4 ms·

Graeber makes no distinction between "useful" as in: a) creator of exchange value to it's maker; b) creator of utility to it's holder; b) psychologically "meani

by tpeo 12y ago

Graeber makes no distinction between "useful" as in: a) creator of exchange value to it's maker; b) creator of utility to it's holder; b) psychologically "meaningful" to the worker. And while the core of the article deals with the latter, by not making this distinction he dangerously suggests the two former. As much I'd like to believe that managers are stupid, they're not crazy to hand out free money. If an employee generated no additional income to it's employer, there would be no reason to hire him in the first place. Similarly, if the holder of a good derived no enjoyment from it, it would be of no value at all to him. It's hard to believe, for instance, that a "corporate lawyer's" work has no social value. The job of lawyers isn't even to win legal battles, but to avoid them in the first place. The job of a corporate lawyer is to ensure corporations are compliant with all the paperwork necessary to their operation. For sufficiently large corporations, they're a necessary condition for it's functioning. For me, the only reason why his argument might seem personally intuitive is because the majority of things in capitalism are of no use at all to any given particular person, even if all of them are "useful" in some way. Paparazzi, dog-washers and all-night pizza deliverymen are useless for all but the people who demand their services. It's not hard to see why consumers would have little interest in contract law if they deal so little with it, and when they do, their job of understanding it has already been cushioned by a specialist. I see little point in coffee shops. Nonetheless, people flock to places with well-developed service economies that offer such things (e.g. New York, San Francisco) along with dog-washers. Perhaps because they know they'll cater to their bullshit tastes too.

crdoconnor 12y ago
>It's hard to believe, for instance, that a "corporate lawyer's" work has no social value. It REALLY isn't that hard. >The job of lawyers isn't even to win legal battles, but to avoid them in the first place. Right, they run the full gamut from avoiding legal battles with communities that are trying to shut down polluting factories that damage their health to avoiding legal battles with people who have suffered injury, incapacitation or even death from using their products. Using every trick available. Their job is to make sure that large corporations are protected from us and they are paid handsomely for it. You consider this 'social value'?
- parasubvert 12y ago
  Do you really consider the work corporate lawyers do can be summed up by the plotlines to Hollywood movies like "A Civil Action" and "Erin Brockovich"? Because that's effectively what you've done in your reply. Fundamentally, lawyers exist because we no longer (generally) find it acceptable to challenge each other to duels, or send Vinnie and the boys to bust someone's kneecaps when we don't like what they're doing. Irreconcilable disagreements between companies/businesses/individuals all need a means of resolution.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    You do realize that Erin Brockovich was based upon a true story right?
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      Of course. The point is that it's an absurd Hollywood-fed cliche to think that this represents all corporate lawyers and thus that they have no social value as a profession.
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        So now real life is a cliche? Okay then.
- notahacker 12y ago
  Some corporate lawyers also persuade upper management they're going to be in serious trouble if they don't drop the unfair terms from their employment contracts, prevent their companies from being taken advantage of by predatory rivals, kill off patent trolls and prevent utterly frivolous lawsuits from ever seeing the light of day. Poet-musicians seldom play for such high stakes, though ones that can't sell enough albums to pay the recording costs or get enough live gigs to feed themselves haven't necessarily left their audiences feeling happier on aggregate. It's really easy to believe that certain corporate lawyer jobs have no social value, or negative social value. It's also really easy to believe that somebody who enjoyed being a "poet-musician" is rather bitter about the fact they now spend sixty suited hours a week wearing a suit composing boilerplate prose, and their whining about what a massive waste of time their job is isn't a particularly good illustration of misallocated resources. It's natural to believe that stuff you enjoy doing is more socially valuable than stuff you don't, but personal feelings of validation are an even worse proxy for social value than the market system. In particular I'm unconvinced by the link drawn between "talented poet-musicians" failing to get their recording contracts renewed and maldistribution of incomes, as if the 99% were unable to afford to patronise poet-musicians rather than seeing no value in doing so. And funnily enough, if the poet musician suffered from being undiscovered rather than untalented, they could probably benefit from the endeavours of people involved in the drudgery of service sector "bullshit" jobs like A&R man, ad exec, or analyst for music retail platform.
bryanlarsen 12y ago
Here's Graeber's answer to this argument. [1] His answer is phrased indelicately because the question he was answering was also phrased much more indelicately than yours was: Well, I keep emphasizing: I’m not here to tell anybody who thinks their job is valuable that they’re deluded. I’m just saying if people secretly believe their job doesn’t need to exist, they’re probably right. The arrogant ones are the ones who think they know better, who believe that there are workers out there so stupid they don’t understand the true meaning of what they do every day, don’t realize it really isn’t necessary, or think that workers who believe they’re in bullshit jobs have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they think they should be doing something else and therefore dismiss the importance of their own work as not good enough. I hear a lot of that. Those people are the arrogant ones. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...
bstrong 12y ago
> If an employee generated no additional income to it's employer, there would be no reason to hire him in the first place. The thing to remember here is that hiring managers aren't spending their own money. And most managers I know (though notably not the best ones) have always wanted to manage bigger teams, both for simple ego reasons and because it tends to lead to promotions and higher compensation (in one company where I worked briefly, title and compensation were directly linked to number of employees managed). This motivation leads to all sorts of decisions that are suboptimal from an economic perspective, including lots of "bullshit acquisitions".

