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On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

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Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.)"

Isn't it interesting that the one example Graeber comes up with is possibly the profession writ large whose demand is largely influenced by a social structure outside of the free-market? Likewise, a over promulgation of workers in finance is suggestive that maybe there is some non-free-market force is incentivising individuals to go into that field...

"A social structure outside of the free-market" describes, by some estimates, over 75% of all human interactions.

Non-market interactions are invisible to conventional economics because they're not priced, but they're by no means insignificant. They range from developing-world peasants farming land to which they simply have no title deeds, through to the form of communist praxis which is the dominant social structure of the supposedly free-market west -- the nuclear family. (Or do you present your kids with a bill for their personal care and feeding? Non-dysfunctional families run along lines Marx described as, "to each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities": sharing without reference to individual wealth is explicit in state-recognized marriage vows. That the power/money relationship often reverses a generation later, as adult children support or nurse their aged parents through their last year, just underlines the pattern.)

Graeber, as an anthropologist, is interested in all human interactions, not just marketized ones. And his particular field has been the intersection of the market sector with the non-marketized greater cloud of human relationships.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#22
post #9

Graeber's idea on the solution to the problem: "revolt of the caring classes" instead of mass dropout is even more interesting in this interview. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1... To put it in a naive tech twist - maybe there should be an online tool that allows me to distribute a proportion of my wages to a list of "people who care for me and things I care about". Basically, can I creat…

[deleted]

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems so completely misguided. Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you? Isn't it just a matter of earning enough money to afford a vacation? I doubt rich people worry as much about little vacation time - they buy those expensive yachts and then have only two weeks per year to ride them? And even supposing there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone, and if you go on vacation someb…

> Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you? Because life is better that way. The employer/employee relationship is incredibly biased. A lot of people simply cannot afford to lose their job, whereas pretty much every employer can afford to fire almost any individual. This means people are willing to work for little pay, poor benefits and no vacation because they are effectively forced to,…

Isn't it also the responsibility of the individual to gain skills that are valuable? I don't think what you describe is true for Software Developers in Sillicon Valley, for example. How much vacation do Software Developers in the Valley usually get?

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you? Because life is better that way. The employer/employee relationship is incredibly biased. A lot of people simply cannot afford to lose their job, whereas pretty much every employer can afford to fire almost any individual. This means people are willing to work for little pay, poor benefits and no vacation because they are effectively forced to,…

Isn't it also the responsibility of the individual to gain skills that are valuable? I don't think what you describe is true for Software Developers in Sillicon Valley, for example. How much vacation do Software Developers in the Valley usually get?

The Silicon Valley is not indicative of jobs in the US. What some developer there gets has little/no bearing on what happens elsewhere.

You also did not argue the core assertion that the employer-employee contract is heavily skewed to the employer. That has been true for the last 30 years. Productivity has made great inroads, yet pay and benefits have dropped significantly.

So yes, this is a government issue. The employers have a sweet deal and the plebes have no power. But alas, Republicans in the Senate will make sure that much needed reforms won't happen.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it the government's responsibility to fix your vacation for you? Because life is better that way. The employer/employee relationship is incredibly biased. A lot of people simply cannot afford to lose their job, whereas pretty much every employer can afford to fire almost any individual. This means people are willing to work for little pay, poor benefits and no vacation because they are effectively forced to,…

Isn't it also the responsibility of the individual to gain skills that are valuable? I don't think what you describe is true for Software Developers in Sillicon Valley, for example. How much vacation do Software Developers in the Valley usually get?

not everyone can be a software developer, and frankly we can't have a society of people who only have specialist skills. There will always be a need for people with minimal skills to do low-skill jobs. They're doing work that has to get done too.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#26
post #21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it interesting that the one example Graeber comes up with is possibly the profession writ large whose demand is largely influenced by a social structure outside of the free-market? Likewise, a over promulgation of workers in finance is suggestive that maybe there is some non-free-market force is incentivising individuals to go into that field...

"A social structure outside of the free-market" describes, by some estimates, over 75% of all human interactions. Non-market interactions are invisible to conventional economics because they're not priced, but they're by no means insignificant. They range from developing-world peasants farming land to which they simply have no title deeds, through to the form of communist praxis which is the dominant social structure…

That's all well and good, but the quote (reproduced above by pedrosorio) specifically said it was an effect of the market.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#27

Related: An epic Reddit answer to 'Why Americans get so little vacation time' Short answer: Communism lost http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d8eiv/why_do_ameri...

