SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century's end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
Why did Keynes' promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the '60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn't figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we've collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment's reflection shows it can't really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the '20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.
[...] And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones. These are what I propose to call "bullshit jobs."
It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen.
http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Ed Note: Link to John Maynard Keynes was NOT in the original article.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday October 03 2016, @11:57AM
The utopia won't ever happen. Here is the thought experiment to prove it: Imagine a guy (A) has 100 dollars. Now imagine another guy (B) has 0 dollars. Now imagine (B) asks (A) for half of his money. 100% of the time (A) will ask some work to be done in return. In fact, this idea is imprinted in our minds due to thousands of years of institutionalized selective breeding that there is close to 100% chance of (B) asking (A) for money in exchange of work by himself. Not doing so can become a criminal case, actually. Hence, as the world tries to move towards more economic equality, we will be forced to do more work, not less. The creation of pointless jobs is in itself a process of reducing genie index - as per Keynes himself - and that is why social unrest is positively correlated to unemployment, it being the side-effect of inequality.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @01:23PM
You are just begging the question. Your model is predicated on the have-nots literally having nothing of value. That's not true at all and without that premise your thesis completely falls apart.
Furthermore, the amount of severe poverty has been dramatically reduced world-wide over just the last 20 years. Especially in east asia where it has gone from 60% of the population to 3%. [vox-cdn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @04:18PM
I modded you +1 coz you cited a perfect example of "begging the question"
cheers,
(Score: 3, Touché) by cubancigar11 on Monday October 03 2016, @04:40PM
You can't use the simplification of a simple model to say the model is wrong. The world also doesn't have only two people. If you go that way anything less that universe is imperfect model.
The basic premise was to show inequality of wealth and work being an essential commodity.
Umm... which basically proves my point? Isn't that the direct conclusion of what I said? Work is bartered for money hence more equality = more useless work??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @07:53PM
> You can't use the simplification of a simple model to say the model is wrong.
You can't use a simplified model to prove something not captured in the model.
> Umm... which basically proves my point? Isn't that the direct conclusion of what I said?
Nope. Here's the details - redistribution is enormously effective as part of the process. [vox.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 03 2016, @02:10PM
And your hypothesis collapses right there, because I can think of numerous times where people have just given stuff away without any expectation of anything in return. For example, right now, almost everywhere, parents are giving away half their food to kids under age 6 or so without any expectation of labor in return. Every single charitable organization, religious group, and panhandler operates on the principle that people are willing to give up valuable stuff without getting anything of equal or greater value in return.
You seem to be operating under a couple of axioms that are known to be false:
1. People are rational: All available psychological research has demonstrated, repeatedly, that people are not rational most of the time. To the degree that people use logic, they use it mostly to convince other people of ideas they've arrived at using other means. That's one of the many reasons scientists have to constantly check each others' work in order to get good results.
2. People are basically selfish: There is all sorts of research out there that makes it clear that behaving altruistically triggers the reward chemicals in most people's brains, and lots and lots of instances of people acting in the interests of others with no immediate expectation of economic reward. This trend is so dominant that those who are unable to behave altruistically are usually diagnosed with mental illnesses such as sociopathy or autism.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday October 03 2016, @04:35PM
No I understand that people give away stuff all the time. I have done it myself. I am saying that
a) NOT ALL people give away stuff
b) ONE person who doesn't give stuff is enough to show utopia doesn't exist.
For as long as (a) is true, (b) cannot be held together.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @06:39PM
because I can think of numerous times where people have just given stuff away without any expectation of anything in return
You assume what they are getting is monetary in value back. Sometimes they are buying themselves something. Sometimes they want to get rid of something but do not want to just 'trash it'. Sometimes it is for glory. Sometimes it is for the felling of power it gives them.
There are other exchanges of value other than money. Money is a holder of value. But it is not the only one out there.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 03 2016, @02:29PM
Marx labor theory of value at its finest.
People spend money on all kinds of things not just raw labor.
Money grubbing dude could have rented or sold property or product, organized some financial time value of money scheme (presumably there exists a labor market for A to hire B in just as much as B to hire A in if there was a scheme to raise capital first). The whole arena of Public Social signalling aka charity and religion. Purchase of political power/votes. Buy/Sell imaginary property (aka intellectual property)
A lot of Marx labor theory of value works pretty well when making widgets and gets confusing when talking about haircuts and other service industries. Labor theory of value makes sense when a farmer harvests 50 bushels of WTF annually. Its very fuzzy math indeed when an actuary sets up and runs a marginally profitable car insurance company. "Sign me the Happy Birthday song and please pay ASCAP so you do it legally"
Marxian thinking made a lot of sense when 99% of the economy was dudes sitting on an assembly line tightening the same bolt for 40 years, but most money isn't there anymore in the economy. Its elsewhere. And needs a model that fits elsewhere, not 1850s urban very early industrial era assembly lines in Germany.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dingus on Monday October 03 2016, @04:48PM
Most Communists/socialists don't believe in utopia either. We do, however, think that it is possible to have a society where the power of assholes to fuck with other people is diminished significantly.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday October 04 2016, @03:57AM
And that is why I am not a communist. Not only the definition of asshole is defined by those in power, someone's asshole is someone else's natural instinct.
