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posted by mrpg on Monday July 02 2018, @04:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the I've-seen-those dept.

In an interview, anthropologist David Graeber answers questions about the modern workplace and the purposeless jobs that fill it.

Not since Dilbert has truth been spoken to power in soulless work settings. But the cartoon character's successor may be David Graeber. In 2013 he achieved viral fame with cubicle zombies everywhere after he published a short essay on the prevalence of work that had no social or economic reason to exist, which he called "bullshit jobs". The wide attention seemed to confirm his thesis.

Mr Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, has expanded on the ideas in a recent book. He responded to five questions from The Economist's Open Future initiative. He rails against "feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies." As he puts it: "People want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that makes some kind a positive difference."

[...] One thing it shows is that the whole "lean and mean" ideal is applied much more to productive workers than to office cubicles. It's not at all uncommon for the same executives who pride themselves on downsizing and speed-ups on the shop floor, or in delivery and so forth, to use the money saved at least in part to fill their offices with feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies.

From The Economist : Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 02 2018, @07:41AM (4 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @07:41AM (#701227) Journal

    Yeah, all of that is common wisdom. Except, conditions weren't the same all over the world. Didn't we have a recent article, telling us that peasants in feudal Europe had more time off than we do today?

    http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/ [reuters.com]

    I'm not finding our article on that, but the link above is very similar. No, I'm not saying that I want to be a medieval peasant or serf, but sometimes we exaggerate how bad things were, and how good things are.

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  • (Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Monday July 02 2018, @02:20PM (3 children)

    by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Monday July 02 2018, @02:20PM (#701357)

    Peasants did not get retirement or 20 years of education either. 45 years of working with 4 weeks/year of vacation is less than 4 years. You get abut 12 years of vacation before you die with retirement.

    • (Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Monday July 02 2018, @03:46PM (2 children)

      by Oakenshield (4900) on Monday July 02 2018, @03:46PM (#701416)

      Peasants did not get retirement or 20 years of education either. 45 years of working with 4 weeks/year of vacation is less than 4 years. You get abut 12 years of vacation before you die with retirement.

      It's amazing that you don't have to go back very far to see people who did not get 20 years of education. I do genealogy and you find at the turn of the century, 1900 not 2000, there were a lot of people who had little or no education. This was particularly the case for rural farming families all throughout the 1800s. It is shocking to modern eyes to see the documents signed by "making your mark." It makes it a bitch to discover the "correct" spelling of a particular name that the owner may not have even known. The census forms had columns for literacy and/or highest grade attended.

      In 1992, I hired a neighbor who was a retired concrete guy to pour me a new back patio. He knew his shit and did a great job but I was shocked to find out he was totally illiterate. His wife managed everything for him that required reading skills. He was in his early seventies then and I always wondered how he would manage if she died before him.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday July 02 2018, @06:02PM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Monday July 02 2018, @06:02PM (#701502) Journal

        In 1992, I hired a neighbor who was a retired concrete guy to pour me a new back patio. He knew his shit and did a great job but I was shocked to find out he was totally illiterate. His wife managed everything for him that required reading skills. He was in his early seventies then and I always wondered how he would manage if she died before him.

        I know people right now in their late teens and early 20s who are in the same situation. Nearly everyone graduates from school these days, but that doesn't mean they actually learn. The schools are fully aware of this, but they claim they have to pass these kids because being held back a grade level would be more harmful to the student than simply not being educated. Of course, then the kid can't understand anything for the rest of their education, so they get no further education, and they can distract the other students from getting an education too...but we're so focused on pushing the metric of "everybody graduates" that we've stopped caring about whether or not that graduation actually means anything...life is all about hitting the milestones and everything else is just decoration...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @06:42PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @06:42PM (#701523)

          I was with the principal of my school when a group of parents busted in yelling that they were suing him because their kids had flunked and wasn't being allowed to pass, ie, graduate.

          I think the schools realized it was going to be a hopeless battle and went off to fight another war.