10 ms·

Why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid

164 points by primroot 12y ago

michaelochurch 12y ago
Most of work, especially the corporate work that pays well reliably, isn't improving the world or helping people. It's helping individuals within companies in their campaigns for more money and more status. It's helping one middle manager become a director, or one executive beat out another one. The problem is that (a) 90% of corporate executives are completely worthless, overpaid deadweight, and (b) people have no choice where they land (under closed allocation) and have no say which boss (i.e. private-sector politician) to throw their muscle behind. It really is amazing how much of the work done by the highest-paid people is completely unnecessary, if not counterproductive.
moron4hire 12y ago
Simple: the more your job is about helping others, the less it's about helping yourself.
- the_cat_kittles 12y ago
  helping other is also an intrinsic reward which lowers the amount of money you need in order to be willing to do the job
  - moron4hire 12y ago
    No, no it isn't. That's just a bullshit excuse managers and government bureaus use to justify not paying people a living wage.
    - the_cat_kittles 12y ago
      maybe not for you, but for me it is
craigyk 12y ago
a good piece. one that I suspect resonates with more people than care to admit.
gertef 12y ago
Title is junk, article is overwritten, some claims are wholly unsuported by evidence, but there are some uncommonly heard ideas that make it worth a skim toward the bottom.
- mercer 12y ago
  I find this article the least interesting one I've read so far, so if you find the ideas interesting, be sure to check out some of his other writing.
coherentpony 12y ago
Assuming no corruption, politicians have jobs that help everybody. They are paid incredibly well.
- sp332 12y ago
  Interesting point, but highly variable. Senators and representatives in my state get $200 for each 2-year term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_House_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_House_of_Represe...
  - coherentpony 12y ago
    There must be something else of monetary value they receive because that's a full time job. Maybe an expense account?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > There must be something else of monetary value they receive because that's a full time job. No, its not a full-time job. New Hampshire is among the (many) states without a full-time legislature, though their pay is pretty low even by the standard of part-time legislatures. [1] [1] Not particularly current, but this doesn't change all that much: http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/full-and-part-time-legislatures.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/full-a...
      - coherentpony 12y ago
        Oh cool. Thanks.
- otikik 12y ago
  Assuming no illness, doctors help no one.
  - sp332 12y ago
outside1234 12y ago
This is because the more your job can only affect the live of one person, the less leverage you have. (1 unit of work effort = 1 unit of work output) This is why we are so highly paid. We can put in 1 unit of work and enable checkout for all of Amazon, for instance. Also: 1) supply and demand and 2) rewarding jobs pay less than shitty ones (all of finance in my opinion)
- ska 12y ago
  It can't be that simple though. In general rent-seeking can be very lucrative, as can be positioning yourself between a good/service what funds it. Example: American physicians are not generally more effective than French physicians, but they are vastly better paid. Far more so than can be explained by any linear relationship like hours worked, and far more than any impact analysis would suggest. Many examples in, e.g. finance exist as well.
  - paulhauggis 12y ago
    They are paid better because the French government limits wages (since health dream is not private in France)
    - ska 12y ago
      That doesn't contradict what I said at all (and it is also an oversimplification).
  - logicchains 12y ago
    The government enforces a quota on medical positions, enrollments and whatnot in the US, which artificially limits the supply of physicians, thereby increasing their wages. In the past hundred years or so, for instance, while the US population increased by 284%, the number of medical schools declined by 26%, to only 123[3]. Some references, one from the right[1] and one from the left[2]. 1.http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-association-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-associatio... 2. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/21/doctors_cartel_and_the_right_a_bad_romance.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/21/doctors_carte... 3. http://mises.org/daily/1547 http://mises.org/daily/1547
philosophus 12y ago
So doctors get paid less than, say, used car salesmen, pawn brokers, payday lenders, etc?
ehmish 12y ago
I found quite interesting his point regarding the redirecting of funding away from automation innovations and towards military and advertising innovations. It resonated with a blog post I read recently[0] [0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
vikp 12y ago
Humans value conformity more than we care to admit. There are a couple of studies in this vein, but one from Baylor shows that people in groups punish others who are more generous, even when the generosity benefits everyone[1]. The author makes an interesting point about people who dislike their work begrudging people who do meaningful things (in their judgement). Throughout our history, we have had an idealized vision of the average American in the back of our heads -- first it was the farmer, creating food for their family. Then it became the factory worker, creating cars for the masses -- now it may be the programmer, making the software that powers our world. The interesting thread here is creation. We live in a country that idealizes making things and taking risk/responsibility. Yet society is heavily geared towards conformity, and work is an extension of that. Even tech startups are increasingly becoming a systematic, codified industry. Is it no wonder that there is some resentment of people who are perceived to truly be free to create? This is why something like basic income[2] is so interesting. Once we are freed from having to conform to society in order to meet our basic needs, what will we be able to do? The cynic would say that people will all collect their checks and accomplish nothing. The optimist would say that everyone would start creating new art, music, machines, etc. I think somewhere in between, but that somewhere in between is still vastly more interesting than what we have now. [1] http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=131067 http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=st... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
- ehmish 12y ago
  The idea that people would punish, rather than revere unconventionally generous individuals sounds like the opposite of the "Big man" system, which has been rather well documented to exist [1] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29
  - vikp 12y ago
    This is interesting. One question and one semi-question: 1. Do "Big Men" first come into any semblance of power through redistribution (I give my food to Tom down the street, now he is my first follower), or does it start some other way (My father is important, therefore I am somewhat important)? 2. I wonder if humans only punish generous behavior in their peers. I assume that leaders have a different standard, as we don't see them as "one of us", and thus we allow them to do things that we would otherwise look down upon.
notahacker 12y ago
If we're making sweeping generalizations about why "helping others" apparently pays less well, the most concise and obvious answer is that those who need the help most (those with debilitating illnesses, the developing world, bootstrapped startups, the offspring of uncaring parents) have a lot less access to cash than those that arguably need it least (fund managers, brand managers, large multinationals, high-net worth individuals). A corollary of this is the latter groups also tend to be much more forgiving of your cockups and are certain not to be aggrieved if you get rich helping them. The irony of Graeber's generalizations is that his job has arguably less reason to exist than most hospital paper-pushers'. As a result some of his understanding of the real world seems more theoretical than practical (I mean, I agree with him in principle about the concept behind many internships being dubious, but I don't think "for the first few years they won’t even pay you" actually applies anywhere outside academia.)
