On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

beat wrote: post #218

RyanZAG wrote: post #20

I was with him all the way until "The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger ". The author does make the point that it might also be the people themselves pushing for it, at least. The 'ruling class' really doesn't care if anybody is or isn't working pointless jobs. Society as a whole is forcing people into pointless jobs by viewing anybody…

The concept that everyone must have a "job" (that is, work for someone else for a wage) is deep in the psyche of both the ruling class and the majority, so both reinforce it through culture and propaganda. It's no different from how previous societies believed that Jews controlled the banks, or children got sick and died because they were suffocated in their sleep by witches. It's rank idiocy, but it's rank idiocy th…

Post by iopq » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 1:20 AM UTC

kephra wrote: post #267

> Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. Those toys just create a high tech low life paradox. The problem is the iron law of wages: "real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker." This minimum is based on housing costs, health insurance, tax, and saving for pensions. The main toy, a car, fue…

Post by iopq » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 1:23 AM UTC

kenster07 wrote: post #237

Why do we continue to work 40+ hour weeks when 15 would suffice? The answer is quite simple -- over the past tens of thousands of years, the primary survival pressure on our gene pool has been scarcity, and thus we are genetically -- not socially -- programmed to want to work.

Post by eru » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 4:11 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #257

mikeash wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you could purchase some sort of financial product that would pay out continuously to cover your taxes. Basically a perpetual annuity, with some wiggle room built in to account for changes in tax rates and property valuation. I don't know what a realistic rate would be for such a thing, but probably quite low. So you'd probably have to put in something like 50x your annual property tax payment.

While that would be cool, the concept of never owning your land smacks of feudalism. It's almost like we're sharecroppers to the government. Taxes are important, however, those taxes could be collected instead by taxing the consumption of necessary resources rather than just having the piece of ground. For example, fire protection -- it could be argued that the virtue of owning land itself doesn't necessarily require…

Post by eru » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 4:26 AM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #309

ombro wrote: post #200

How many of those pointless, time wasting bullshit jobs are directly linked to the gross expansion of government in the 20th century? Finance, law, health care, education... almost all of the jobs he complains about are built around the requirements of bureaucracies and laws, and the exploitation thereof.

ok, I'll bite. Interesting hypothesis. What's the control? Given that government exists and has a significant role in the system, how can we control for that in order to identify whether it is cause, correlation, or mere coincidence? For the record, I think the issue with government isn't government per se but the extreme levels of regulatory capture .