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>Most people who criticize "bullshit jobs" simply lack the perspective to see how these jobs are critically important for society. Ok, so that's one that you c

>Most people who criticize "bullshit jobs" simply lack the perspective to see how these jobs are critically important for society. Ok, so that's one that you cherry picked. How about these? * Private equity CEOs * Lobbyists * PR researchers * Telemarketers * Bailiffs Tell us how the world would be worse off without them. You could argue that some of these are doing actual harm to society, actually.

WalterBright 12y ago
Let's take Private Equity CEOs. The bottom line of what they do is try to reallocate capital away from less productive investments and towards more productive investments.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  Which is why we have off-shoring, and stagnant or dropping real income for that segment of the population that still has a job. Are these good things? Is it a good thing when a private equity investor starts stomping around your startup demanding you treat your hires like exploitable assets and not like friends or colleagues you respect?
  - darawk 12y ago
    a) Off-shoring is a consequence of poorly thought out and even more poorly enforced tax-laws, not private equity firms. b) If you have a private equity investor stomping around your startup, it's because you solicited their investment. If you didn't want it, don't take the money. Simple.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      a) Private equity has always pushed for off-shoring and for a favourable tax culture. This is only a government failure to the extent that government hasn't resisted lobbying efforts from the PEs. b) So you're saying founders have a choice between accepting bullying or being starved of funding? Perhaps that's not the positive argument for PE it might appear to be. The reality is that PE culture vampirises and kills real businesses and real affluence. It's only investment in the most toxic and predatory sense.
      - adventured 12y ago
        First, people keep saying "private equity" - most investment in the US is private equity (eg every time an angel invests into a company, it's a private equity investment). I will assume what is being referred to here, is LBO or more aggressive acquisition type firms like Bain. The parent is right however, if Bain comes knocking on your private business, it's up to you as to whether you take their money. They do not use force to make you take their money or terms. I don't think the parent is making an argument in favor of these companies being saints, rather, that they function on a voluntary basis.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality, helping the poor, and helping consumers. It's true that the wealthy Americans who formerly collected rents due to an accident of their birth might not be happy about it, but so what? Real income is rising, BTW. It's only real wages (i.e. income excluding benefits) in the US which have not due to a shift of comp from wages to non-wage benefits (the total is also rising).
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      >Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality Pitting third world workers against first world workers isn't good for either of them in the long run. The same threat that hangs over US workers (we will offshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wages) actually hangs over 3rd world workers too (we will reshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wage). It's a win/win situation for private equity though. > It's true that the wealthy Americans who formerly collected rents Wages are rents now are they? That's doubleplus good doublethink. >Real income is rising Median incomes are in decline. >shift of comp from wages to non-wage benefits ...if you do some creative accounting on healthcare costs. Theoretically you might be getting $150,000 worth of benefits if your company insurance pays for your appendectomy. You and I both know that those absurd prices only really apply to the uninsured.
      - yummyfajitas 12y ago
        The rent captured by us workers is the price delta between a competitive market and one with barriers to trade. Only part of their wage is rent - if deepika earns 10k rs/month and Danielle earns 100k rs, the rent is 90k. As for income (not wages, which is a subse of income), data is easily googleable. http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=COMPRNFB&show=chart&range=max&units=lin http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=COMPRNF...
        crdoconnor 12y ago
        >The rent captured by us workers is the price delta between a competitive market and one with barriers to trade. Oh really. What is the price delta between a logically-impossible perfectly competitive market and the current labor market? >Only part of their wage is rent - if deepika earns 10k rs/month and Danielle earns 100k rs, the rent is 90k. Assuming deepika and Danielle are the same person.
- littletimmy 12y ago
  In general, you can make that sort of broad argument about anything. For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). The point being made here is whether Private Equity CEOs are contributing anything substantial apart from concentrating capital. The answer to that has to be no. Private equity firms (the refashioned lbo firms, not vc) have a history of preying on medium-sized solid businesses where they strip the company of assets, load it with debt, and eventually pocket gains at the expense of employees and other stakeholders. That said, I agree with you in that a PE CEO is a bad example to use in this case. A PE firm is not neutral-useless, it is deleterious to society.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    >For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). I think that's a different discourse. Slave labour was not a "bullshit job", it was productive. However, it was unethical. You can have productive jobs which are unethical, but that's a separate discussion from bullshit jobs.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >I think that's a different discourse. Slave labour was not a "bullshit job", it was productive. That depends on how you do the accounting. If you account for slave labor as the cost of minimal food and housing, then it's not only productive, it's cheaper than almost anything else, especially because the slaves are property, so you can breed them and get a return-on-investment while also extracting labor. Of course, if you account for slave labor in terms of some equivalent to wages, then all of a sudden society has reason to stop using slave labor and innovate instead. Ditto for today's low-wage labor in which sub-living wages end up subsidized by state antipoverty benefits. Society has always faced a choice between exploitation and innovation, a zero-sum arrangement and a positive-sum arrangement. Unfortunately, rarely has it been wise enough to choose the latter.
