Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 03 2016, @11:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the describing-a-lot-of-jobs dept.

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.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Monday October 03 2016, @05:25PM

    by art guerrilla (3082) on Monday October 03 2016, @05:25PM (#409525)

    you have put your finger on the nub of the problem: large korporations...
    they are only necessary for destroying competition, NOT for the actual making and distributing of widgets ( the supposed goal)...
    i know in just about ALL the firms i worked for that got above mom and pop size, there was always mgmt that was/is fucking useless, EXCEPT for the penultimate challenge of keeping the peasants from revolting...
    otherwise, they could drop off the face of the earth and productivity would increase...
    their function is to keep the patriarchal, authoritarian hierarchy intact so the people ACTUALLY AND REALLY responsible for the productivity dont get any uppity ideas...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Spook brat on Monday October 03 2016, @06:51PM

    by Spook brat (775) on Monday October 03 2016, @06:51PM (#409575) Journal

    you have put your finger on the nub of the problem: large korporations...
    they are only necessary for destroying competition, NOT for the actual making and distributing of widgets ( the supposed goal)...

    I disagree, there's another function of large corporations: making and distributing of widgets at lower cost, which is why they are able to out-compete smaller rivals. As much as we love the idea of buying local, the price difference compared to buying from WalMart/China is significant. Economy of scale is a real thing, and having the capital to buy/build a machine/factory to mass-produce your widget delivers a real, permanent advantage over small batches and handcrafting. Destruction of competition is at that point a side-effect. The artisan market is thereafter higher cost and likely to become accessible only to the affluent.

    Companies become large because that's what allows them to deliver the lowest-price goods at the highest profit margin. As participants in the economy we demand it. It's not good or evil, it simply is.

    i know in just about ALL the firms i worked for that got above mom and pop size, there was always mgmt that was/is fucking useless, EXCEPT for the penultimate challenge of keeping the peasants from revolting...
    otherwise, they could drop off the face of the earth and productivity would increase...

    Bad managers are bad, news at 11. Stay tuned for our follow-up story: bad hiring decisions are hard to undo.

    From another perspective, when working in a large group if there is a subset acting at odds to the rest of the group then active sabotage is functionally equivalent to both insubordination and poor coordination. In that context, it can be really hard (especially for many creative types of personalities) to distinguish the message "can we please all just walk in the same direction?" from "BOW, SLAVES! SUBMIT TO YOUR MASTERS!!!" YMMV

    their function is to keep the patriarchal, authoritarian hierarchy intact so the people ACTUALLY AND REALLY responsible for the productivity dont get any uppity ideas...

    It is not a prerequisite that the authoritarian hierarchy be patriarchal. The authoritarian part is also dependent on the local culture; Scandinavian vs. American vs. Japanese companies will all differ in how they respond to input from the employees working the assembly lines.*

    Hierarchy, however, is indispensable in a large organization. It doesn't matter how charismatic the leader is, no one can answer the daily email questions from every employee of even a smallish (1k or so employees) company. Some delegation is going to happen there. Hiring someone just to manage communication and organizational behavior seems wasteful, but if doing so allows for the economies of scale I mentioned earlier (and hence increases profits even after the "wasted" salary) then that middle manager is going to be hired.

    *In defense of authoritarianism, it does make things easier; when it's time to change direction, it's simpler and faster to just say "here's the plan, do it... NOW" than taking a poll/listening to/weighing every suggestion from every participant. Metcalf's Law strikes again! Of course, when the order ends up steering you into disaster, [wikipedia.org] it seems like much less of a virtue...

    --
    Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]