im3w1l 12y ago
This fact can be derived from very simple assumptions. Let's assume people value pay, and let's assume they value helping others. Different people value pay more/less. People will then choose jobs on the "efficient frontier". Which point on the frontier depends on how much you value pay. Now it follows from the efficient frontier that if job A is both better paid and helps other people more than job B, then no one will do job B. So for all pairs of jobs (A,B) that people do, one will be better paid and the other help others more.
hvs 12y ago
If you think about it in that light, it makes the achievements of the socialist bloc seem pretty impressive: a country like Russia managed to go from a backwater to a major world power with everyone working maybe on average four or five hours a day. That is a very selective reading of history.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  The empire-building helped I'd guess. Funny how a Socialist country had to depend on exploitation to grow. Just like most everybody else.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    I'd be interested to see when actual socialists think the Soviet Union stopped being an effective socialist state and started being more of a totalitarian kleptocracy with a veneer of socialist rhetoric as justification. I was an early Agile person, starting with Extreme Programming in 2000. It blew me away how quickly a revolutionary approach to the work I loved was turned into a bunch of empty labels and pointless rituals that covered up the same old power structure but provided the useful appearance of change. [1] It's definitely made me wonder what early Russian revolutionaries would think of how the Soviet Union turned out. [1] http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...
    - philwelch 12y ago
      Since Stalin was both an early Russian revolutionary and the nadir of "how the Soviet Union turned out", it's hard to accept the reading of history that says the Soviet Union didn't turn out according to plan.
      - krfsm 12y ago
        Considering Stalin's swift elimination of all his political rivals, it's reasonable to assume not everybody shared his political vision.
sk8ingdom 12y ago
Although the trend of more work today than ever is obviously troubling, as an engineer, I can't help but think that the reason we don't yet have what the past promised because "the robots" really are not that great yet--we do, after all, need an entire staff of people to design, test, build, and monitor them. In addition, for every problem that we solve--global distribution, connectivity, transportation--we create even more. All of these "solutions" require additional infrastructure, research and development, and ultimately, breed entirely new disciplines and fields of study--i.e. STAFF. Additional flexibility breeds complexity. 100 years ago, I probably wouldn't have ventured very far from where I was born. Food would be grown locally. I wouldn't have internet, etc. Today I have MUCH more flexibility, but that comes at the price of complexity. I tend to believe the SUV / iPhone argument but think they're pretty terrible examples. All things equal, I could likely maintain the same level of technology and lifestyle as someone 100 years ago on about half my income. It's simply, not our culture, which is in large part driven by consumerism. Even if I WANTED to, most companies wouldn't allow it. The real question we should be asking ourselves, is do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them? The film Happiness [1] also explores the work / leisure balance in depth. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film)
- don2 12y ago
  "do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them?" As a personal anecdote, I don't need those things. I don't need a car, I don't need a smartphone, I don't need a TV, I don't need more than a few clothes, I don't need furniture other than a bed, I don't need to eat out or eat expensive food/drinks, if I wasn't working I wouldn't even need a computer and internet. I'm quite happy without most of those things. I make an engineer's salary and save almost all of it, so that one year out of college (cheap education, no loans) I now have savings that could easily last me 5 years in the bay area at my current lifestyle (counting housing/food/healthcare) or significantly longer in a cheaper area. (Though I'm not quitting yet, I still enjoy my job and maybe there's the beginnings of golden handcuffs there.) Unfortunately for my case, I expect it will be hard to raise a family on this below-standard-expenditure lifestyle, although that is something I think I want to do. For one thing, I can't imagine how I'd find a wife who was on board with living without all the standard American luxuries. I imagine such a woman exists, but I wouldn't know where to look. And even though I want to take a bunch of time off and travel the world / work on my own (zero-hope-for-profit) hobby projects, I can imagine society's disapproval of this, and also can't help but wonder if I'd regret it. What if it was hard to get a job as good as this if I later wanted to go in for money like everyone else?
ctdonath 12y ago
A telling & loaded question: Are people working so many hours because we’ve just somehow independently conceived this desire for lattes and Panini and dog-walkers and the like, or is it that people are grabbing food and coffee on the go and hiring people to walk their dogs because they’re all working so much? Making panini or coffee - good ones - takes effort, time, and resources to a degree few are willing to engage on their own. I've a dozen coffee makers, acquired in the quest to learn how to brew a perfect cup, and still drop $1.75 at Starbucks because a swipe of a card and a few minutes of scheduled skilled labor are often preferable to finding decent beans, grinding them, heating water, buying & fitting a filter, pouring, timing, cleaning and stowing what's needed; ditto lunch and dog-walking. Sure, we could all make fancy lunches and fine coffees and walk the dogs, and enjoy doing so at select times, but most people are unable and unwilling to at that level day-in-and-day-out when slinging dirt, paper, or bits can acquire such lifestyle. As for the "BS jobs": in between the productive (slinging dirt, or deciding who should sling which dirt where) are "glue jobs" and "filler jobs", not notable of themselves but required to cover & hold together aspects of productivity, without which cumulatively expensive problems would arise. That opportunities in any job may be abused for personal gain, or trail off to nothing useful, is simply a reality of human nature and imperfect systems. The question, foundational to much of the biased rambling in the rest of the interview, is either naive or disingenuous. We have independently conceived of odd luxuries, and made them profitable for someone to do despite being arguably wasteful, or that they are in fact our chosen outlet for the long-predicted "life of leisure". Like "living on the Moon", the remote notion is romanticized, but when given the option to ... most people are disinterested in eeking out survival on a giant atmosphere-free dead rock, or idly reading or playing games whilst subsisting on mundane food & accommodations; rather, they'd instead choose a routine of imposed obligations, coupled with swipe-a-card easy access to higher luxuries of relatively fine foods and fancier surroundings. I guess my gripe with the interviewee is that he has a notion of how society should be, and argues toward forcing economic redistributions to make it happen ... decrying & denying the reality that the economy is what it is, on the whole, because it's the cumulation of free choices. Sure, I could be living a "life of leisure" (and nearly did) enjoying majority time of idleness; instead, I (like most) chose a more frantic life of productivity (and sometimes gap-filling) so I could enjoy relatively luxurious goods & services with the swipe of a card. Force redistribution to impose the social structure & values the interviewee wants, and methinks most of us would rebel at the results; we're not living that way for a reason.
noname123 12y ago
