On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

However, for a lot of it I'm asked for help or input where my brain's called into action for a few minutes a time every now and again by other staff. We know this isn't productive for us, but if it provides value to the organisation as a whole (usually by solving something relatively minor, which is best expressed IRL than through the screen), then that's what they need of me.

For instance, a couple of years ago I inherited a convoluted, needlessly ornate and grotesque application that could clearly be rewritten and even extended in one-fifth the LOC it currently occupied. When I finally got greenlit to perform the surgery the usual thing happened, which is that I realized, after much painful effort, that the system had become grotesque little by little, in much the same way that good people turn bad: by taking steps that seem appropriate at the time to what the situation demands. My solution, in the end, was somewhat less grotesque than the original, and certainly more capable, and yet it was not the glittering jewel that I had imagined beforehand, and the path to it was littered with bodies. I assume many people on this site have had a similar experience.

So with regard to repugnant systems (giant commerical banks) and jobs (middle management) or jobs and systems that are repugnant due to the types and numbers of people who seem to be filling them (lawyers, politicians) and wrt established habits and customs and traditions -- to all of it I now perceive that these jobs and systems are the survivors of a mighty selection pressure, and the whole creaky affair so vastly outperformed the alternatives that it has taken over the world to the extent that now it seems as if nothing else is possible.

Something else is possible, of course; but the costs of these theoretically more benign and humane alternatives are impossible to envision. And I'm positive that the whole thing could not be redone, elegantly, in one-fifth the code.

The more I see, especially since 2008, the more I think Keynes was really onto something re: monetary velocity. Our biggest problem is excessive pessimism and a zero-sum mentality, manifesting as various paradoxes of thrift. Without monumental efforts at hand-waving to keep the money flowing, our tendency is to deflate all the way back to the dark ages.

Bullshit jobs are a semi-conscious hack to keep this from happening-- to keep people "working" so they get paid so the money flows.

The other crazy hack around this problem is inflation, and fiat currency in general.

The Austrian types who preach how all this nonsense is a result of these things are precisely wrong. Don't blame the hack for the thing it's fixing.

If we can find a more permanent solution to the problems that we're hacking around, maybe we can dispense with the bullshit. Maybe that's a guaranteed minimum income.