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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

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Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#121

Post by ZeroGravitas »

lmm wrote: post #62

It bears saying that working hours have gone down, at least here in Europe. But it took unions and laws to make it happen, and at every stage employers have screamed blue murder - "oh noes, we couldn't possibly maintain productivity with only a 60/50/40/35 hour work week". Of course, once the law is introduced it turns out the company can remain just as productive. I don't know what the figures are for the US, with i…

Some of those reductions were actually pushed by companies themselves (Ford in the US being a commonly cited example), who measured productivity and found it dropped as work hours increased.

This only makes the standard US position on work crazier, however.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

mason240 wrote: post #119
Filligree wrote: post #3

Some of what people want is positive-sum: Books, aquariums, theater showings, even cars. As we get more productive, the amount of time you need to work for these decreases. A lot of what people want is zero-sum: Location, status symbols, and so forth. If you want to live in the centre of town you need to work more than anyone else who so wants, not just as much as it takes to cover the maintenance. This is, I believe…

This is exactly it. On a related note, look at how fast food restaurants no longer sell fast, cheap food. Instead they sell experiences. McDonalds has the McCafe thing, and even KFC is trying to rebrand itself as something more like Panera Bread. We have moved beyond the point where the item itself is readily available, so what is desired now is the experience that goes with it.

I think you overstate the case with fast food -- lots of their marketing still seems to be about fast and cheap -- but to the extent that it is less focussed than that in the past I think it is because fast food outlets are marketing to differentiate themselves from each other because they are ingrained enough on culture that they don't need as much to differentiate from traditional restaurants.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#123

Post by LOSindignados »

RyanZAG wrote: post #113
JonnieCache wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more than a just plausible argument. There's a whole cabinet department devoted to it: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge... https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insi...

I'm still not convinced. The attempt by one government to carry out 'economic nudging' does not mean that the nudging has had any real effect. There is also the problem that countries without such attempts (eh.. Sri Lanka?) are having any different results in people working bullshit jobs. Again, the argument is plausible but is a long way from being compelling, for me at least. The simplest answer - that people are d…

RyanZAG, I suspect it's more a matter of it being convenient for those with entrenched wealth and power to let the masses struggle for the scraps they have left over. This situation leads most of us to compete for the bullshit jobs, to get angry at those who were fortunate enough to get real jobs (even if they are poorly compensated relative to their social value, e.g. teachers), and to generally be so distracted by the charade as to not notice the massive fraud taking place behind doors forever closed to their unwashed, foolish selves.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#124

Post by twoodfin »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #101
twoodfin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how do you propose eating without working? Someone has to work so she or others can eat.

That was the case before automation. Right now, though, humans are 1. under-bidding automation (this will be decreasingly successful) 2. politically suppressing automation (AKA "creating jobs") …because nobody wants to abandon the "work = eat" rule.

I can buy 2[1], but what's your evidence for 1? I mean, look at the decline in U.S. agriculture jobs over the past century in inverse proportion to agricultural output.

Sure, China employs a lot of manpower to perform the kind of manufacturing that in more developed economies was automated long ago, and that's profitable for them (for the moment). But that's not in the guise of any "make work" scheme, it's because it's the cheapest thing they can do at their current phase of industrial development.

[1] Even this claim is a little suspect. I have heard that in places like France and Japan, the political pressure for stable, high-wage jobs at the exclusion of others has led to fairly inefficient automation to avoid the subsequent risk and expense of hiring.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#125

Post by calibraxis »

cnorgate wrote: post #92
zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

Totally agree with Zeteo's assessment - only thing I would add is that people shouldn't assume someone else'e job is 'bullshit' simply because they can't directly see or appreciate the value it creates. For example: in the case of corporate leadership, it is easy and appealing to suggest they aren't creating any direct value... i.e. fire the leadership and 'widgets' will still get made. The problem with this thinking…

The author does state: "I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless?"

Personally, quite often my jobs have been meaningless or worse. The worse they paid, probably the more meaningful they were.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#126

Post by ronaldx »

lsh wrote: post #99
ronaldx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you are an academic - therefore, I imagine you have heard of cases where a peer reviewer killed an article just because it contradicted the reviewer's own work? Even if an academic is not explicitly sabotaging work, it's clear from the amount of time spent on grant applications and general bureaucracy that their useful production is being sabotaged. To meet bureaucratic standards, researchers are often requi…

> I assume you are an academic - therefore, I imagine you have heard of cases where a peer reviewer killed an article just because it contradicted the reviewer's own work? Thats why you have the reviewers declare no conflict of interest, have more than one peer reviewer and an editor who makes the final decision and assigns further peer reviewers if necessary. I agree with your last two points.