Visible help, yes. But as a programmer, I help to write HTML/CSS and rails and js code that makes a friendlier and more engaging UI that makes every user's shopping experience that much more pleasant; also unlike conventional charities that offer sometimes intangible emotional support, I can quantify "the net happiness add" by Google Analytics, the higher the conversion rate means, higher the user's "engagement" and contribution to my company and shareholder value. I'm also contribute back to the tech community by sharing my code that I experiment on my own during hackathons and weekends on Github. Unlike other professions where things are not as transparent, I love that our field is always on the cutting edge, experimenting with the latest frameworks and technology and sharing the results (be as it may that sometimes it's not as well-documented but I make up for it by writing an enthusiastic blog post about it).
thucydides 12y ago
The main reason is because human desires are inexhaustible. As our society gets wealthier, more people will be hired to perform tasks that make people's lives easier, though those tasks are ancillary to an organization's main mission. For example, the university's main mission is to educate students, but more and more administrators and staff will be hired to turn the university into a luxury resort to satisfy students' desires (big gym, mental health services, remedial education, sports, expensive food, transportation systems). And the university will also use more of its wealth to satisfy its employees' desires and problems (by hiring human resources officers and lawyers and hedge fund managers). That happens to every organization as it grows wealthier, I suspect. And those jobs, being ancillary, being divorced from directly helping people, are miserable. So, paradoxically, inexhaustible human desire for what is "better" and easier ends up creating jobs that, while comfortable, feel wretched and meaningless. You see this in a society, too. Yes, our individual desires for "food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on" are never sated. It's partly because we're trying to keep up with our peers, but much more importantly, it's the hedonic treadmill. That is, the satisfaction we feel after buying a BMW or becoming CEO or getting a new house will fade quickly - and be replaced with the desire for something else. No doubt even the world's wealthiest people are dissatisfied with some aspect of their daily lives. Perhaps they wish for faster travel than is possible with current airplanes or for a longer lasting house or less crime or more love or whatever. That's a microcosm of what happens to the world's wealthiest societies, which, after all, are composed of people. It's why we've moved from Bell phones to iPhones, but it's also why we have so many more ennui-creating jobs.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  There's actually a hard limit. e.g. Retina displays are as good as you need because they are finer than the eye's ability to distinguish. Likewise there are only so many hours in the day, and days in your life. There is a hard (large) limit to what you can do in a lifetime. We may be increasing what we desire as resources become cheaper, but it is increasing asymptotically to 'what a person can consume/experience in the hours they have'.
  - waps 12y ago
sz4kerto 12y ago
"At the same time, these companies are willing to shell out huge amounts of money to paper-pushers coming up with strategic vision statements who they know perfectly well are doing absolutely nothing." Ahh. So for some reason, private companies (or shareholders, if you like) are willing to give their money to people who they know are doing absolutely nothing. Well, I simply don't believe that.
- sheepmullet 12y ago
  Shareholders have a lot less influence over the running of a medium-large company than you would think. In a 1000+ employee profitable company do you really think the shareholders will revolt because senior management has a few dozen worthless positions that help consolidate their power?
- kitsune_ 12y ago
  You underestimate the power of bureaucracies, private and public.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  There is also a difference between a) earning return on capital for investors, and b) contributing value to society. Teachers tend to be heavy on b) and light on a). Hedgefund managers tend to be heavy on a) and light on b).
orasis 12y ago
"... ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people."
lightblade 12y ago
Not true, Bill Gates put a computer on every table and made billions of dollars while at it.
- jokoon 12y ago
  well bill gates is one of the few guys who managed to properly get something in return, at least he understood there's no such thing as one way altruism. You have to insert yourself in a business model to make things happen. of course if we had thousands of bill gates, I guess it would be better don't you think?
- wpietri 12y ago
  Did Microsoft make a single desktop computer? I don't recall seeing one.
fred_durst 12y ago
Why have so many people been convinced that money is anything more than an arbitrary system at this point? It is bizarre to me how many smart people keep believing that it isn't. The reason something generates money from something else is simply because it does. There is nothing good, bad or otherwise about it.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
I think this idea of the bullshit jobs, and the implicit removal of them, has corollaries with what was posted here recently: "How to get business ideas - remove steps" [1] The trouble is, as was pointed out in the article, is that removing steps means removing a person from their source of income and in a lot of cases also their identity and social network. So how do you remove bullshit jobs without causing a massive collective existential threat? [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338
- wpietri 12y ago
  It's definitely an interesting topic. One of the reasons Toyota had a deep tradition of avoiding layoffs was so that people would feel safer helping remove waste from the system. One way to look at it: idle people with decaying skills and self esteem are just another kind of waste. So if your first step is to eliminate some particular sort of bullshit work, the second step could be to find some non-bullshit way to employ the people who no longer are doing anything. Thinking broadly, that shouldn't be hard. After all, we could afford to pay people to do bullshit, so we'll be even better off if we pay those people to do something productive. But the current way we account for things often makes it tricky in specific cases.
shkkmo 12y ago
“I want to do something with my life that actually benefits others; but if I go into a line of work where I care for other people, they pay me so little, and they put so much in debt, that I can’t even take care of my own family! This is ridiculous!” Yet, the big swing in silicon valley is B2B. The question we should asking ourselves is: What can we, as software engineers and web developers, do to support our working class? We need to reduce their debt, reduce their cost of living, and decrease the amount of time they waste dealing with the intricacies of living in modern society. How can we do this?
- Balgair 12y ago
  In the US at least, we could use a way to increase voter participation. I believe in democracy and this republic. Believe being the correct word here. So many times, I fear for my country. I see evidence here on HN that it's all shit. That people are stupid and can't be trusted, maybe less so than the politicians. But I still believe that democracy is the best way out of it all. I have seen when a little girl realizes that her classroom rules really do change based on her vote. I have seen that power and hope in the faces of children and adults alike. I believe in democracy. If you want to alleviate the debt burdens of the working classes, get them to the polls. If you want to reduce their cost of living, get them to the polls. If you want to help them have more efficient lives, give them more freedom and rights by getting them to the polls. Find a way to get people voting and out and helping each other. Then, I believe that people will fix it themselves because they know that they can. You have to tech a man to fish, not fish for him. The best way to teach a man to reduce their debt, to reduce their cost of living, to decease the time they spend on waste and paperwork is to teach them that they have the power to do something about it.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    I don't believe that voter participation is not a magic pill and will not fix anything by itself. However, if you do believe that. Then get on it!
    - Balgair 12y ago
mikeash 12y ago
