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“So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

theguardian.com

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Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#191

Post by xorcist »

adventured wrote: post #114
xorcist wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all off-shoring is the same. Some of it moves labor from sustainable economies to corrupt ones, and some of it uses slave labor. Neither of those is a net positive for global equality.

I'd have to believe that a very small percentage of off-shoring from first world nations (economically speaking) ends up in classically corrupt countries. Most labor off-shoring from the US has not gone to corrupt countries (if we're talking about corrupt being Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Somalia, etc). Most of it has gone to India, Mexico, China, Philippines, Vietnam, etc. Rising, former third world nations. US comp…

I wasn't even thinking of Somalia and Sudan, which aren't quite even states in all aspects, let alone corrupt ones.

The ones you mention have all problems with corruption, to the point that as a Westerner doing business there you have to be aware of it.

Certain parts and certain businesses are worse off than others, of course, and for example the textile industry which is probably the most discussed and studied, have had huge problems with everything from organized crime to outright slave labor.

A general statement that off-shoring helps poor people is simply too easy to find counter examples to.

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#192

Post by amelius »

fab13n wrote: post #43
qq66 wrote: post #6

Most people who criticize "bullshit jobs" simply lack the perspective to see how these jobs are critically important for society. Take the list from the article itself, one of the "bullshit jobs" listed is actuary. Well, without actuaries, insurance would not be priced correctly, and would be prohibitively expensive or too cheap and insurance companies would go out of business. Either way, insurance would be less ava…

Bullshitness is not an all-or-nothing quality for jobs, that's part of why they're so hard to get rid of. You can find some justification to every job, but this justification can be dubious, or can not be worth the cost in human energy or social side effects. Most jobs are somewhat bullshitty not because they solve no problem, but because they solve it in grossly contrived and ineffective way. That can be crushing, w…

Reading your last paragraph, I just wished more people were researching ways to fix this situation, and to come up with new economic models to replace standard capitalism. It would probably be the least bullshit job of all :)

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#193

Post by jmngomes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #133
diminoten wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly can't be so arrogant so as to assume that if you can't see the benefit of an activity, that it must not have any benefit, right? Lobbyists are critical to the functioning of the American system of government. They're even mentioned in the Constitution. Private equity firms make retirement possible. PR researchers enable companies to not have to deal exclusively with the populist swaying of public opinion…

Go on. I'd like to see how telemarketing is useful. For me, it's a more demeaning job than being a prostitute - at least in the latter case, two parties engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of value. The job of a telemarketer is to trick a person into wasting his/her hard-earned money on a subpar product the person doesn't even need.

Agreed, and the same goes for the people that do "customer support" on call centers set up in basements, run by "managers" fit for a reenactment of the Stanford experiment, dealing with disrespectful customers that are angry about the crap sold to them by the same company that outsources "support" to yet another outsourcer. All while these people do nerve wrecking "work" for minimum wage, because they have to eat, until they burn out. And this is in Europe.

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#194

Post by SamReidHughes »

collyw wrote: post #155
crdoconnor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most people who criticize "bullshit jobs" simply lack the perspective to see how these jobs are critically important for society. Ok, so that's one that you cherry picked. How about these? * Private equity CEOs * Lobbyists * PR researchers * Telemarketers * Bailiffs Tell us how the world would be worse off without them. You could argue that some of these are doing actual harm to society, actually.

I have thought this recently. The people who get richest often are the ones fucking up things. The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. Like wise the guy who invented tetra packs is rich, but what a waste - a plastic carton for every litre of milk? Better off when we were recycling glass.

Glass to hold and transport milk is more of a waste than plastic. You can tell because the cost of using plastic is evidently lower.

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#195

Post by wpietri »

rayiner wrote: post #172
wpietri wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say. Each individual lobbyist is presumably useful to the person paying them. But that doesn't mean that they are societally useful. If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Or they might not, because there'd be less distortion to sort through. The reason company X nee…

> Lobbyists are people who tell officials whatever they are paid to say Lobbyists are paid to advocate the viewpoints of their clients, but their clients are people: businesses, organizations, and individuals with a stake in the society. > If we had exactly zero of them, legislators would still learn things and pass laws. They might need to hire more researchers. Sure, you can move that function into the bureaucracy.…

> their clients are people: businesses, organizations, and individuals with a stake in the society.

Protip: no matter what Romney says, corporations are not people. Having started a number of companies, and having also met a few people, I am quite sure they are different. Only one of them is supposed to be running the government.

