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On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

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Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#241

Post by facepalm »

normloman wrote: post #214
facepalm wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employers have such a sweet deal, just become an employer? Why is there an entitlement for employment?

Because most new businesses fail. So the people best suited to start ones are people with a safety net: a lot of cash saved up, or a well off family to support them. In short, the people who can't afford to lose their jobs also cannot afford to fail in business.

Then perhaps it would make more sense to change that than to change rules about vacations.

Isn't it the job of the banking system to enable people to start businesses?

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#242

Post by vectorpush »

shkkmo wrote: post #139
byEngineer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tea Party members voted against bank bailouts. Not democrats, not old-republicans. My point is, yes, you can buy democrats and some republicans to vote in favor of more government spending. But you apparently can't buy them all to do it. During cold war you could try to buy Moscow communists as much as you wanted so they allowed you open bank branch in USSR, but this would never happen. You can try buy guys like Ron…

I was always sad the the Tea Party and the Occupy movement never managed to figure out that they were on the same side...

They really aren't on the same side and were mostly orthogonal to each other. Of course, both movements share some common grievances against the government, but the concrete ideas of both groups are just about 100% incompatible.

As a glaring example, consider the Citizen's United case; Occupy supporters would almost unanimously point to the Citizen's United ruling as extremely damaging to American democracy, Tea Party supporters on the other hand overwhelmingly side with the government regarding the treatment of money as speech.

Pick pretty much any issue and you'll find that the two movements bitterly disagree, just about the only thing they can agree on is that the government is corrupt and the country is moving in the wrong direction, but that's a universal platitude that everyone will nod their head at.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#243

Post by zo1 »

jessaustin wrote: post #177
byEngineer wrote: post #108

I work at a large bank in the US. We build websites. Internal websites. The company employs maybe 300k people in the US alone. None of the websites gets more than 10 hits a day! There are 5 websites. And we have 40-50 people to support just that! If all these websites disappeared overnight there would be no difference to the bank. And to the society. The best part: the bank has been rescued by tax payer money. If it…

This is capitalism, not tax funded corporations. I feel your pain, but we've got to let go of this word. "Capitalism" has meant exactly "tax-funded corporations", and all the other bullshit that you and I don't like, for such a long time, that this is the accepted meaning now. I don't think the phrase "free market" has been spoiled yet, but if we have to have an -ism then we need to come up with a new one. Avoid the…

No, don't, please. Do Not let go of a word and its definition. It has a definition, and you must stick with it and not give them an inch of ground. It's a losing battle, where constant re-definition means that eventually anything applies under the term.

Giving them ground is precisely why you, and others think that we've lost the term "capitalism". For so long, we let individuals use it in bastardized terms to refer to grey-area capitalism, and allowed its use to be in the form of a pejorative.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#244

Post by JoeAltmaier »

72deluxe wrote: post #240
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #194

From my POV, working 40 hours a week instead of 15 is a conscious choice. I could probably start my own company or source of income and get away with working 15 hours or even less a week, but I'm not going to. One, working for a boss is secure - I know what I'm gonna earn by the end of the month, no stress there. Two... I honestly wouldn't know what to do with the remaining time. I'm not an artsy hipster that spends…

This is quite true. Some of my friends and family work for themselves and I could not possibly cope with the stress of having to win jobs or worry if I was going to get paid at the end of the month. Despite the romantic ideas of working for yourself, it appears to offer LESS flexibility instead of more - they're always working! Instead of "I can work when and where I want!" it turns into "I am always working, anywher…

I coped by adding a column to my spreadsheet: satisfaction. I charged more per hour for instance for family time, than for engineering time. So trading one for the other was obviously wrong. Still, the spreadsheet total has to meet a bar. I ended up working about 30 hours per week.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#245

Post by dllthomas »

crdoconnor wrote: post #121
rakoo wrote: post #44

> The answer clearly isn’t economic I beg to differ. I totally agree with the paradox (with the advances in technology, humans should be working less) but the problem, today, is economic: - In order to live you need money - In order to obtain money you need to work (except for the lucky too few) - Therefore, work needs to exist to provide people with money, to the point of creating "useless" jobs if needs be How are…

This is preferable to Basic Income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Works_Administration / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guarantee For the following reasons: * It it proven and was highly successful during the previous depression. * We actually do have a lot of infrastructure which needs rebuilding and projects which would make all of our lives better (high speed rail, mission to mars, etc.) * People actuall…

I don't object to PWA style projects when we find things that we want to do. I don't think it's a sensible way to guarantee a job. As orangecat said downthread a bit, "shovel-ready" often isn't. I want to spend money to build the infrastructure we actually need. I don't want to throw money at boondoggles, which will be increasingly hard to avoid if we structurally have to keep pushing out projects whether or not we have anything that's actually 1) a good idea, and 2) ready to go.

Edited to add: To be precise, when I say "throw money at", I really mean "throw physical resources and people's time at, while shifting power toward whoever organized it". Obviously I'm advocating paying out some of the money either way so that's not the difference.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#246

Post by zo1 »

dognotdog wrote: post #117
byEngineer wrote: post #108

I work at a large bank in the US. We build websites. Internal websites. The company employs maybe 300k people in the US alone. None of the websites gets more than 10 hits a day! There are 5 websites. And we have 40-50 people to support just that! If all these websites disappeared overnight there would be no difference to the bank. And to the society. The best part: the bank has been rescued by tax payer money. If it…

Don't take it out on socialism! Under those principles, the banks either would not have existed in this form in the first place, or been allowed to go bankrupt just as you suggest. What happened with the bank bailout was pure capitalism, the banks simply bought the government!

You can't have a government, which is by definition a monopoly backed by a military and police force. And then turn around and blame "pure capitalism" because it appears to have somehow influenced the government monopoly.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#247

Post by indrax »

crdoconnor wrote: post #188
rakoo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People actually like to work - to feel useful. There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. I think it's completely wrong, people (most of them) will continue to work; the huge difference is that they will not do it for the money, but for the actual effect it has. Your example shows it. You can also ask yourselves if chefs, musicians, programmers, mechanic…

>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?

Who decides what jobs are available? Who decide who gets which jobs?

By giving a job instead of money, you are using up a significant chunk of the labor pool. You need an additional chunk to figure out how to allocate it, and are then relying on them to allocate it well. To build something, you are also paying for and using up capital.

By giving money, people are free to use their time in whatever way is most valuable to them, only using up the resources they need to live, and those resources get allocated by market forces.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#248

Post by sklogic »

refurb wrote: post #235
sklogic wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key here is in being monstrous, not in the underlying ideology.

The big difference there is that when a company is wasteful, they do it with their own money. When the state is wasteful, that's my money they are pissing away.

This difference is not that clear. Governments are bailing out failing banks and handing out beefy contracts; pension funds are owning sizeable proportions of the huge, slow, stupid companies, etc. All with my money.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#249

Post by [deleted] »

confluence wrote: post #16
lentil_soup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I am being ignorant, but how's the military a socialist thing?

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#250

Post by notdang »

Don't want to defend Soviet Union, but this is very different to what I experienced while living in USSR:

"Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). "

It was quite the opposite. Just one person serving a huge queue.

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