What nonsense! Certainly there will be outliers, but in general people get paid more because they help others more. Your pay comes from other people giving it to you willingly. They wouldn't give it to you unless you were helping them somehow. I think the confusion is that, as you get paid more, you tend to help people less directly. A minimum-wage fast-food worker is obviously helping people. That's what he does. He probably says the literal words, "May I help you?" a hundred times a day. But he's not helping very many people and he's not helping them very much, and that's why the job doesn't pay so well. Compare to, say, a chemist (as in chemistry, not the British term for a pharmacist). He's not directly helping people. In his day to day work, he doesn't interact with the customers. But he's helping to create new products and maintain existing products that people want, in a fashion that can be ludicrously indirect but is still ultimately extremely helpful. Or look at senior management. We like to deride them, but most managers in most companies are useful. They don't help the customers directly, but they help their employees help people, and that can translate into a lot of help in a big company. Yeah, there are people who get paid a lot to basically shaft other people, but they're not the common case.
- shanghaiseo 12y ago
  In this sense, I'm guessing he's pointing that those who help with more immediate, physically-demonstrated (helping) results are getting paid less. Coming back around, like you said, I agree that jobs (such as chemists) do "help." In fact, he's helping the helper. Yes, as you mentioned too, even though there might be no "consumer good" produced, senior managers can be described to help indirectly, although the clients may not see their actions on the front end. It's a weird combo of perspective and purpose to grasp. Most jobs are 'helping,' whether it is for something or someone; its not a one-to-one process, but often a chain of events that can change order. "The more your job helps others, the less you get paid" is pretty shallow.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Thinking about it more, there's a fundamental limit to how many people you can help directly in a day. There are only so many hours in a day. If you want to break that barrier, you have to provide your help indirectly in some manner, whether it's shaping an organization for people to work within, or building tools that help them do their jobs, or what have you.
kimonos 12y ago
I agree at some point!
fecklessyouth 12y ago
The Enlightenment produced a society which identified pleasure as its most fundamental social value. As Locke says, individuals are hardwired to pursue pleasure. And as Smith says, capitalism is the economic system best able to produce the most total pleasure. Thus, if you can produce lots of pleasure for people, if you are useful, if you can make money appear out of the stock market, you are rewarded. The jobs most rewarded by society are those that are most pleasurable to others, like CEOs who can turn profits for board members. The group who's pleasure is the deciding pleasure is the dominant social group, who has the most of whatever currency matters to society. (Status, property, now cash) Whether someone is virtuous, or caring, or helps others, is irrelevant in ascertaining their value, and thus how they should be paid. A teacher might produce pleasure in a student, but that student is in no capacity to makes its pleasure the deciding one. The moral good of a job is, at best, a footnote, and only valuable insofar as far as the dominant groups are pleased by them. The market doesn't care about your moral good. The mistake of writers like this one is supposing that such a system can be fixed within the confines of modern capitalism. It cannot. People will conduct their campaigns, and go on strike, and create new movements, and perhaps pay teachers more out of social duty and pity, but they will ultimately butt heads with the philosophical underpinnings of modernity. If this writer is serious, the solution is not to turn to mere Marxist-inspired theories of labor, but to Aristotle and Aquinas. For what Aristotle, Aquinas, and essentially the entire stock of pre-modern philosophy, approached differently was the question of, "what should our fundamental social value be?" Their answer was not, "pleasure." For Aristotle, it was the good produced by a life trained in socially-imparted virtues--which ultimately allowed one to contemplate the divine. For Aquinas, it was more explicitly religious: loving God, which entailed doing and believing all the things He wants us to do. And as was the case with the Enlightenment, the cultures that both these thinkers embodied were constructed around such answers, from the top down. In either system, the moral worth of work is not irrelevant, it's the only thing relevant (with differences in how moral is defined). In-depth rebuttals should be directed to Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish philosopher whose book "Whose Justice, Which Rationality," I just paraphrased in part. (But seriously...)
- jmcmichael 12y ago
  The interviewee, Davide Graeber, is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Occupy movement so probably does not believe that a solution to this problem lies with the confines of modern capitalism. He identifies himself as an anarchist. There's more detail on his political/economic views in his book, 'Debt: The First 5000 Years': http://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt http://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt
simula67 12y ago
TL;DR If your job helps others, you may want to do it [1] for reasons other than money and therefore get paid less. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
cnorgate 12y ago
Just because certain people can't describe or understand the value of a given task or job, doesn't mean it has no value. Clearly if person A pays person B to perform a task, then person B must be creating at least as much value as they're being paid. Who are you or I to judge that value? We're neither receiving the value nor paying for it. If person A is consistently paying more than $2 for $1 of value, then they'll soon be out of money, and the system will unceremoniously remove person A from decision making authority. While it's nice to suggest that Wall St. doesn't create any value for people, ~20% of our GDP would suggest otherwise. The truth is that Wall St. acts much like Adam Smith's invisible hand. For our system to work, capital must be allocated to optimal uses. Command economies do a poor job of this, except in war time. Wall St. helps us reallocate capital to the most productive endeavors. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Even if the folks on Wall St. don't build your car, they did pool the capital necessary to finance the construction of the manufacturing facility. Can't have one without the other. As a final point, if the 'caring class' isn't compensated enough, perhaps it's because there is an oversupply of 'caring folks'. Or perhaps they're not really creating any value for others? Perhaps some of the 'caring class' should get creative and find other ways to be caring, or perhaps they should find ways to provide more 'care' with their time so they can command a higher share of the value they create?
contingencies 12y ago
What strikes me is that this article seems to conclude with a focus on changing society's perception of work as a means to changing its nature (I think we need to start by redefining labor itself, maybe, start with classic “women’s work,” nurturing children, looking after things, as the paradigm for labor itself and then it will be much harder to be confused about what’s really valuable and what isn’t. As I say, we’re already seeing the first stirrings of this sort of thing. It’s both a political and a moral transformation and think it’s the only way we can overcome the system that puts so many of us in bullshit jobs.) whereas Debt: The First 5000 Years focuses, to my mind, essentially on proving the heterogeneity of value and value-exchange systems (ie. psycho-social and concrete economies) in past and present human societies that deviate significantly from our present-era global neocolonial capitalist system. I wonder if this represents a change in Graeber's own mindset, or is merely representative of the interviewer. PS. I've had emails with Graeber and he's every bit as personable and intelligent in private communications as in his conventional written output.
mahyarm 12y ago
The caring classes he talks about being underpaid are probably underpaid because they tend to help the poorest who do not have much money, the amount of people with their skill set is high and their professions do not scale in the amount of people they help.
kennethcwilbur 12y ago
Honest question: Is the headline linkbait? I read the entire interview but I didn't see where he really explained why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid.

