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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

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Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#101

Post by JulianMorrison »

twoodfin wrote: post #88
JulianMorrison wrote: post #53

The core cause of bullshit jobs is not conspiracy, it's political economy. We currently choose (IMO a terrible choice) to have a money based society where "don't work" == "don't eat". And so work must be found. This is what it means when politicians talk of "creating jobs".

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.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#102

Post by cygwin98 »

baggachipz wrote: post #90
dccoolgai wrote: post #68

I live and work in Washington DC. If you ever want to visit a living museum of bullshit jobs, come visit this city. One of my favorite anecdotes is when my friend worked for a defense contractor who hired a "requirements manager". On her first day of work, she popped into my buddy's office and whispered: "what are requirements?".

I remember being contracted out for IT support to a government agency whose sole purpose was representing workers in government agencies. The entirety of its existence astonished me, and as you can imagine, absolutely nothing was accomplished in the 3 weeks I was around. One employee spent most of her time procuring special furniture and equipment for a self-perceived disability (she was perfectly capable), others wh…

Sounds like communist countries used to be.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#103

Post by JonFish85 »

I find it funny that the author states that "the ruling class" essentially decides to keep people busy. Let's not forget that there are other factors at play here: unions are the first one that come to mind. Any union shop is going to have a major problem on their hands the day they decide to cut one job (not saying it's right or wrong, just that unions defend their jobs rigorously, as they should). Unions typically aren't what I think of when I think "ruling class".

However, I do tend to think of politicians as that "ruling class". And for better or for worse, people love to hear the phrase "job creation". Politicians can't "create" jobs in the same way that private companies can. They can certainly foster an environment wherein companies can flourish (and ruin it). But any politically-created job is either an oversight job (finance industry is littered with jobs that should be automated but in the interest of being able to point fingers at people, exist) or a bureaucratic job (in my opinion).

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#104

Post by nknighthb »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #52
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deprecation of assets via property tax is an incredibly good idea. When you don't have that, people see property as a speculative asset class, buy property, do nothing productive with it and...that's basically the Chinese property bubble. Yes, you must pay taxes on your home, but that's because your home is consuming resources from the locality even if it is owned outright.

The grand parent made a really good point. Lets say I don't want to consume local resources. I still have to pay taxes. As far as I know, this is true in the US and Canada. I believe this may not be true elsewhere. Regardless, the "having to pay taxes" has implications such that one can never completely leave the rat race. Btw ... I'd be happy to be corrected. Are there places in the US/Canada without such taxes? Sin…

The mere existence of your land imposes a burden on local resources. Unless it's completely paved over (unlikely) it may start on fire, which may spread to nearby property. Paved over or not, it may be used by people without your permission as a base for criminal activity, necessitating a police response whether you want it or not.

Let's say it was paved, and a solid steel structure built with a roof so steep it was of no practical use to humans. You've eliminated the fire and criminal issues, but now rainwater runoff is flooding the road and your neighbors' property, you're causing ecological damage by eliminating vegetation and animal habitats, and you're blocking sunlight from your neighbors' yards.

And since you're not consuming local resources, that means you have no way to get to or from your property, so really, what good is it to you anyway?

There is no practical way for you to go about your life that has zero impact on those around you. So yes, you must always, to some extent, deal with the reality that there are other humans on this planet.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#105

Post by fab13n »

theorique wrote: post #76
fab13n wrote: post #17

(wanted to post this on the website, but the comments system is off) I've found this article both entertaining and insightful; there's one big hypothesis in it which I find unnecessary, though: the conspiracy theory, making it a fight between dominant classes and actual wealth producers. If we call "bureaucracies" the collectives which consume a lot of human workforce and produce little human-enjoyable wealth out of…

The phrase "inverted totalitarianism" describes this phenomenon.

> "inverted totalitarianism" describes this phenomenon.

I believe it doesn't. Inverted totalitarianism supposes that a master class keeps the plebeian one controlled through apathy and deception, rather than open brute force as in classical totalitarian states. But it fundamentally frames the struggle as one group of humans against another.

My point is that it's not humans versus humans, it's humans versus bureaucracies, a bureaucracy being an autonomous agent without any human mastermind thinking on its behalf, i.e. much more than the sum of its employees, the way a human being is much more than the sum of its cells.

We're treating bureaucracies (as per the definition above, "entities that consume a lot of human workforce and produce little human-enjoyable wealth") as allies helping us producing wealth, because we think salaries still are a good way to create and distribute wealth. Even entrepreneurs are often primarily incensed as "job creators", although when you think about it, it would be better for them to create wealth out of thin air rather than out of sweat and tears. We ought to treat them (bureaucracies, not entrepreneurs!) as a parasitic species instead.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#106

Post by alanctgardner2 »

ap22213 wrote: post #89

Part of the problem is that it's really hard to quantify the social value of failure. So, a lot of people opt to take the easy path and do more busy work. At least, then they may show that their busy work had some productivity and output. I see this all too often in software development. Instead of people chasing wildly challenging ideas, they choose to re-write things over and over. How many programming languages do…

What counts as a wildly challenging idea in applied computer science? A new programming paradigm? I actually can't think of anything I would drop everything to pursue right now, and I suspect most people are the same way. I think it's naive to assume everyone would do something wonderful if only they were unfettered by corporate shackles. For most people writing a good ORM or programming language would be an achievement.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#107

Post by walshemj »

ap22213 wrote: post #93
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was a great and edifying book, but towards the end he did the same thing as in this article. He went off preaching half baked ideas about morality like a hippy. His list of bullshit jobs here is so slippery it undermines his basic point. If private equity and all the corporate lawyers vanished there would be serious ramifications. Nothing capital intensive would get done, unless you instituted fiat capit…

What would be the serious ramifications of vanishing corporate law and private equity?

Try running a company or doing a start up with out a supply of capital.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#108

Post by zdw »

Serious shades of Douglas Adams's Telphone Cleaners in this... That's the result when the BS job class fully decides that anyone who does "menial tasks" should just be discarded.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#109

Post by kybernetikos »

cabalamat wrote: post #80
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…

> Most people in these kind of jobs actually believe that the job is necessary. Really? Or do they secretly worry that it isn't? > Especially in academic and administrative disciplines the very thought of their work not being useful will have most people very defensive and angry. "No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might b…

While a pithy thing to say with some truth in it, I have experienced people asserting things of the order of 2 + 2 = 5, and given the right situation it can have the potential to make people pretty mad.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#110

Post by walshemj »

BetaCygni wrote: post #2

Other people clearly don't think your job is worthless or they wouldn't be paying you to do it. The reason we don't work less is because we clearly want (and can have) more stuff than we had in the 1930's. If you're happy with the standard of living from 1930 you could probably achieve that with 10 hours of work per week.

But the cost of "luxury" items has declined a lot since the 30's how much did a TV or a Car cost in the 30's compared to today.
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