> But someone has to present to the legislators the impact a proposal will have on various stakeholders

If only there were some organization that could do that. Maybe we could call it the Congressional Budget Office or the Congressional Research Service. Maybe legislators could have aides who specialize in particular areas. Or heck, maybe our legislators could find some way to hear what knowledgeable people say. Like they could invite experts to come by and hear what they have to say. We could call it a hear-ing.

> But who attacks the evidence of the faceless unelected technocrat?

Everybody. Which is basically what happens now. Also, I am no expert, but I am pretty sure that most legislative aides and researchers have faces.

>Companies like Google merely have money [...] It's a huge credit of the lobbying system that such companies can have as much influence over government as they do.

Absolutely. Thank god money can have incredible influence. Lord knows what would happen if the power were actually held by the people. Cats and dogs sleeping together, I'm sure. It'd be anarchy.

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#196

Post by fsloth »

ptaipale wrote: post #184
fsloth wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, some paperwork is mandatory, no actual health care." The way the law is brought to action is that the private clinics have specific service tiers which they offer to employers, of which even the basic one covers consultation by a general practitioner. The easiest way for employers to fulfill the letter of the law is to buy the service. Which means that working adults seldom tend to the public services unless the…

I was founder in a SW startup, and those of us who had a Yes, this is obscure for this forum (perhaps that's why some people downvoted the previous comment) but just for the note, in Finland the employer is not really required to buy any services from private clinics. The legal requirement is for existence of a preventive plan, and a specification for what other services the plan covers. It's okay by law if the cover…

Ok, this is really obscure but thanks for the clarification :)

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#197

Post by toomuchtodo »

rayiner wrote: post #116
_abattoir wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When most people say "bullshit job", it seems to me like they really mean "job that could be solved by a well-built machine". Farming used to be a bullshit job until we built gigantic combines and automated watering systems and agricultural data storage systems, and now our farming problems are electronic, not logistic. (except for water, but that's another story.) So for the example of an actuary, ideally their job…

> If we took every actuary working 9 to 5, and instead threw all of their tens of thousands of daily working hours at coding a program to do their job, how soon do you think we could automate an entire industry? This is naive techno-optimism.[1] [1] https://xkcd.com/1425 ; "The title text mentions The Summer Vision Project and Marvin Minsky of MIT. In the summer of 1966, he asked his undergraduate student Gerald Jay…

The DARPA Grand Challenge started in 2004 [1], and now we have autonomous vehicles on the road in select locations. While still not fully unmanned, we've gone from nothing to a great deal of automation in ~11 years.

Spacex was founded in 2002 [2], and is expected to have a successful first stage powered vehicle recovery this year. 13 years from incorporation to revolution.

IBM's Watson diagnoses cancer better than a human doctor [3].

Keep you skepticism sir. I'll bet on the future; its winning.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

[3] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-me...

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#198

Post by robotresearcher »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #194
collyw wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought this recently. The people who get richest often are the ones fucking up things. The oil industry for example is making a mess of the environment, but many people rich. Like wise the guy who invented tetra packs is rich, but what a waste - a plastic carton for every litre of milk? Better off when we were recycling glass.

Glass to hold and transport milk is more of a waste than plastic. You can tell because the cost of using plastic is evidently lower.

Only if the costs of each are accurately encoding their externalities. There can be a long delay before this happens, if ever.

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#199

Post by SamReidHughes »

robotresearcher wrote: post #198
SamReidHughes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass to hold and transport milk is more of a waste than plastic. You can tell because the cost of using plastic is evidently lower.

Only if the costs of each are accurately encoding their externalities. There can be a long delay before this happens, if ever.

No, not really. The externalities of the plastic is inconsequential. The externalities of glass are probably higher. Have you calculated them?

Re: “So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary”

#200

Post by robotresearcher »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #199
robotresearcher wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the costs of each are accurately encoding their externalities. There can be a long delay before this happens, if ever.

No, not really. The externalities of the plastic is inconsequential. The externalities of glass are probably higher. Have you calculated them?

No. I'm guessing you haven't either, since no one can. Such confidence in the market. Is/was the market price of Thalidomide, asbestos and cigarettes also perfect?

edit: I'm not saying that Tetrapaks will turn out to be terrible, just pointing out that things are priced with complete ignorance of their eventual externalities.

And how is the cost of the plastic fragments in the ocean factored in in this example? It won't be zero in the long run.

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