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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: 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