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The rise of the pointless job

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of the pointless job

#121

Post by zanny »

foamflower wrote: post #77
romanr wrote: post #29

This is another argument in favor of universal income. Bullshit jobs is one of consequences of progress, low cost goods, food and comfort. With increasing automation it’s going to be get incrementally harder to find bullshit jobs for people. until society understands that not everyone can and have to be employed.

The opposite is true. At some point in the past, elevator operators served a useful function, since elevators were hard to operate. Today, even the existence of automation (i.e. accessible elevator UI) has not completely driven the elevator operator extinct, but has transmuted his job into bullshit. Same goes for gas pump improvements (I suppose we can thank New Jersey and until recently Oregon). The entire "Flunkies…

Whats the opposite? He said progress beget bullshit jobs, you just stated the same thing.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#122

Post by CountSessine »

monocasa wrote: post #88
ams6110 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tons of actual productive work that could be done though. Cleaning trash from streets and parks, filling potholes, fixing sidewalks, pulling weeds, painting over graffiti. These things would would make everyone's days a little nicer.

Or even stuff that has real meaning. Rebuilding our crumbling highway system, laying fiber to the home for a next gen telecoms infrastructure. Just going back to school and getting information job skills. Child care. The list goes on and on without resorting to telephone handset cleaners.

Cleaning trash from streets and parks, filling potholes, fixing sidewalks, pulling weeds, painting over graffiti. These things would would make everyone's days a little nicer.

Or even stuff that has real meaning

Why do you think that maintaining safe and beautiful cities has no real meaning? Someone needs to do it. Is this just elitism?

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#123

Post by not_real_acct »

modbait wrote: post #95
expensivedrone wrote: post #80

I'm a programmer working at a big-tech company. I make ~$350k/year, even though my job could be done equally well by a college intern. I only do ~2 hours of productive work in an average day. My previous jobs were far more interesting and challenging, and I had apparently done extremely well in my interviews. Hence why I got an offer with an extremely good compensation package. However, the team that I go put into, i…

Through my long career, I've notice virtually no correlation between my pay and the utility of my position. And indeed, I've had one or two jobs like yours. Sadly for my bank book, I can only stand being useless for relatively short stretches. I still reminisce about my lowest paying job, my first. It was probably the most enjoyable and satisfying. It was also useful, though perhaps not at the top of that list. It's…

My experience is similar. I look at it a lot like insurance policies. For instance, my company once had a service contract with a software company that cost about a million a year. One time I audited that service contract, and found that they'd used it exactly ONCE the entire. A million dollar phone call.

But they're not going to cancel the contract, because they want the support in case they need it.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#124

Post by naravara »

ngvrnd wrote: post #107
mfoy_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I die inside. But any suggestion of "mincome" or the like is met with such a harsh reaction... What, effectively, is the difference between goon-bloom and mincome? Is it just that one is too obviously a subsidy?

well... one way, you have goons, the other way, you have livers. The problem with mincome is the hedonic treadmill. the folk receiving mincome will grow dissatisfied with their lot and militate for raises. negative feedback is unpleasant but necessary.

>the folk receiving mincome will grow dissatisfied with their lot and militate for raises. negative feedback is unpleasant but necessary.

Close. What it does is reduces supply (fewer people working) while raising demand (people with more money in their pockets). This winds up causing inflation that erodes away the value of the minimum income. It's not even a hedonic treadmill, just an inflationary one.

A basic income guarantee can only ever work as temporary assistance or as a residualist stopgap for people on the fringes of society. If it's too widespread it ends up working against itself. A job guarantee increases supply (assuming you use the labor power productively) while keeping demand high, so that works against the inflation problem.

It's a tough balancing act though. You have to make sure the make-work is actually producing useful stuff or you'll have all the same problems as the basic income plus a bunch of random ditches dug. During Cultural Revolution in China cadres kind of engendered ecological catastrophes by creating bureaucratic agencies that would pointlessly clearcut forests for no reason. It's basically the paper-clip maximizing AI problem, only the intelligence isn't artificial.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#126

Post by api »

lainga wrote: post #15

I have said this before, but I see some parallels between the modern world and Japan during the early Tokugawa era. Japan had pretty much reached a steady state by the time Tokugawa Iyeyasu came to power in 1600; most of the available land had been cultivated or settled, and, especially after the policies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, society was locked in a rigid structure without much room for advancement or unrest. As a…

That's really interesting. I've drawn another more superficial Japan comparison: Japanese economic stagnation since the 1980s. I've been predicting for a while that we are headed for "planet Japan": perpetually low interest rates and not much actual growth.

What ended the era you describe? Contact with the outside world? I've also thought for a long time that space migration is the only real hope for the human race to avoid permanent stagnation and eventual decline.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#127

Post by gajjanag »

tlb wrote: post #69
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #44

Honest question: how much of our work is not absolutely necessary? It's easy to write a piece of software once and share it with everybody. The product you are working on - what unique value is giving to humanity? (I mean beyond "it pays the bills" and "it uses $popular_thing_of_the_year") I believe we reached a level of productivity where - in rich countries - we are all keeping each other busy with loads of unneces…

Only farming is absolutely necessary. Farming is down to about 2% in the US. You could cut that in half if people stopped ordering avocado toast and just ate oats. So, probably 99%.

You might want to adjust the figure to account for clothing/minimal construction work for shelter - both are definitely fundamental in most parts of the US. One might also wish to add in a minimally functional healthcare system to ensure a reasonably high average life expectancy.

Nevertheless, the point is still extremely valid; I would estimate around 95%.

Update: As in general it is easy to draw overly pessimistic conclusions from this (I have been affected by this myself), it may be of use to point out that positive answers do exist for this issue. One of my personal favorites is the powerful, short book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#128

Post by krapp »

Sangermaine wrote: post #62
burn_cycle wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds pretty interesting, can you recommend any books on Japan about this particular period/topic?

For a view of what this looked like on the ground, you should check out "Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai". It's the autobiography of Katsu Kokichi (Musui is another name he was known by), a samurai born in the early 19th century to a very low-ranking family. It's a firsthand account of life at the very lowest fringe of Shogunate society at the very end of that system, and is quite entertaining…

I can't be the only person here who read this comment and thought of Gintama.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#129

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

iriNjfk993 wrote: post #71
mfoy_ wrote: post #27

Keynes was a little more direct: "The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up."

The frustrating thing is though: we have plenty of real demand Social work, infrastructure repairs, mental health services. But all the effort coalesces around BIG Corp. and Douche Co. needs first Somehow we’re convinced that Bezos and Koch’s are more important than our neighbors Some looney economists will tell you it’s proven in physics these people are just better Ignoring the history of violent imperialism and co…

All demand is "real demand." Someone wants something and is willing to pay you. That's real.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#130

Post by sametmax »

mentalpiracy wrote: post #114
PeterisP wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, digging a hole in the ground and then filling it up is horribly, soul crushingly demotivating. Even if someone is working in a job that de facto amounts to doing just that, it should be covered up so that this fact isn't obvious and that a person can reasonably choose to ignore the truth and convince themselves that their job has some real value. Which is actually done, all kinds of internal propaganda, glor…

> However, digging a hole in the ground and then filling it up is horribly, soul crushingly demotivating. Ah you see, this is why you have one person doing the digging, and another doing the filling! This way, each man goes home satisfied.

This is not only clever, but actually a good metaphor of the activity of numerous entities.
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