  - 12y ago
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  Can you try to explain how they did that in the case of Guitar Center? http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/guitar-center-private-equitys-magical-growth-curve.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/guitar-center-private... The theory and reality of private equity do seem to be worlds apart. Much like the theory and practice of high speed trading. In theory they reallocate capital more productively. In practice they seem to make money by squeezing workers, taxpayers, investors and even their own customers (some of whom seem content to squeezed - CalPERs, for instance).
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    I find that article to be hopelessly confusing, and can't make heads or tails of it. So I have no opinion on GC.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      Maybe you shouldn't have opinions on private equity if you find it hopelessly confusing.
      - WalterBright 12y ago
        I said the article was incoherent. Not the topic of PE.
        crdoconnor 12y ago
        So explain, in your own words, then, how you think Ares is more efficiently allocating capital now that they're in charge of GC. Because it sure seems to me that all they are doing is squeezing their employees and vendors ever harder as per the Bain "how to run a company into the ground" handbook.
        adventured 12y ago
        And why wouldn't you attribute it to incompetence, rather than malice? A successful company is worth vastly more than a destroyed one, or one that has had its assets stripped. The ideal LBO is one in which you take an undervalued company private, maximize its operations, and then spin it back out at a time when you can achieve maximum return (eg when the market is high). If Guitar Center is such an amazing business, how did they end up in a shark's mouth to begin with? It's precisely because they were a poorly run business that they were consumed by Bain. If Bain sells pieces of the business, who does that harm exactly? If Bain maximizes profitability and spins GC back out, who does that harm? Fired employees? Well it's business, not charity, nobody is entitled to a job; most businesses exist to generate a profit, not employ people. I find that most people dislike that fact, however that's how every economy works, on profit not charity (which derives from having earned a profit in the first place). Not to mention that even if you were right, and a company is extremely valuable and all Bain does is destroy good companies, that opens up vast opportunities for good competitors to grow and hire new employees. Your response might be: and how about the employees of said destroyed company? Sure, and how about the employees of a million businesses that go under every year due to incompetence, we should obviously outlaw bad business operators and entrepreneurs. If you're an employee of any company, anywhere, you're assuming risk of employment, that your employer may go under, weaken, or restructure. There's no avoiding that risk.
cssmoo 12y ago
Court appointed bailiffs have been used by myself to recover owed cash on a couple of occasions so they serve a purpose and a good one. If people enter a contract they can't fulfil then there needs to be a method to obtain appropriate compensation. As for the rest, I agree.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  Sure, that was good for you. I don't think anybody would argue that these jobs aren't good for somebody. The real question is whether they are contributing to society at large. I know somebody who hired a lobbyist too. Worked out great.
  - cssmoo 12y ago
    Yes. It was good for me and it was good for the other person too. Why? Because it enforces society's moral standards upon everyone. If there is no common ground it descends into anarchy because if someone owes me £1500 I'm going to pay £200 to smash his kneecaps if there wasn't a court and bailiff option...
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      >I'm going to pay £200 to smash his kneecaps The often extreme violence of creditors against debtors, and the way that has debt has been used to control (and often enslave) others is another theme of Graeber's books. I imagine that you are not a fan.
      - cssmoo 12y ago
        Bailiffs and debt collectors are two different concepts.
    - zo1 12y ago
      I'm sorry, but if you think that is what a state-less society will turn to, then it says more about you than it does about other people. I, for example, don't not smash people's kneecaps because it's "against the law", just like most other individuals that inhabit this society. On the other hand, you seem to be under the misconception that there can be no "common ground" in a society without a state-mandated "common ground". Here are some links to start you off on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization #Note. Sorry for detracting from the main topic being discussed here. But I sometimes do feel compelled to enlighten individuals that seem to have some very "spoon fed" definitions about the possibility of a state-less society, and how it might look like.
zo1 12y ago
Definition of bailiff: a person who performs certain actions under legal authority, in particular. North American: an official in a court of law who keeps order, looks after prisoners, etc. British: a sheriff's officer who executes writs and processes and carries out distraints and arrests. It would seem that just by that definition, they serve a purpose. Are we looking at different definitions, perhaps
fwn 12y ago
I am unsure how someone might think lobbyists don't generate value. With their lobbying they convert causes which can't be easily utilised in the democratic process to be more addressable (which means: can be targeted by polarising groups in either gov or opposition) They do extend the capacity of democracies dramatically. eg: Nobody linked mahogany with dying rainforests before Greenpeace.
- wpietri 12y ago
