The rise of the pointless job • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#381

Post by doomlaser » Sat, May 05, 2018, 12:40 PM UTC

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…

I think of FDR's Public Works department, which built my High School, and the Student Union at my undergraduate alma mater, UIUC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#382

Post by icebraining » Sat, May 05, 2018, 12:51 PM UTC

interfixus wrote: post #350

edraferi wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an economic theory that job satisfaction is a kind of compensation. That is, you have to pay people more to do unsatisfying jobs.

There is such a theory, yes. It has obviously never encountered low-paying, shitty, backbreaking work on the factory floor.

I don't think the theory implies it's the only effect on salaries, only that it's a factor.

Obviously when the workers have very few or no alternatives, the effect will be minimal.

But I know people who dropped out of college courses that provided a good chance of a middle-class income for a career that fulfilled them more, despite paying like crap. So the effect exists.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#383

Post by nicoburns » Sat, May 05, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #373

ctime wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with cur…

Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else

Also common in latin america.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#384

Post by gtvwill » Sat, May 05, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #375

baxtr wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else

Packing your own groceries is work and boring though.

If packing your own groceries fills your definition of work and doesn't just come under "shit you just do to get something from one place to another because you need it in your life". You REALLY need to get out and perform a variety of jobs. Like damn you gotta be about as useless as tits on a bull if you think pulling the food your going to eat that is NECESSARY FOR YOUR SURVIVAL off a bench and into a bag is work.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#385

Post by ExpiredLink » Sat, May 05, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

>> if no one had an army, armies would not be needed.

Lol, the US has an army because they need to attack other countries!

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#386

Post by ilkan » Sat, May 05, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

ctime wrote: post #228

WJW wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30 centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with cur…

I don't travel much. But they are called porters (or, redcaps in Barbados because they wear red caps for easy identification). Let's say you are elderly, tired or have a lot of baggage. You wave a porter over, he or she takes the indicated bags off the airport conveyor belt, loads them onto a trolley, wheels them through Customs, and loads them onto the taxi for you. I've seen elderly, handicapped or heavily burdened (eg couples with 3 kids and 10 bags) use them. How else would one get by?

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#387

Post by lkrubner » Sat, May 05, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #380

foamflower wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my family lived in Japan years ago, we noticed that when taking the train, approximately three attendants checked our tickets before we boarded a train. At least two of those jobs are "bullshit" in terms of producing wealth, but they are socially beneficial in a culture where the social contract requires near-zero unemployment. (I, apparently like you, can't help but remember this kind of arrangement when listen…

I was also thinking exactly this during my couple of years in Japan - that having a huge amount of "bullshit jobs" is one way of keeping unemployment low in an increasingly automated economy where growth is stagnating. In an economy where having a job (or somehow having attained large sums of money because of luck/previous endeavors) is necessary to not be an outcast, this is one way of mitigating this or at least pu…

An economy can not be increasingly automated and increasingly stagnant. It’s one or the other. In the USA the economy has been fairly stagnant since 1973 because the post war boom ended in 1973. The move to automation also collapsed in 1973. Please see productivity trends here:

https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet

You can control what years are shown on that page. I sugggest you look at 1950 to 2018. Although the data is noisy, you can see it has declined. Also note that the era of occasional double digits advances ended decades ago. The 14% in 1956 and the 12% in 1971 have never repeated this side of 1973.

The economy is stagnant because the trend toward automation has died out. Although people in tech keep predicting a robot revolution, there is no evidence of it in the productivity numbers.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#388

Post by dyarosla » Sat, May 05, 2018, 1:14 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #373

ctime wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with cur…

Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else

Pretty sure the idea here is to quicken the checkout and lines-> having someone fill bags as someone else handles payments and you handle paying, makes queues move faster than having them grind to a halt due to someone packing their bags too slowly.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#389

Post by rocqua » Sat, May 05, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #135

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talk to people about changing the world so work is optional, and people are really attached to the idea that everyone should work all the time. Our world is sufficiently productive (a trend I expect to continue rising) that we could offer a modest life to everyone regardless of how much they work. Or more conservatively, we could build a world where everyone has 8 weeks of vacation a year or could take 6 months off…

> Our world is sufficiently productive (a trend I expect to continue rising) that we could offer a modest life to everyone regardless of how much they work. i realize that the rest of your post details technological advancements that could create this condition (on an indefinite timeline), but you also seem to be saying that it is already possible today. i often see this sort of claim these days, and i always wonder…

Measure productivity different from money made. The point is that based on current production levels, we could provide everyone with sufficient food, decent housing and basic amenities like water and electricity.

The reason this doesnt happen is that those who sell the food, or build the housing are better off getting paying customers. This makes sense as a market, sellers are self-interested. It also leads to a certain kind of optimum. But certainly, as a matter of production, it is feasible to give everyone a modest life without needing to change productivity. As a matter of social stability, it isn't feasible, but in some sense, that should be a denouncement of society.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#390

Post by rangibaby » Sat, May 05, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

api wrote: post #126

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 t…

> Contact with the outside world?

Perry (US) sailed a fleet into Tokyo Bay and threatened to destroy the city if the samurai government didn’t open trade with the US (1850s).

Fearing domination by western powers (cf. China) the Japanese reformed their society and economy based on western empires (1868) and within 40 years was able to soundly defeat Russia in a war (1905).