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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @12:28PM
Of course he can't. He's just virtue-signaling, he doesn't actually understand what he's talking about.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @03:06PM
Yup, that's me. SJW who spends all his time trying to convince other SJWs how much he feels the pain of the oppressed. Look at my shiny virtue and be awed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @03:39PM
Lol, you think only SJWs have virtue. That's funny.
Here's a clue for fools like you — all those terms like SJW, virtue-signaling, tree-hugger, feminazi, etc dreamt up by reactionaries to dismiss the arguments of people they consider enemies aren't really about their enemies, they are about themselves. In trying to describe something they can't figure out they look for behaviors in themself and try to make it fit. That's why the terms have such traction with other reactionaries, they "feel" true because they recognize their own impulses in the words.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday October 03 2016, @04:34PM
Ok, way off topic.
Is TERF one of those terms as well? I realize it gets all wibbly-wobbly real quick and in a hurry. I'm having trouble distinguishing feminazi from TERF from radfem and where that all fits into recent herstory at the moment.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 03 2016, @08:44PM
Dust in the wind, let it blow past instead of adding the tiniest bit of traction to it. If the terms make you confused then that is way better than the annoyance / anger those types want to get out of you!
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 03 2016, @08:58PM
Yes, coin a term to describe a style of behavior and you're a horrible person. What a fucking moron.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.