  You're confusing lobbying with political activity. Greenpeace's power comes through citizens, advertising, and information, not lobbyists. They have 250,000 members in the US and are widely known and quoted. But last year they spent only $30k on lobbying out of the $3.2 billion spent, or less than 0.001% of the total. Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/
diminoten 12y ago
You honestly can't be so arrogant so as to assume that if you can't see the benefit of an activity, that it must not have any benefit, right? Lobbyists are critical to the functioning of the American system of government. They're even mentioned in the Constitution. Private equity firms make retirement possible. PR researchers enable companies to not have to deal exclusively with the populist swaying of public opinion. Public opinion, generally speaking, is an awful way to do business and to make decisions. Mobs are cruel. I could go on but this method of dealing with your issues is unsustainable. Suffice it to say that you're just going to have to live with the fact that you don't understand everything and that's okay.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Go on. I'd like to see how telemarketing is useful. For me, it's a more demeaning job than being a prostitute - at least in the latter case, two parties engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of value. The job of a telemarketer is to trick a person into wasting his/her hard-earned money on a subpar product the person doesn't even need.
  - ryanmonroe 12y ago
    Telemarketing may not be useful, but now the goalpost seems to have moved from "prove most jobs are actually useful" to "prove no jobs of questionable utility exist"
  - roymurdock 12y ago
    Useful is such a relative word. Telemarketing is useful in some way to the person who employs the telemarketer. Otherwise he/she wouldn't pay someone to do it. It's also useful to the person earning the salary, who then spends their salary consuming in the economy. Not everyone is lucky/brave enough to pursue what they are truly passionate about. Finally, even if the job doesn't generate any sales, it's still redistributing wealth away from one set of people (shareholders of the company) to others in the economy. Is this useful?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
rayiner 12y ago
> * Private equity CEOs Like 'sama? Remember, the whole world of VC is a subcategory of private equity. > * Lobbyists Lobbyists are the ones that tell the government that if they pass the new environmental regulation, the coal plant employing 300 workers will have to close. Other lobbyists tell the government that if they don't pass the new environmental regulation, that coal plant will impose tens of millions of dollars of healthcare costs on the surrounding neighborhood. Both are important functions. > * PR researchers Are cosmetics companies also bullshit in your calculation? > * Bailiffs So courts in which dangerous criminals are prosecuted shouldn't have people providing security?
- wpietri 12y ago
  Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say. Each individual lobbyist is presumably useful to the person paying them. But that doesn't mean that they are societally useful. If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Or they might not, because there'd be less distortion to sort through. The reason company X needs a lobbyist is often because company Y has a lobbyist. That's certainly why Google and the tech industry started spending heavily; they were losing out to other players. It's basically an arms race to manipulate government. With the additional problem that the battleground is our own country, so that the harm caused by the ongoing war is not borne by lobbyists but by taxpayers and citizens.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say Lobbyists are paid to advocate the viewpoints of their clients, but their clients are people: businesses, organizations, and individuals with a stake in the society. > If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Sure, you can move that function into the bureaucracy. Instead of lobbyists presenting information on behalf of clients, you could have technocrats that were part of the bureaucracy. But someone has to present to the legislators the impact a proposal will have on various stakeholders--it would be a bad thing if nobody did that work. And it's not clear that moving the research function into the bureaucracy would be a good thing. The benefit of the lobbying system is that it's adversarial--Google's lobbyists can attack the evidence and reasoning of Sony's lobbyists. But who attacks the evidence of the faceless unelected technocrat? Non-adversarial processes have failure modes too. Also, it's not like without lobbyists big corporations wouldn't have influence over government, or even less influence. Companies like mass retailers, oil companies, coal companies, etc, will always have tremendous pull because they employ lots of people or control products vital to the economy. Companies like Google merely have money, rather than hundreds of thousands of voters' livelihoods as bargaining chips. It's a huge credit of the lobbying system that such companies can have as much influence over government as they do.
collyw 12y ago
I have thought this recently. The people who get richest often are the ones fucking up things. The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. Like wise the guy who invented tetra packs is rich, but what a waste - a plastic carton for every litre of milk? Better off when we were recycling glass.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. They also make our mega-sprawl suburbs possible. It's a cop-out to pretend like oil companies aren't getting rich giving people what they want.
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  Glass to hold and transport milk is more of a waste than plastic. You can tell because the cost of using plastic is evidently lower.
  - robotresearcher 12y ago
    Only if the costs of each are accurately encoding their externalities. There can be a long delay before this happens, if ever.
    - SamReidHughes 12y ago
      No, not really. The externalities of the plastic is inconsequential. The externalities of glass are probably higher. Have you calculated them?
      - robotresearcher 12y ago
        No. I'm guessing you haven't either, since no one can. Such confidence in the market. Is/was the market price of Thalidomide, asbestos and cigarettes also perfect? edit: I'm not saying that Tetrapaks will turn out to be terrible, just pointing out that things are priced with complete ignorance of their eventual externalities. And how is the cost of the plastic fragments in the ocean factored in in this example? It won't be zero in the long run.