164 points by primroot 12y ago

Most of work, especially the corporate work that pays well reliably, isn't improving the world or helping people. It's helping individuals within companies in their campaigns for more money and more status. It's helping one middle manager become a director, or one executive beat out another one. The problem is that (a) 90% of corporate executives are completely worthless, overpaid deadweight, and (b) people have no choice where they land (under closed allocation) and have no say which boss (i.e. private-sector politician) to throw their muscle behind. It really is amazing how much of the work done by the highest-paid people is completely unnecessary, if not counterproductive.

moron4hire 12y ago

Simple: the more your job is about helping others, the less it's about helping yourself.

the_cat_kittles 12y ago
helping other is also an intrinsic reward which lowers the amount of money you need in order to be willing to do the job
- moron4hire 12y ago
  No, no it isn't. That's just a bullshit excuse managers and government bureaus use to justify not paying people a living wage.
  - the_cat_kittles 12y ago
    maybe not for you, but for me it is

craigyk 12y ago

a good piece. one that I suspect resonates with more people than care to admit.

gertef 12y ago

Title is junk, article is overwritten, some claims are wholly unsuported by evidence, but there are some uncommonly heard ideas that make it worth a skim toward the bottom.

mercer 12y ago
I find this article the least interesting one I've read so far, so if you find the ideas interesting, be sure to check out some of his other writing.

coherentpony 12y ago

Assuming no corruption, politicians have jobs that help everybody. They are paid incredibly well.

sp332 12y ago
Interesting point, but highly variable. Senators and representatives in my state get $200 for each 2-year term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_House_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_House_of_Represe...
- coherentpony 12y ago
  There must be something else of monetary value they receive because that's a full time job. Maybe an expense account?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > There must be something else of monetary value they receive because that's a full time job. No, its not a full-time job. New Hampshire is among the (many) states without a full-time legislature, though their pay is pretty low even by the standard of part-time legislatures. [1] [1] Not particularly current, but this doesn't change all that much: http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/full-and-part-time-legislatures.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/full-a...
    - coherentpony 12y ago
      Oh cool. Thanks.
otikik 12y ago
Assuming no illness, doctors help no one.
- sp332 12y ago

outside1234 12y ago

This is because the more your job can only affect the live of one person, the less leverage you have. (1 unit of work effort = 1 unit of work output) This is why we are so highly paid. We can put in 1 unit of work and enable checkout for all of Amazon, for instance. Also: 1) supply and demand and 2) rewarding jobs pay less than shitty ones (all of finance in my opinion)

ska 12y ago
It can't be that simple though. In general rent-seeking can be very lucrative, as can be positioning yourself between a good/service what funds it. Example: American physicians are not generally more effective than French physicians, but they are vastly better paid. Far more so than can be explained by any linear relationship like hours worked, and far more than any impact analysis would suggest. Many examples in, e.g. finance exist as well.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  They are paid better because the French government limits wages (since health dream is not private in France)
  - ska 12y ago
    That doesn't contradict what I said at all (and it is also an oversimplification).
- logicchains 12y ago
  The government enforces a quota on medical positions, enrollments and whatnot in the US, which artificially limits the supply of physicians, thereby increasing their wages. In the past hundred years or so, for instance, while the US population increased by 284%, the number of medical schools declined by 26%, to only 123[3]. Some references, one from the right[1] and one from the left[2]. 1.http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-association-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-associatio... 2. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/21/doctors_cartel_and_the_right_a_bad_romance.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/21/doctors_carte... 3. http://mises.org/daily/1547 http://mises.org/daily/1547

philosophus 12y ago

So doctors get paid less than, say, used car salesmen, pawn brokers, payday lenders, etc?

ehmish 12y ago

I found quite interesting his point regarding the redirecting of funding away from automation innovations and towards military and advertising innovations. It resonated with a blog post I read recently[0] [0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

vikp 12y ago

Humans value conformity more than we care to admit. There are a couple of studies in this vein, but one from Baylor shows that people in groups punish others who are more generous, even when the generosity benefits everyone[1]. The author makes an interesting point about people who dislike their work begrudging people who do meaningful things (in their judgement). Throughout our history, we have had an idealized vision of the average American in the back of our heads -- first it was the farmer, creating food for their family. Then it became the factory worker, creating cars for the masses -- now it may be the programmer, making the software that powers our world. The interesting thread here is creation. We live in a country that idealizes making things and taking risk/responsibility. Yet society is heavily geared towards conformity, and work is an extension of that. Even tech startups are increasingly becoming a systematic, codified industry. Is it no wonder that there is some resentment of people who are perceived to truly be free to create? This is why something like basic income[2] is so interesting. Once we are freed from having to conform to society in order to meet our basic needs, what will we be able to do? The cynic would say that people will all collect their checks and accomplish nothing. The optimist would say that everyone would start creating new art, music, machines, etc. I think somewhere in between, but that somewhere in between is still vastly more interesting than what we have now. [1] http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=131067 http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=st... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

ehmish 12y ago
The idea that people would punish, rather than revere unconventionally generous individuals sounds like the opposite of the "Big man" system, which has been rather well documented to exist [1] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29
- vikp 12y ago
  This is interesting. One question and one semi-question: 1. Do "Big Men" first come into any semblance of power through redistribution (I give my food to Tom down the street, now he is my first follower), or does it start some other way (My father is important, therefore I am somewhat important)? 2. I wonder if humans only punish generous behavior in their peers. I assume that leaders have a different standard, as we don't see them as "one of us", and thus we allow them to do things that we would otherwise look down upon.

notahacker 12y ago

If we're making sweeping generalizations about why "helping others" apparently pays less well, the most concise and obvious answer is that those who need the help most (those with debilitating illnesses, the developing world, bootstrapped startups, the offspring of uncaring parents) have a lot less access to cash than those that arguably need it least (fund managers, brand managers, large multinationals, high-net worth individuals). A corollary of this is the latter groups also tend to be much more forgiving of your cockups and are certain not to be aggrieved if you get rich helping them. The irony of Graeber's generalizations is that his job has arguably less reason to exist than most hospital paper-pushers'. As a result some of his understanding of the real world seems more theoretical than practical (I mean, I agree with him in principle about the concept behind many internships being dubious, but I don't think "for the first few years they won’t even pay you" actually applies anywhere outside academia.)

