that book sort of vaguely hints around at all these jobs that are surely bullshit but won’t identify them concretely. See what I mean? We push on where these fake jobs are and you fallback to a subjective internal definition we can’t inspect. And now let me remind you of the context. If the real definition of bullshit isn’t economic slack, but internal dissatisfaction then this comment would be false: > What if LLMs are optimizing the average office worker's productivity but the work itself simply has no discernable economic value? This is argued at length in Grebber's Bullshit Jobs essay and book.
inglor_cz 8mo ago
"Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life"." Ever actually lived in anything approaching one? Yeah, if the stores are empty, it does not make sense to produce ads for stuff that isn't there ... ... but we still had ads on TV, surprisingly, even for stuff that was in shortage (= almost everything). Why? Because the Plan said so, and disrespecting the Plan too openly would stray dangerously close to the crime of sabotage. You have no idea.
- dns_snek 8mo ago
  None of that is inherent to socialism. There can be good and bad management, freedom and authoritarianism in any economic system.
  - inglor_cz 8mo ago
    Socialist economies larger than kibbutzes could only be created and sustained by totalitarian states. Socialism means collective ownership of means of production. And people won't give up their shops and fields and other means of production to the government voluntarily, at least not en masse. Thus they have to be forced at a gunpoint, and they always were. All the subsequent horror is downstream from that. This is what is inherent to building a socialist economy: mass expropriation of the former "exploitative class". The bad management of the stolen assets is just a consequence, because ideologically brainwashed partisans are usually bad at managing anything including themselves.
    - dns_snek 8mo ago
      This is exactly what I meant, a centrally-planned economy where the state owns everything and people are forced to give everything up is just one terrible (Soviet) model, not some defining feature of socialism. Yugoslavia was extremely successful, with economic growth that matched or exceeded most capitalist European economies post-WW2. In some ways it wasn't as free as western societies are today but it definitely wasn't totalitarian, and in many ways it was more free - there's a philosophical question in there about what freedom really is. For example Yugoslavia made abortion a constitutionally protected right in the 70s. I don't want to debate the nuances of what's better now and what was better then as that's beside the point, which is that the idiosyncrasies of the terrible Soviet economy are not inherent to "socialism", just like the idiosyncrasies of the US economy aren't inherent to capitalism.
groundzeros2015 8mo ago
Have you participated in academia before?

dns_snek 8mo ago

> Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life". There's nothing inherent to socialism that would preclude advertising. It's an economic system where the means of production (capital) is owned by the workers or the state. In market socialism you still have worker cooperatives competing on the market.

Wilder7977 8mo ago

Plus, a core part of what qualifies as a bullshit job is that the person doing it feels that it's a bullshit job. The book is a half-serious anthropological essay, not an economic treaty.

wolvesechoes 8mo ago
Yeah, guy states that in multiple places, and yet here we are, with an impression that most people referencing the book apparently didn't read it.
- bubblewand 8mo ago
  An odd tendency I’ve noticed about Graeber is that the more someone apparently dislikes his work, the more it will seem like they’re talking about totally different books from the ones I read.
  - groundzeros2015 8mo ago
    Because he uses private framings of concepts that are well understood. So if your first encounter is through Graeber you’re going to have friction with every other understanding. If you’ve read much else you will say “hold on a minute, what’s about …”
    - wolvesechoes 8mo ago
      > If you’ve read much else If you've read much else you should be able to engage with text properly, and construct charitable interpretations of author's claims or arguments.
      - groundzeros2015 8mo ago
        Please read my comments here engaging with the ideas in the text and specifically your concern that bullshit jobs are just jobs that don’t feel important.
        wolvesechoes 8mo ago
        You have written bunch of comments regarding advertising, single comment criticizing Graeber for using concepts in uncommon way, and one reply to my comment that doesn't really connect with the content of that comment. Did I miss something?
        groundzeros2015 8mo ago
        Yes, David graeber talks a lot about the idea of bullshit jobs but fails to identify them concretely. As we see in this thread, whenever someone puts up an example, there is actually value he misses because he is unfamiliar with the workplace and business. The example used here was advertising. And then when we push on the example the fallback is to the subjective - feeling unfilled, definition. So I am still look for concrete examples of bullshit jobs to justify the original comment that AI will find efficiencies by letting us throw these away. Got any? You are an expert on the text so I’m hoping you can identify one.
- groundzeros2015 8mo ago
  > And that book sort of vaguely hints around at all these jobs that are surely bullshit but won’t identify them concretely. See what I mean? We push on where these fake jobs are and you fallback to a subjective internal definition we can’t inspect. And now let me remind you of the context. If the real definition of bullshit isn’t economic slack, but internal dissatisfaction then this comment would be false: > What if LLMs are optimizing the average office worker's productivity but the work itself simply has no discernable economic value? This is argued at length in Grebber's Bullshit Jobs essay and book.

inglor_cz 8mo ago

"Socialist economies are like "adblock for your life"." Ever actually lived in anything approaching one? Yeah, if the stores are empty, it does not make sense to produce ads for stuff that isn't there ... ... but we still had ads on TV, surprisingly, even for stuff that was in shortage (= almost everything). Why? Because the Plan said so, and disrespecting the Plan too openly would stray dangerously close to the crime of sabotage. You have no idea.

dns_snek 8mo ago
None of that is inherent to socialism. There can be good and bad management, freedom and authoritarianism in any economic system.
- inglor_cz 8mo ago
  Socialist economies larger than kibbutzes could only be created and sustained by totalitarian states. Socialism means collective ownership of means of production. And people won't give up their shops and fields and other means of production to the government voluntarily, at least not en masse. Thus they have to be forced at a gunpoint, and they always were. All the subsequent horror is downstream from that. This is what is inherent to building a socialist economy: mass expropriation of the former "exploitative class". The bad management of the stolen assets is just a consequence, because ideologically brainwashed partisans are usually bad at managing anything including themselves.
  - dns_snek 8mo ago
    This is exactly what I meant, a centrally-planned economy where the state owns everything and people are forced to give everything up is just one terrible (Soviet) model, not some defining feature of socialism. Yugoslavia was extremely successful, with economic growth that matched or exceeded most capitalist European economies post-WW2. In some ways it wasn't as free as western societies are today but it definitely wasn't totalitarian, and in many ways it was more free - there's a philosophical question in there about what freedom really is. For example Yugoslavia made abortion a constitutionally protected right in the 70s. I don't want to debate the nuances of what's better now and what was better then as that's beside the point, which is that the idiosyncrasies of the terrible Soviet economy are not inherent to "socialism", just like the idiosyncrasies of the US economy aren't inherent to capitalism.

groundzeros2015 8mo ago

Have you participated in academia before?