WalterBright 12y ago

Let's take Private Equity CEOs. The bottom line of what they do is try to reallocate capital away from less productive investments and towards more productive investments.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
Which is why we have off-shoring, and stagnant or dropping real income for that segment of the population that still has a job. Are these good things? Is it a good thing when a private equity investor starts stomping around your startup demanding you treat your hires like exploitable assets and not like friends or colleagues you respect?
- darawk 12y ago
  a) Off-shoring is a consequence of poorly thought out and even more poorly enforced tax-laws, not private equity firms. b) If you have a private equity investor stomping around your startup, it's because you solicited their investment. If you didn't want it, don't take the money. Simple.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    a) Private equity has always pushed for off-shoring and for a favourable tax culture. This is only a government failure to the extent that government hasn't resisted lobbying efforts from the PEs. b) So you're saying founders have a choice between accepting bullying or being starved of funding? Perhaps that's not the positive argument for PE it might appear to be. The reality is that PE culture vampirises and kills real businesses and real affluence. It's only investment in the most toxic and predatory sense.
    - adventured 12y ago
      First, people keep saying "private equity" - most investment in the US is private equity (eg every time an angel invests into a company, it's a private equity investment). I will assume what is being referred to here, is LBO or more aggressive acquisition type firms like Bain. The parent is right however, if Bain comes knocking on your private business, it's up to you as to whether you take their money. They do not use force to make you take their money or terms. I don't think the parent is making an argument in favor of these companies being saints, rather, that they function on a voluntary basis.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality, helping the poor, and helping consumers. It's true that the wealthy Americans who formerly collected rents due to an accident of their birth might not be happy about it, but so what? Real income is rising, BTW. It's only real wages (i.e. income excluding benefits) in the US which have not due to a shift of comp from wages to non-wage benefits (the total is also rising).
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >Off-shoring is a wonderful example of private equity types reducing global inequality Pitting third world workers against first world workers isn't good for either of them in the long run. The same threat that hangs over US workers (we will offshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wages) actually hangs over 3rd world workers too (we will reshore your job if you unionize and demand higher wage). It's a win/win situation for private equity though. > It's true that the wealthy Americans who formerly collected rents Wages are rents now are they? That's doubleplus good doublethink. >Real income is rising Median incomes are in decline. >shift of comp from wages to non-wage benefits ...if you do some creative accounting on healthcare costs. Theoretically you might be getting $150,000 worth of benefits if your company insurance pays for your appendectomy. You and I both know that those absurd prices only really apply to the uninsured.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      The rent captured by us workers is the price delta between a competitive market and one with barriers to trade. Only part of their wage is rent - if deepika earns 10k rs/month and Danielle earns 100k rs, the rent is 90k. As for income (not wages, which is a subse of income), data is easily googleable. http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=COMPRNFB&show=chart&range=max&units=lin http://m.research.stlouisfed.org/fred/series.php?sid=COMPRNF...
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        >The rent captured by us workers is the price delta between a competitive market and one with barriers to trade. Oh really. What is the price delta between a logically-impossible perfectly competitive market and the current labor market? >Only part of their wage is rent - if deepika earns 10k rs/month and Danielle earns 100k rs, the rent is 90k. Assuming deepika and Danielle are the same person.
littletimmy 12y ago