im3w1l 12y ago

This fact can be derived from very simple assumptions. Let's assume people value pay, and let's assume they value helping others. Different people value pay more/less. People will then choose jobs on the "efficient frontier". Which point on the frontier depends on how much you value pay. Now it follows from the efficient frontier that if job A is both better paid and helps other people more than job B, then no one will do job B. So for all pairs of jobs (A,B) that people do, one will be better paid and the other help others more.

hvs 12y ago

If you think about it in that light, it makes the achievements of the socialist bloc seem pretty impressive: a country like Russia managed to go from a backwater to a major world power with everyone working maybe on average four or five hours a day. That is a very selective reading of history.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
The empire-building helped I'd guess. Funny how a Socialist country had to depend on exploitation to grow. Just like most everybody else.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I'd be interested to see when actual socialists think the Soviet Union stopped being an effective socialist state and started being more of a totalitarian kleptocracy with a veneer of socialist rhetoric as justification. I was an early Agile person, starting with Extreme Programming in 2000. It blew me away how quickly a revolutionary approach to the work I loved was turned into a bunch of empty labels and pointless rituals that covered up the same old power structure but provided the useful appearance of change. [1] It's definitely made me wonder what early Russian revolutionaries would think of how the Soviet Union turned out. [1] http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...
  - philwelch 12y ago
    Since Stalin was both an early Russian revolutionary and the nadir of "how the Soviet Union turned out", it's hard to accept the reading of history that says the Soviet Union didn't turn out according to plan.
    - krfsm 12y ago
      Considering Stalin's swift elimination of all his political rivals, it's reasonable to assume not everybody shared his political vision.

sk8ingdom 12y ago

Although the trend of more work today than ever is obviously troubling, as an engineer, I can't help but think that the reason we don't yet have what the past promised because "the robots" really are not that great yet--we do, after all, need an entire staff of people to design, test, build, and monitor them. In addition, for every problem that we solve--global distribution, connectivity, transportation--we create even more. All of these "solutions" require additional infrastructure, research and development, and ultimately, breed entirely new disciplines and fields of study--i.e. STAFF. Additional flexibility breeds complexity. 100 years ago, I probably wouldn't have ventured very far from where I was born. Food would be grown locally. I wouldn't have internet, etc. Today I have MUCH more flexibility, but that comes at the price of complexity. I tend to believe the SUV / iPhone argument but think they're pretty terrible examples. All things equal, I could likely maintain the same level of technology and lifestyle as someone 100 years ago on about half my income. It's simply, not our culture, which is in large part driven by consumerism. Even if I WANTED to, most companies wouldn't allow it. The real question we should be asking ourselves, is do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them? The film Happiness [1] also explores the work / leisure balance in depth. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film)

don2 12y ago
"do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them?" As a personal anecdote, I don't need those things. I don't need a car, I don't need a smartphone, I don't need a TV, I don't need more than a few clothes, I don't need furniture other than a bed, I don't need to eat out or eat expensive food/drinks, if I wasn't working I wouldn't even need a computer and internet. I'm quite happy without most of those things. I make an engineer's salary and save almost all of it, so that one year out of college (cheap education, no loans) I now have savings that could easily last me 5 years in the bay area at my current lifestyle (counting housing/food/healthcare) or significantly longer in a cheaper area. (Though I'm not quitting yet, I still enjoy my job and maybe there's the beginnings of golden handcuffs there.) Unfortunately for my case, I expect it will be hard to raise a family on this below-standard-expenditure lifestyle, although that is something I think I want to do. For one thing, I can't imagine how I'd find a wife who was on board with living without all the standard American luxuries. I imagine such a woman exists, but I wouldn't know where to look. And even though I want to take a bunch of time off and travel the world / work on my own (zero-hope-for-profit) hobby projects, I can imagine society's disapproval of this, and also can't help but wonder if I'd regret it. What if it was hard to get a job as good as this if I later wanted to go in for money like everyone else?

ctdonath 12y ago

A telling & loaded question: Are people working so many hours because we’ve just somehow independently conceived this desire for lattes and Panini and dog-walkers and the like, or is it that people are grabbing food and coffee on the go and hiring people to walk their dogs because they’re all working so much? Making panini or coffee - good ones - takes effort, time, and resources to a degree few are willing to engage on their own. I've a dozen coffee makers, acquired in the quest to learn how to brew a perfect cup, and still drop $1.75 at Starbucks because a swipe of a card and a few minutes of scheduled skilled labor are often preferable to finding decent beans, grinding them, heating water, buying & fitting a filter, pouring, timing, cleaning and stowing what's needed; ditto lunch and dog-walking. Sure, we could all make fancy lunches and fine coffees and walk the dogs, and enjoy doing so at select times, but most people are unable and unwilling to at that level day-in-and-day-out when slinging dirt, paper, or bits can acquire such lifestyle. As for the "BS jobs": in between the productive (slinging dirt, or deciding who should sling which dirt where) are "glue jobs" and "filler jobs", not notable of themselves but required to cover & hold together aspects of productivity, without which cumulatively expensive problems would arise. That opportunities in any job may be abused for personal gain, or trail off to nothing useful, is simply a reality of human nature and imperfect systems. The question, foundational to much of the biased rambling in the rest of the interview, is either naive or disingenuous. We have independently conceived of odd luxuries, and made them profitable for someone to do despite being arguably wasteful, or that they are in fact our chosen outlet for the long-predicted "life of leisure". Like "living on the Moon", the remote notion is romanticized, but when given the option to ... most people are disinterested in eeking out survival on a giant atmosphere-free dead rock, or idly reading or playing games whilst subsisting on mundane food & accommodations; rather, they'd instead choose a routine of imposed obligations, coupled with swipe-a-card easy access to higher luxuries of relatively fine foods and fancier surroundings. I guess my gripe with the interviewee is that he has a notion of how society should be, and argues toward forcing economic redistributions to make it happen ... decrying & denying the reality that the economy is what it is, on the whole, because it's the cumulation of free choices. Sure, I could be living a "life of leisure" (and nearly did) enjoying majority time of idleness; instead, I (like most) chose a more frantic life of productivity (and sometimes gap-filling) so I could enjoy relatively luxurious goods & services with the swipe of a card. Force redistribution to impose the social structure & values the interviewee wants, and methinks most of us would rebel at the results; we're not living that way for a reason.