(Score: 2) by dingus on Tuesday October 04 2016, @05:26AM
>Not only the definition of asshole is defined by those in power
It is? I've always seen it the opposite way: those in power are almost always assholes.
>someone's asshole is someone else's natural instinct.
Even if you think assholery is natural instinct(I disagree), that doesn't justify tolerating and even helping it, as we do now.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday October 04 2016, @09:55AM
That's the difference between you and the powerful - they can send you to jail and deny you rights being an asshole, you can call everyone an asshole and nobody will bother.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France
And let me guess, you are not an asshole in your eyes... right? The true issue here is the lack of support for the powerless, not an abundance of support for assholery.
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Monday October 03 2016, @08:27PM
First off, how did A get the $100? Why does b not have any dollars? The simple story has not context right from the start. We could have C, with $200 decide to give B $50, just because. The players have no starting point. Hell, B could just kill A for the $100 which I would agree, is not utopia, but then were it utopia, who ever gave A $100 would have also given B the same.
You also create a simplistic creation in that A is a greed ass so you again start off no in Utopia.
My reasoning of why we create pointless jobs is two fold based in greed and fossilized work ethics. Your own story proves it out.
Greed held by a few may be nice for them, but they need people to do things for them so the create jobs, mainly to support the flow of liquidity into their pockets and to not work for it. Pointless jobs are also created because people in power cannot accept the rational that not everyone wants or needs to work to create liquidity and capital. Artists work first for passion, maybe acknowledgement but certainly not profit.
Were we to institute a Government paycheck for all, I bet we'd see a rise in small business start ups, expansion of the arts, and a less violent society like the one you proposed.
Where did A get is $100?
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 1) by Z-A,z-a,01234 on Tuesday October 04 2016, @10:57AM
There were societies where if one guy had 100 something (let's call them dollars) and some other guy had 0 and asked the first for half he would also get it. If the roles were reversed he would have to do the same. That is called survival in small societies and the dollars would be some large animal that the first guy couldn't eat it by himself anyway. Other examples in modern times include survival in Russia after the economic collapse in the 90s and the help refugees get in Greece of all places (there are a LOT of volunteers).
As we progress towards full automation, at some point something will have to give: it's either society (due to large number of really poor, unemployed people) or the economic system (welcome utopia). I chose number 2 - it looks way better than #1.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Tuesday October 04 2016, @02:10PM
Uhm, yes, you'll generally get money in exchange for something, which is kind of the point of money, to facilitate exchange. But the question where you're working on assumption rather than reason is how much do you get in exchange for some amount of money.
Expanding on your example (and I'll adopt the inequal starting distribution, although the question how that arose is still warranted): A has $100, B and C have $0, each.
Scenario 1: A gives $50 to B to clean half his house, and $50 to C to clean the other half. Now A has nothing, B and C have $50 dollars, each, and clearly, next time it's A's turn to go to work. -> This is pretty much the Utopia.
Scenario 2: A gives $40 to B to clean his entire house, and $20 to C, if C can convince B to pay A $30 for some totally worthless insurance(*). Now A has $70, B has $10 and C has $20. -> This is what the article says is happening.
Among the differences between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2:
- B does all the "real" work. Presumably because sharing the work with C would not have left enough for B to live on. Not when B "must have" that useless insurance for $30, at least.
- The societal value of C's job is negative (adding pure annoyance). It does pay off for A, though.
- A gets to keep most money, while doing none of the work.
And this is where we return to the actual point of the article, as I understand it: If "real" work was valued more, everybody would have to work less, and bullshit jobs would disappear. However, as we have a) too many people who need money but don't have any, and b) they are in too bad of a negotation position to ask for a pay that will allow to make a living on 3 to 4 hours a working day, the useful work is never shared equally, and bullshit jobs can flourish.
(*) In reality, C's pay would be better, but we'd have at least one further person whose job it is to sell crap to B and C for the benefit of A.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday October 05 2016, @05:28AM
You are arguing on idealism. In Scenario 1, what will happen is that C will think that B is going to give his money to A anyway so why should I. After that transaction, A will have $50, B will have $0 and C will have $50. But now C will say that A should give money, and so on... C is a hoarder who is waiting for an opportunity of financial imbalance to profit from. In no time you will find that C is having $99 and A and B are bartering with the $1 left among themselves. Believe me, that's reality. The solution is to have a fourth entity of power, D, to enforce economical laws - that's socialism and it doesn't work for myriad of problems discussed in much detail in all the books of economics.
The whole thing becomes way simpler without involving government in Scenario 2. And that is why it is happening.