In general, you can make that sort of broad argument about anything. For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). The point being made here is whether Private Equity CEOs are contributing anything substantial apart from concentrating capital. The answer to that has to be no. Private equity firms (the refashioned lbo firms, not vc) have a history of preying on medium-sized solid businesses where they strip the company of assets, load it with debt, and eventually pocket gains at the expense of employees and other stakeholders. That said, I agree with you in that a PE CEO is a bad example to use in this case. A PE firm is not neutral-useless, it is deleterious to society.
- nawitus 12y ago
  >For example, you could say slavers were trying to reallocate labor from where it was less productive (African subsistence farming) to where it was more productive (building the American economy). I think that's a different discourse. Slave labour was not a "bullshit job", it was productive. However, it was unethical. You can have productive jobs which are unethical, but that's a separate discussion from bullshit jobs.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >I think that's a different discourse. Slave labour was not a "bullshit job", it was productive. That depends on how you do the accounting. If you account for slave labor as the cost of minimal food and housing, then it's not only productive, it's cheaper than almost anything else, especially because the slaves are property, so you can breed them and get a return-on-investment while also extracting labor. Of course, if you account for slave labor in terms of some equivalent to wages, then all of a sudden society has reason to stop using slave labor and innovate instead. Ditto for today's low-wage labor in which sub-living wages end up subsidized by state antipoverty benefits. Society has always faced a choice between exploitation and innovation, a zero-sum arrangement and a positive-sum arrangement. Unfortunately, rarely has it been wise enough to choose the latter.
- 12y ago
crdoconnor 12y ago
Can you try to explain how they did that in the case of Guitar Center? http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/guitar-center-private-equitys-magical-growth-curve.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/guitar-center-private... The theory and reality of private equity do seem to be worlds apart. Much like the theory and practice of high speed trading. In theory they reallocate capital more productively. In practice they seem to make money by squeezing workers, taxpayers, investors and even their own customers (some of whom seem content to squeezed - CalPERs, for instance).
- WalterBright 12y ago
  I find that article to be hopelessly confusing, and can't make heads or tails of it. So I have no opinion on GC.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    Maybe you shouldn't have opinions on private equity if you find it hopelessly confusing.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      I said the article was incoherent. Not the topic of PE.
      - crdoconnor 12y ago
        So explain, in your own words, then, how you think Ares is more efficiently allocating capital now that they're in charge of GC. Because it sure seems to me that all they are doing is squeezing their employees and vendors ever harder as per the Bain "how to run a company into the ground" handbook.
        adventured 12y ago
        And why wouldn't you attribute it to incompetence, rather than malice? A successful company is worth vastly more than a destroyed one, or one that has had its assets stripped. The ideal LBO is one in which you take an undervalued company private, maximize its operations, and then spin it back out at a time when you can achieve maximum return (eg when the market is high). If Guitar Center is such an amazing business, how did they end up in a shark's mouth to begin with? It's precisely because they were a poorly run business that they were consumed by Bain. If Bain sells pieces of the business, who does that harm exactly? If Bain maximizes profitability and spins GC back out, who does that harm? Fired employees? Well it's business, not charity, nobody is entitled to a job; most businesses exist to generate a profit, not employ people. I find that most people dislike that fact, however that's how every economy works, on profit not charity (which derives from having earned a profit in the first place). Not to mention that even if you were right, and a company is extremely valuable and all Bain does is destroy good companies, that opens up vast opportunities for good competitors to grow and hire new employees. Your response might be: and how about the employees of said destroyed company? Sure, and how about the employees of a million businesses that go under every year due to incompetence, we should obviously outlaw bad business operators and entrepreneurs. If you're an employee of any company, anywhere, you're assuming risk of employment, that your employer may go under, weaken, or restructure. There's no avoiding that risk.