by tpeo 12y ago

crdoconnor 12y ago

>It's hard to believe, for instance, that a "corporate lawyer's" work has no social value. It REALLY isn't that hard. >The job of lawyers isn't even to win legal battles, but to avoid them in the first place. Right, they run the full gamut from avoiding legal battles with communities that are trying to shut down polluting factories that damage their health to avoiding legal battles with people who have suffered injury, incapacitation or even death from using their products. Using every trick available. Their job is to make sure that large corporations are protected from us and they are paid handsomely for it. You consider this 'social value'?

parasubvert 12y ago
Do you really consider the work corporate lawyers do can be summed up by the plotlines to Hollywood movies like "A Civil Action" and "Erin Brockovich"? Because that's effectively what you've done in your reply. Fundamentally, lawyers exist because we no longer (generally) find it acceptable to challenge each other to duels, or send Vinnie and the boys to bust someone's kneecaps when we don't like what they're doing. Irreconcilable disagreements between companies/businesses/individuals all need a means of resolution.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  You do realize that Erin Brockovich was based upon a true story right?
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    Of course. The point is that it's an absurd Hollywood-fed cliche to think that this represents all corporate lawyers and thus that they have no social value as a profession.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      So now real life is a cliche? Okay then.
notahacker 12y ago
Some corporate lawyers also persuade upper management they're going to be in serious trouble if they don't drop the unfair terms from their employment contracts, prevent their companies from being taken advantage of by predatory rivals, kill off patent trolls and prevent utterly frivolous lawsuits from ever seeing the light of day. Poet-musicians seldom play for such high stakes, though ones that can't sell enough albums to pay the recording costs or get enough live gigs to feed themselves haven't necessarily left their audiences feeling happier on aggregate. It's really easy to believe that certain corporate lawyer jobs have no social value, or negative social value. It's also really easy to believe that somebody who enjoyed being a "poet-musician" is rather bitter about the fact they now spend sixty suited hours a week wearing a suit composing boilerplate prose, and their whining about what a massive waste of time their job is isn't a particularly good illustration of misallocated resources. It's natural to believe that stuff you enjoy doing is more socially valuable than stuff you don't, but personal feelings of validation are an even worse proxy for social value than the market system. In particular I'm unconvinced by the link drawn between "talented poet-musicians" failing to get their recording contracts renewed and maldistribution of incomes, as if the 99% were unable to afford to patronise poet-musicians rather than seeing no value in doing so. And funnily enough, if the poet musician suffered from being undiscovered rather than untalented, they could probably benefit from the endeavours of people involved in the drudgery of service sector "bullshit" jobs like A&R man, ad exec, or analyst for music retail platform.

bryanlarsen 12y ago

Here's Graeber's answer to this argument. [1] His answer is phrased indelicately because the question he was answering was also phrased much more indelicately than yours was: Well, I keep emphasizing: I’m not here to tell anybody who thinks their job is valuable that they’re deluded. I’m just saying if people secretly believe their job doesn’t need to exist, they’re probably right. The arrogant ones are the ones who think they know better, who believe that there are workers out there so stupid they don’t understand the true meaning of what they do every day, don’t realize it really isn’t necessary, or think that workers who believe they’re in bullshit jobs have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they think they should be doing something else and therefore dismiss the importance of their own work as not good enough. I hear a lot of that. Those people are the arrogant ones. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/ http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1...

bstrong 12y ago

> If an employee generated no additional income to it's employer, there would be no reason to hire him in the first place. The thing to remember here is that hiring managers aren't spending their own money. And most managers I know (though notably not the best ones) have always wanted to manage bigger teams, both for simple ego reasons and because it tends to lead to promotions and higher compensation (in one company where I worked briefly, title and compensation were directly linked to number of employees managed). This motivation leads to all sorts of decisions that are suboptimal from an economic perspective, including lots of "bullshit acquisitions".