That answer is complete bullshit. > In the United States, socialism is virtually nonexistent. Except for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Unemployment. And don't forget the military.

By that definition the whole of Western Europe would be a socialist state. Government services like these do not equal socialism.

I live in The Netherlands, a pretty liberal kingdom with excellent social security and unemployment benefits. But don't be mistaken, it's not a socialist country. Not by a long shot. The biggest political parties are liberal-conservative and social-democrats. The latter lean towards the left, but our only true socialist party is much more to the left. They're only the sixth party by size.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#28
I just had a great trip to a cousins wedding and saw a lot of family. My Parents' generation are now just past the 'age of retirement' and are in their late 60s and early 70s.

The majority of them are still working in their bullshit jobs. I asked several if they were going to retire soon and they all replied the same. If they retire what would they do? Even though their work is mostly pointless from a job function perspective, it gives them something to do and keeps them active and social. It is not stressful for them and they enjoy it for the most part.

I wonder if we are all working these jobs because there is nothing better to do.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#29

This seems to me like an employee's opinion, rather than that of a founder. I mean that the worker's view of a company is as a job-creator, whereas a company founder sees a company as a tool to fill a market niche (and usually generate profit). The argument against the article's proposal is quite simple - if people will pay for a service, doesn't that fact give the service value over 'bullshit'? It's not that either'…

> if people will pay for a service, doesn't that fact give the service value over 'bullshit'?

That's not necessarily true. There are a lot of reasons why people or companies pay for things, and those reasons aren't necessarily related to the value of the things themselves. Consider:

- The effect of advertising (in grocery stores, for example: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2009/11/10635.html).

- Corporate environments where bribery -- or its fancy equivalent, paying for nice dinners and ski trips for customers -- determines sales.

- Conflict-of-interest: guy responsible for purchasing works out a big contract between his firm and the vendor his wife owns.

- Vendor lock-in.

- Fear. This explains pretty well the bidding wars between Google and Facebook -- each of which fears losing an advantage over the other -- over startups whose value can very rarely reasonably amount to N times the value of companies who actually Build Things.

Money is at most a loose approximation for value. It can represent other things as well.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#30
Interesting article and a strong feeling that there is something there that we all know but we don't say, declare to ourselves and to the others. So I think there another point to add here: everything manages to stick together not because of an not well explained hate for 'real workers' (I can see that it exists, but how does it contribute to keep everyone in its place?).

On one hand it is the most stupid of all the answers: its' because of money, the salary that you get paid to do this pointless jobs.

And on the other hand it is because of something less clearly perceivable, yet profound and 'democratized': a part from the 'real' jobs mentioned in the article - physical labor jobs, agriculture, health services - almost all the other workers are equated by the secret perception of being paid more instead of the value of their job, the value of their real work effort and contribution. But this perception alone won't do the job. It works because it is matched by a counter-perception, almost as unmentionable: if most of the employees feel they manage to get paid more than what they do (not of what they deserve because this implies other personal, political, social, intellectual considerations), most of the employers do feel that are paying their employees less than what they contribute to the wealth of the company or organization, less of what their contribution's value is.

I believe that this is at the parallel combination of these perceptions is, at least one, of the main reasons why everything keep staying the way it is, why we don't work less.

What to do?

Organize the work differently. Start-ups have the potential to structure a division of labour, responsibilities and remuneration that provides a better sense of empowerment, equal contribution to the common aim of that the organization/company has, fair returns from the effort done. It doesn't last long thou. As soon as the start-up become institutionalized, e.g. direct control is lost over certain operations and processes, the company/organization become bigger, certain part of the work done is captured only with quarterly reports or similar simplification, tales of the work done, the objective achieved, it tend to become as any other existing company, recreating that dual perception that I've mentioned before.

Bottom line is (probably): perception for perception, let's ask more often and with less fear(?) to our colleagues, to the other people in general how much do they earn? what does really involve their job? It may sound a futile exercise but I believe that by communicating to each other, by spelling it out, we will play around with other possibilities, with alternative organizations and modes of labour.

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