cssmoo 12y ago

Court appointed bailiffs have been used by myself to recover owed cash on a couple of occasions so they serve a purpose and a good one. If people enter a contract they can't fulfil then there needs to be a method to obtain appropriate compensation. As for the rest, I agree.

crdoconnor 12y ago
Sure, that was good for you. I don't think anybody would argue that these jobs aren't good for somebody. The real question is whether they are contributing to society at large. I know somebody who hired a lobbyist too. Worked out great.
- cssmoo 12y ago
  Yes. It was good for me and it was good for the other person too. Why? Because it enforces society's moral standards upon everyone. If there is no common ground it descends into anarchy because if someone owes me £1500 I'm going to pay £200 to smash his kneecaps if there wasn't a court and bailiff option...
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >I'm going to pay £200 to smash his kneecaps The often extreme violence of creditors against debtors, and the way that has debt has been used to control (and often enslave) others is another theme of Graeber's books. I imagine that you are not a fan.
    - cssmoo 12y ago
      Bailiffs and debt collectors are two different concepts.
  - zo1 12y ago
    I'm sorry, but if you think that is what a state-less society will turn to, then it says more about you than it does about other people. I, for example, don't not smash people's kneecaps because it's "against the law", just like most other individuals that inhabit this society. On the other hand, you seem to be under the misconception that there can be no "common ground" in a society without a state-mandated "common ground". Here are some links to start you off on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution_organization #Note. Sorry for detracting from the main topic being discussed here. But I sometimes do feel compelled to enlighten individuals that seem to have some very "spoon fed" definitions about the possibility of a state-less society, and how it might look like.

zo1 12y ago

Definition of bailiff: a person who performs certain actions under legal authority, in particular. North American: an official in a court of law who keeps order, looks after prisoners, etc. British: a sheriff's officer who executes writs and processes and carries out distraints and arrests. It would seem that just by that definition, they serve a purpose. Are we looking at different definitions, perhaps

fwn 12y ago

I am unsure how someone might think lobbyists don't generate value. With their lobbying they convert causes which can't be easily utilised in the democratic process to be more addressable (which means: can be targeted by polarising groups in either gov or opposition) They do extend the capacity of democracies dramatically. eg: Nobody linked mahogany with dying rainforests before Greenpeace.

wpietri 12y ago
You're confusing lobbying with political activity. Greenpeace's power comes through citizens, advertising, and information, not lobbyists. They have 250,000 members in the US and are widely known and quoted. But last year they spent only $30k on lobbying out of the $3.2 billion spent, or less than 0.001% of the total. Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/