noname123 12y ago

Visible help, yes. But as a programmer, I help to write HTML/CSS and rails and js code that makes a friendlier and more engaging UI that makes every user's shopping experience that much more pleasant; also unlike conventional charities that offer sometimes intangible emotional support, I can quantify "the net happiness add" by Google Analytics, the higher the conversion rate means, higher the user's "engagement" and contribution to my company and shareholder value. I'm also contribute back to the tech community by sharing my code that I experiment on my own during hackathons and weekends on Github. Unlike other professions where things are not as transparent, I love that our field is always on the cutting edge, experimenting with the latest frameworks and technology and sharing the results (be as it may that sometimes it's not as well-documented but I make up for it by writing an enthusiastic blog post about it).

thucydides 12y ago

The main reason is because human desires are inexhaustible. As our society gets wealthier, more people will be hired to perform tasks that make people's lives easier, though those tasks are ancillary to an organization's main mission. For example, the university's main mission is to educate students, but more and more administrators and staff will be hired to turn the university into a luxury resort to satisfy students' desires (big gym, mental health services, remedial education, sports, expensive food, transportation systems). And the university will also use more of its wealth to satisfy its employees' desires and problems (by hiring human resources officers and lawyers and hedge fund managers). That happens to every organization as it grows wealthier, I suspect. And those jobs, being ancillary, being divorced from directly helping people, are miserable. So, paradoxically, inexhaustible human desire for what is "better" and easier ends up creating jobs that, while comfortable, feel wretched and meaningless. You see this in a society, too. Yes, our individual desires for "food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on" are never sated. It's partly because we're trying to keep up with our peers, but much more importantly, it's the hedonic treadmill. That is, the satisfaction we feel after buying a BMW or becoming CEO or getting a new house will fade quickly - and be replaced with the desire for something else. No doubt even the world's wealthiest people are dissatisfied with some aspect of their daily lives. Perhaps they wish for faster travel than is possible with current airplanes or for a longer lasting house or less crime or more love or whatever. That's a microcosm of what happens to the world's wealthiest societies, which, after all, are composed of people. It's why we've moved from Bell phones to iPhones, but it's also why we have so many more ennui-creating jobs.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
There's actually a hard limit. e.g. Retina displays are as good as you need because they are finer than the eye's ability to distinguish. Likewise there are only so many hours in the day, and days in your life. There is a hard (large) limit to what you can do in a lifetime. We may be increasing what we desire as resources become cheaper, but it is increasing asymptotically to 'what a person can consume/experience in the hours they have'.
- waps 12y ago

sz4kerto 12y ago

"At the same time, these companies are willing to shell out huge amounts of money to paper-pushers coming up with strategic vision statements who they know perfectly well are doing absolutely nothing." Ahh. So for some reason, private companies (or shareholders, if you like) are willing to give their money to people who they know are doing absolutely nothing. Well, I simply don't believe that.

sheepmullet 12y ago
Shareholders have a lot less influence over the running of a medium-large company than you would think. In a 1000+ employee profitable company do you really think the shareholders will revolt because senior management has a few dozen worthless positions that help consolidate their power?
kitsune_ 12y ago
You underestimate the power of bureaucracies, private and public.
shkkmo 12y ago
There is also a difference between a) earning return on capital for investors, and b) contributing value to society. Teachers tend to be heavy on b) and light on a). Hedgefund managers tend to be heavy on a) and light on b).

orasis 12y ago

"... ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people."

lightblade 12y ago

Not true, Bill Gates put a computer on every table and made billions of dollars while at it.

jokoon 12y ago
well bill gates is one of the few guys who managed to properly get something in return, at least he understood there's no such thing as one way altruism. You have to insert yourself in a business model to make things happen. of course if we had thousands of bill gates, I guess it would be better don't you think?
wpietri 12y ago
Did Microsoft make a single desktop computer? I don't recall seeing one.

fred_durst 12y ago

Why have so many people been convinced that money is anything more than an arbitrary system at this point? It is bizarre to me how many smart people keep believing that it isn't. The reason something generates money from something else is simply because it does. There is nothing good, bad or otherwise about it.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

I think this idea of the bullshit jobs, and the implicit removal of them, has corollaries with what was posted here recently: "How to get business ideas - remove steps" [1] The trouble is, as was pointed out in the article, is that removing steps means removing a person from their source of income and in a lot of cases also their identity and social network. So how do you remove bullshit jobs without causing a massive collective existential threat? [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338

wpietri 12y ago
It's definitely an interesting topic. One of the reasons Toyota had a deep tradition of avoiding layoffs was so that people would feel safer helping remove waste from the system. One way to look at it: idle people with decaying skills and self esteem are just another kind of waste. So if your first step is to eliminate some particular sort of bullshit work, the second step could be to find some non-bullshit way to employ the people who no longer are doing anything. Thinking broadly, that shouldn't be hard. After all, we could afford to pay people to do bullshit, so we'll be even better off if we pay those people to do something productive. But the current way we account for things often makes it tricky in specific cases.

shkkmo 12y ago

“I want to do something with my life that actually benefits others; but if I go into a line of work where I care for other people, they pay me so little, and they put so much in debt, that I can’t even take care of my own family! This is ridiculous!” Yet, the big swing in silicon valley is B2B. The question we should asking ourselves is: What can we, as software engineers and web developers, do to support our working class? We need to reduce their debt, reduce their cost of living, and decrease the amount of time they waste dealing with the intricacies of living in modern society. How can we do this?

Balgair 12y ago
In the US at least, we could use a way to increase voter participation. I believe in democracy and this republic. Believe being the correct word here. So many times, I fear for my country. I see evidence here on HN that it's all shit. That people are stupid and can't be trusted, maybe less so than the politicians. But I still believe that democracy is the best way out of it all. I have seen when a little girl realizes that her classroom rules really do change based on her vote. I have seen that power and hope in the faces of children and adults alike. I believe in democracy. If you want to alleviate the debt burdens of the working classes, get them to the polls. If you want to reduce their cost of living, get them to the polls. If you want to help them have more efficient lives, give them more freedom and rights by getting them to the polls. Find a way to get people voting and out and helping each other. Then, I believe that people will fix it themselves because they know that they can. You have to tech a man to fish, not fish for him. The best way to teach a man to reduce their debt, to reduce their cost of living, to decease the time they spend on waste and paperwork is to teach them that they have the power to do something about it.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  I don't believe that voter participation is not a magic pill and will not fix anything by itself. However, if you do believe that. Then get on it!
  - Balgair 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