> have more than one peer reviewer and an editor who makes the final decision and assigns further peer reviewers if necessary.

QED.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#127

Post by sfjailbird »

cnorgate wrote: post #92
zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

Totally agree with Zeteo's assessment - only thing I would add is that people shouldn't assume someone else'e job is 'bullshit' simply because they can't directly see or appreciate the value it creates. For example: in the case of corporate leadership, it is easy and appealing to suggest they aren't creating any direct value... i.e. fire the leadership and 'widgets' will still get made. The problem with this thinking…

> if you really want to 'reap the benefits' or our more productive society, you can work 15 hours starting today. The tradeoff is that you'll need to move to the middle of Colorado, buy a small plot of land, build your own house and purchase a straight edge razor.

What if you owned the home you live in, though? Lately, I've become a bit obsessed with this idea. The reason the 'wage slave' concept exists is that most of us have to do the 9-to-5, or we would unsettlingly quickly find ourselves homeless - the ultimate social catastrophe. I sometimes compare this with the lifestyle I see in some 'less developed' countries, where it is still customary for a family to own the house they live in. The result is that even when the breadwinner is frequently un- or underemployed, and with parts of the household staying at home exclusively without generating an income, their lives seem a lot less stressful. Even when they worry about money and basic necessities, they survive, turning down consumption to a minimum in financially challenging times. The equivalent for us, with regards to the subject at hand, would be to work 15 hours of productive, enjoyable work and still get by. Or alternatively, to work 40 hours of really interesting, challenging stuff that might not pay well or at all for a while.

The conclusion would seem to be to work single-mindedly on owning your home. As you said, one option is to move to Colorado and buy a barren plot in the middle of nowhere. But a more reasonable alternative might be to work your freaking ass off to pay off your property as soon as humanly possible. If you are really scrappy, you should be able to do that in around 15 years, depending on where you live and what your salary is. The problem is that people don't want to live like that. We want to live comfortably, with the biggest car we can afford the monthly payments on, with nice vacations, consumer goods etc. etc. Well you pay for that - the price is working 9-to-5 in a job you hate.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#128

Post by twoodfin »

dvanduzer wrote: post #97
twoodfin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how do you propose eating without working? Someone has to work so she or others can eat.

The sun generates nearly 400 trillion trillion watts per second but don't let that fool you into thinking there's such a thing as a free lunch for more than a few billion years.

And without someone doing at least some work, you will starve no matter how many of those watts warm your reclined body.

Sure, the amount of that work is going down, and has been going down for centuries, but that's not an inevitable, natural process: The technological innovation to make food easier and cheaper to produce also requires work.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#129

Post by JonnieCache »

RyanZAG wrote: post #113
JonnieCache wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more than a just plausible argument. There's a whole cabinet department devoted to it: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge... https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insi...

I'm still not convinced. The attempt by one government to carry out 'economic nudging' does not mean that the nudging has had any real effect. There is also the problem that countries without such attempts (eh.. Sri Lanka?) are having any different results in people working bullshit jobs. Again, the argument is plausible but is a long way from being compelling, for me at least. The simplest answer - that people are d…

I don't think we really disagree. People act in their own interest, and for those with power over others, those self interested acts are inevitably going to influence the lives of those in their power.

To me, it is least surprising that these acts would take the form of subtle "nudges," carried out through the media, education system, etc. There doesn't have to be a big scary plan behind it, it's just the cumulative effect of many powerful actors trying to maintain and increase their power.

My reference to the government's "Nudge Unit" (worst rap crew ever) was mainly to illustrate the fact that this is seen as an effective and sensible mode of exercising power by the 21st century establishment. They tried various forms of more overt, coercive control in the last century and it didn't work out so well. Hence I am least surprised that they are now doing the same thing through more layers of abstraction.

But yeah, I'm certainly not saying I absolutely believe all of this to be true, with tinfoil certainty. It's just that like many others around here, I've started looking at current events less in isolation and more through the lens of post WW2 history, and it certainly throws some things into sharper relief. Let's hope I'm not just staring at Rorschach blots.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#130

Post by five18pm »

dvanduzer wrote: post #97
twoodfin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how do you propose eating without working? Someone has to work so she or others can eat.

The sun generates nearly 400 trillion trillion watts per second but don't let that fool you into thinking there's such a thing as a free lunch for more than a few billion years.

How does one go about eating the sun or the trillion trillion watts produced by sun? You need all that energy converted to something edible - that means there is at least one job, agriculture. If you can automate that, then there is the job of automation engineer. And so it goes...
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