diminoten 12y ago

You honestly can't be so arrogant so as to assume that if you can't see the benefit of an activity, that it must not have any benefit, right? Lobbyists are critical to the functioning of the American system of government. They're even mentioned in the Constitution. Private equity firms make retirement possible. PR researchers enable companies to not have to deal exclusively with the populist swaying of public opinion. Public opinion, generally speaking, is an awful way to do business and to make decisions. Mobs are cruel. I could go on but this method of dealing with your issues is unsustainable. Suffice it to say that you're just going to have to live with the fact that you don't understand everything and that's okay.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Go on. I'd like to see how telemarketing is useful. For me, it's a more demeaning job than being a prostitute - at least in the latter case, two parties engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of value. The job of a telemarketer is to trick a person into wasting his/her hard-earned money on a subpar product the person doesn't even need.
- ryanmonroe 12y ago
  Telemarketing may not be useful, but now the goalpost seems to have moved from "prove most jobs are actually useful" to "prove no jobs of questionable utility exist"
- roymurdock 12y ago
  Useful is such a relative word. Telemarketing is useful in some way to the person who employs the telemarketer. Otherwise he/she wouldn't pay someone to do it. It's also useful to the person earning the salary, who then spends their salary consuming in the economy. Not everyone is lucky/brave enough to pursue what they are truly passionate about. Finally, even if the job doesn't generate any sales, it's still redistributing wealth away from one set of people (shareholders of the company) to others in the economy. Is this useful?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago

rayiner 12y ago

> * Private equity CEOs Like 'sama? Remember, the whole world of VC is a subcategory of private equity. > * Lobbyists Lobbyists are the ones that tell the government that if they pass the new environmental regulation, the coal plant employing 300 workers will have to close. Other lobbyists tell the government that if they don't pass the new environmental regulation, that coal plant will impose tens of millions of dollars of healthcare costs on the surrounding neighborhood. Both are important functions. > * PR researchers Are cosmetics companies also bullshit in your calculation? > * Bailiffs So courts in which dangerous criminals are prosecuted shouldn't have people providing security?

wpietri 12y ago
Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say. Each individual lobbyist is presumably useful to the person paying them. But that doesn't mean that they are societally useful. If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Or they might not, because there'd be less distortion to sort through. The reason company X needs a lobbyist is often because company Y has a lobbyist. That's certainly why Google and the tech industry started spending heavily; they were losing out to other players. It's basically an arms race to manipulate government. With the additional problem that the battleground is our own country, so that the harm caused by the ongoing war is not borne by lobbyists but by taxpayers and citizens.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say Lobbyists are paid to advocate the viewpoints of their clients, but their clients are people: businesses, organizations, and individuals with a stake in the society. > If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Sure, you can move that function into the bureaucracy. Instead of lobbyists presenting information on behalf of clients, you could have technocrats that were part of the bureaucracy. But someone has to present to the legislators the impact a proposal will have on various stakeholders--it would be a bad thing if nobody did that work. And it's not clear that moving the research function into the bureaucracy would be a good thing. The benefit of the lobbying system is that it's adversarial--Google's lobbyists can attack the evidence and reasoning of Sony's lobbyists. But who attacks the evidence of the faceless unelected technocrat? Non-adversarial processes have failure modes too. Also, it's not like without lobbyists big corporations wouldn't have influence over government, or even less influence. Companies like mass retailers, oil companies, coal companies, etc, will always have tremendous pull because they employ lots of people or control products vital to the economy. Companies like Google merely have money, rather than hundreds of thousands of voters' livelihoods as bargaining chips. It's a huge credit of the lobbying system that such companies can have as much influence over government as they do.

collyw 12y ago

I have thought this recently. The people who get richest often are the ones fucking up things. The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. Like wise the guy who invented tetra packs is rich, but what a waste - a plastic carton for every litre of milk? Better off when we were recycling glass.

rayiner 12y ago
> The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. They also make our mega-sprawl suburbs possible. It's a cop-out to pretend like oil companies aren't getting rich giving people what they want.
SamReidHughes 12y ago
Glass to hold and transport milk is more of a waste than plastic. You can tell because the cost of using plastic is evidently lower.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  Only if the costs of each are accurately encoding their externalities. There can be a long delay before this happens, if ever.
  - SamReidHughes 12y ago
    No, not really. The externalities of the plastic is inconsequential. The externalities of glass are probably higher. Have you calculated them?
    - robotresearcher 12y ago
      No. I'm guessing you haven't either, since no one can. Such confidence in the market. Is/was the market price of Thalidomide, asbestos and cigarettes also perfect? edit: I'm not saying that Tetrapaks will turn out to be terrible, just pointing out that things are priced with complete ignorance of their eventual externalities. And how is the cost of the plastic fragments in the ocean factored in in this example? It won't be zero in the long run.