While we are on the subject of bullshit: https://github.com/bullgit/bullshit-job-titles
On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
341–350 of 390 posts
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, the job market is not demand driven. So, the number of people who work isn't really determined by how many people need money. It is determined by how many jobs there is. In other words, jobs don't exist to provide people with money. They exist to provide the boss with labour. The fact that people need money is just very convenient for the capitalists.
That doesn't seem entirely true. If most people didn't need money to live, they would be less willing to sign up for "bullshit jobs", meaning employers would have to provide more enticing compensation, potentially resulting in a reduction in people working such meaningless jobs. In other words, the job market is currently supply driven, but that is due to the fact that demand is inelastic -- everyone needs money to l…
Yup.
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves o…
(shove the healthcare part aside for a second) to a certain degree, all firms are 'socialist', because they are banding together to not compete with each other. This is the central interesting problem in the 'theory of the firm' which deals with how in a capitalist system groups of individuals band together to not compete . This definition, then is meaningless. Socialism is when a central authority organizes the dist…
It's only malfunction is being poorly funded. The definition is not meaningless. Companies are pretty socialist.
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of whi…
> What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? If you give them basic income, then the jobs can pay what the jobs are worth, and no one needs to be forced into economically inefficient make-work jobs that take time that could be used for focussed training, risky (but potentially valuable) self-initiated ventures, etc. Any such make-work jobs proposal is obviously paying a premium over the…
>no one needs to be forced into economically inefficient make-work jobs
So you are saying that the jobs building the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan and the Triborough bridge (among many other things under the PWA) were "economically inefficient make work jobs".
Why?
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#345Conclusion is not supported by what came before:
> If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of whi…
I challenge you to ask around you this question: "If basic income were to be established, what would you think people do ?" As owenmarshall said, you can perfectly have both -- establish basic income for "survival" needs, and let people have work if they really want to. Basic income doesn't mean abolishing all kinds of work, it just means making sure humans don't have to work to live.
I think most people would continue to work and the people who are currently unemployed would largely remain unemployed.
I don't think the unemployment we have is economically efficient, though. Our neo-command economy run by wall street selfishly demanded high unemployment despite the need for currently unemployed people to work and desire for those same people to work.
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's hard to believe, for instance, that a "corporate lawyer's" work has no social value. It REALLY isn't that hard. >The job of lawyers isn't even to win legal battles, but to avoid them in the first place. Right, they run the full gamut from avoiding legal battles with communities that are trying to shut down polluting factories that damage their health to avoiding legal battles with people who have suffered injur…
Do you really consider the work corporate lawyers do can be summed up by the plotlines to Hollywood movies like "A Civil Action" and "Erin Brockovich"? Because that's effectively what you've done in your reply. Fundamentally, lawyers exist because we no longer (generally) find it acceptable to challenge each other to duels, or send Vinnie and the boys to bust someone's kneecaps when we don't like what they're doing.…
You do realize that Erin Brockovich was based upon a true story right?
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of whi…
I think you've set up a dichotomy where you can have the PWA or basic income. The best approach would be both : a basic income to provide people enough to survive (probably not so comfortably, but...). From there, you could have a PWA that focuses on infrastructure that features a strong training component and pays well, or you strike out on your own.
Politically it kind of is a dichotomy. I see very little hope for Basic Income politically because the A) protestant work ethic is too deeply embedded in American culture and B) for many Americans the only outcome they would notice would be very high inflation.
I'm not against the very idea of it and if there were a referendum for it tomorrow I would almost certainly vote yes, but I honestly think that its basic presumptions are wrong:
* The the labor market today is allocating people to jobs efficiently.
* That as a society we don't have enough useful work for everybody to do today.
* That the government wouldn't efficiently allocate resources if it were to create jobs.
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to your misuse of "corporatism" as identified by tatterdemalion, you seem to be redefining "capitalism" to mean "what deelowe likes"; capitalism historically -- from the time that name was first given to an economic system by nineteenth century critics of the then-existing system in developed countries -- has always referred to a system which features unfettered accumulation of capital, and it is a system…
You seem to be repeating this idea over and over - that this is what a few people 200 years ago meant when they said "capitalism", and therefore that's what capitalism is. But that is not exactly what most people today mean by the term. Even if you were right 200 years ago, you're wrong today. Your approach therefore winds up changing the use of the term, to make it more useful for your side of the debate. That's not…
The capitalism that we see today is not qualitatively different from any capitalism that has ever existed. They've all had cronyism, they've all had different rules for different types of firms, and most of them have had banks. Thus, if "capitalism" was a good name for whatever they had back then, it's a good name for what we've got now. This better system of which we're dreaming deserves better marketing than a name so shabby as "capitalism".
Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I suspect "after human civilization" will happen sooner than "after software".
How curious! I've always thought it will be the other way around. Your assertion assumes either Doomsday scenario (where humans wipe themselves from the face of Earth, and automated machines keep going for a few more decades until disrepair catches up) or some sort of Singularity that makes humanity itself obsolet (a.k.a. Nerd!Rapture). On the other hand, History teaches that every civilization has their decline and…
I thought I was taking an optimistic view? Software is a tool like fire or the wheel. Barring a "Doomsday" (which I don't envision), our descendants won't give it up, even if they use vats of bacteria or lattices of anti-quarks or something even less recognizable as "hardware". One can imagine them giving up humanity and civilization. Eventually, both of those will seem pointless to anyone who isn't an antiquarian weirdo.