What nonsense! Certainly there will be outliers, but in general people get paid more because they help others more. Your pay comes from other people giving it to you willingly. They wouldn't give it to you unless you were helping them somehow. I think the confusion is that, as you get paid more, you tend to help people less directly. A minimum-wage fast-food worker is obviously helping people. That's what he does. He probably says the literal words, "May I help you?" a hundred times a day. But he's not helping very many people and he's not helping them very much, and that's why the job doesn't pay so well. Compare to, say, a chemist (as in chemistry, not the British term for a pharmacist). He's not directly helping people. In his day to day work, he doesn't interact with the customers. But he's helping to create new products and maintain existing products that people want, in a fashion that can be ludicrously indirect but is still ultimately extremely helpful. Or look at senior management. We like to deride them, but most managers in most companies are useful. They don't help the customers directly, but they help their employees help people, and that can translate into a lot of help in a big company. Yeah, there are people who get paid a lot to basically shaft other people, but they're not the common case.

shanghaiseo 12y ago
In this sense, I'm guessing he's pointing that those who help with more immediate, physically-demonstrated (helping) results are getting paid less. Coming back around, like you said, I agree that jobs (such as chemists) do "help." In fact, he's helping the helper. Yes, as you mentioned too, even though there might be no "consumer good" produced, senior managers can be described to help indirectly, although the clients may not see their actions on the front end. It's a weird combo of perspective and purpose to grasp. Most jobs are 'helping,' whether it is for something or someone; its not a one-to-one process, but often a chain of events that can change order. "The more your job helps others, the less you get paid" is pretty shallow.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Thinking about it more, there's a fundamental limit to how many people you can help directly in a day. There are only so many hours in a day. If you want to break that barrier, you have to provide your help indirectly in some manner, whether it's shaping an organization for people to work within, or building tools that help them do their jobs, or what have you.

kimonos 12y ago

I agree at some point!

fecklessyouth 12y ago

The Enlightenment produced a society which identified pleasure as its most fundamental social value. As Locke says, individuals are hardwired to pursue pleasure. And as Smith says, capitalism is the economic system best able to produce the most total pleasure. Thus, if you can produce lots of pleasure for people, if you are useful, if you can make money appear out of the stock market, you are rewarded. The jobs most rewarded by society are those that are most pleasurable to others, like CEOs who can turn profits for board members. The group who's pleasure is the deciding pleasure is the dominant social group, who has the most of whatever currency matters to society. (Status, property, now cash) Whether someone is virtuous, or caring, or helps others, is irrelevant in ascertaining their value, and thus how they should be paid. A teacher might produce pleasure in a student, but that student is in no capacity to makes its pleasure the deciding one. The moral good of a job is, at best, a footnote, and only valuable insofar as far as the dominant groups are pleased by them. The market doesn't care about your moral good. The mistake of writers like this one is supposing that such a system can be fixed within the confines of modern capitalism. It cannot. People will conduct their campaigns, and go on strike, and create new movements, and perhaps pay teachers more out of social duty and pity, but they will ultimately butt heads with the philosophical underpinnings of modernity. If this writer is serious, the solution is not to turn to mere Marxist-inspired theories of labor, but to Aristotle and Aquinas. For what Aristotle, Aquinas, and essentially the entire stock of pre-modern philosophy, approached differently was the question of, "what should our fundamental social value be?" Their answer was not, "pleasure." For Aristotle, it was the good produced by a life trained in socially-imparted virtues--which ultimately allowed one to contemplate the divine. For Aquinas, it was more explicitly religious: loving God, which entailed doing and believing all the things He wants us to do. And as was the case with the Enlightenment, the cultures that both these thinkers embodied were constructed around such answers, from the top down. In either system, the moral worth of work is not irrelevant, it's the only thing relevant (with differences in how moral is defined). In-depth rebuttals should be directed to Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish philosopher whose book "Whose Justice, Which Rationality," I just paraphrased in part. (But seriously...)

jmcmichael 12y ago
The interviewee, Davide Graeber, is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Occupy movement so probably does not believe that a solution to this problem lies with the confines of modern capitalism. He identifies himself as an anarchist. There's more detail on his political/economic views in his book, 'Debt: The First 5000 Years': http://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt http://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt

simula67 12y ago

TL;DR If your job helps others, you may want to do it [1] for reasons other than money and therefore get paid less. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

cnorgate 12y ago

Just because certain people can't describe or understand the value of a given task or job, doesn't mean it has no value. Clearly if person A pays person B to perform a task, then person B must be creating at least as much value as they're being paid. Who are you or I to judge that value? We're neither receiving the value nor paying for it. If person A is consistently paying more than $2 for $1 of value, then they'll soon be out of money, and the system will unceremoniously remove person A from decision making authority. While it's nice to suggest that Wall St. doesn't create any value for people, ~20% of our GDP would suggest otherwise. The truth is that Wall St. acts much like Adam Smith's invisible hand. For our system to work, capital must be allocated to optimal uses. Command economies do a poor job of this, except in war time. Wall St. helps us reallocate capital to the most productive endeavors. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Even if the folks on Wall St. don't build your car, they did pool the capital necessary to finance the construction of the manufacturing facility. Can't have one without the other. As a final point, if the 'caring class' isn't compensated enough, perhaps it's because there is an oversupply of 'caring folks'. Or perhaps they're not really creating any value for others? Perhaps some of the 'caring class' should get creative and find other ways to be caring, or perhaps they should find ways to provide more 'care' with their time so they can command a higher share of the value they create?

contingencies 12y ago

What strikes me is that this article seems to conclude with a focus on changing society's perception of work as a means to changing its nature (I think we need to start by redefining labor itself, maybe, start with classic “women’s work,” nurturing children, looking after things, as the paradigm for labor itself and then it will be much harder to be confused about what’s really valuable and what isn’t. As I say, we’re already seeing the first stirrings of this sort of thing. It’s both a political and a moral transformation and think it’s the only way we can overcome the system that puts so many of us in bullshit jobs.) whereas Debt: The First 5000 Years focuses, to my mind, essentially on proving the heterogeneity of value and value-exchange systems (ie. psycho-social and concrete economies) in past and present human societies that deviate significantly from our present-era global neocolonial capitalist system. I wonder if this represents a change in Graeber's own mindset, or is merely representative of the interviewer. PS. I've had emails with Graeber and he's every bit as personable and intelligent in private communications as in his conventional written output.

mahyarm 12y ago

The caring classes he talks about being underpaid are probably underpaid because they tend to help the poorest who do not have much money, the amount of people with their skill set is high and their professions do not scale in the amount of people they help.

kennethcwilbur 12y ago

Honest question: Is the headline linkbait? I read the entire interview but I didn't see where he really explained why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid.