Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

strikemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 357 posts

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#51

Post by ronaldx »

impendia wrote: post #22
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…

I was with you until the end. Can you provide an example of an academic sabotaging useful production in order to prove his or her value?

I assume you are an academic - therefore, I imagine you have heard of cases where a peer reviewer killed an article just because it contradicted the reviewer's own work?

Even if an academic is not explicitly sabotaging work, it's clear from the amount of time spent on grant applications and general bureaucracy that their useful production is being sabotaged.

To meet bureaucratic standards, researchers are often required to teach and educators are often required to publish... it's not effective production.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#52

Post by throwaway1979 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25
johnminter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget that nasty reality called property and school taxes. In reality, one never owns one's home. You own it as long as you can pay any remaining mortgage and all the taxes. Let's also not forget maintenance costs. Ever paid the bill to replace a leaking roof or kitchen appliances or...

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? Since they are levied locally, I imagine they could exist.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#53

Post by JulianMorrison »

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".

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#54

Post by gaelian »

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…

This kind of discussion always reminds me of the movie Cube[1]. Since watching it years ago, I have often found it to be a fantastical and exaggerated but useful metaphor related to this topic.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_(film)

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#55

Post by singingfish »

fab13n wrote: post #34
Patient0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You don't need a conspiracy to describe a stable but sub-optimal outcome: you just need it to be a Nash equilibrium.

It's stronger than a Nash equilibrium. It's not even an equilibrium actually, because we keep improving humans' productivity, and bureaucracies keep eating the freed workforce. It's really easier to make sense out of it from an ecologist's PoV than from an economist's or a game theoretician's, because the two competing agents (humans and bureaucracies) are hard to formally separate.

> It's stronger than a Nash equilibrium. It's not even an equilibrium actually, ...

An alternative is that it's an equilibrium, but that we haven't hit where it starts to operate as one yet.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#56

Post by baseraid »

The author has a very interesting point. Still he oversimplifies and so I didn't find the article very insightful.

For example lawyers are there for good reason. Modern society needs a way to officially settle conflicts. But our law system creates arms races and draws more and more resources this way.

I think few jobs are as zero sum as SEO from their beginning. The problem is that when we start arms races and pour more and more resources into them, they become almost zero sum.

So the interesting question would be how to avoid arms races. But that is not even mentioned.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#57

Post by singingfish »

mixmax wrote: post #12
Filligree wrote: post #3

Some of what people want is positive-sum: Books, aquariums, theater showings, even cars. As we get more productive, the amount of time you need to work for these decreases. A lot of what people want is zero-sum: Location, status symbols, and so forth. If you want to live in the centre of town you need to work more than anyone else who so wants, not just as much as it takes to cover the maintenance. This is, I believe…

This is a good observation. I've put some effort into circumventing the zero-sum things, though I haven't thought about it this way before. I live on a boat that I've paid with cash, and thus own. My living expenses come down to harbour rent, electricity and heating in the winter. Over a year that's an average of $300 a month. I live in the smack middle of Copenhagen. On top of this comes living expenses, clothes, et…

I do something similar, but I live in the rat race. I have a job that keeps me going on part time hours nicely, and I just built a house (largely with money).

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#58

Post by guard-of-terra »

vanderZwan wrote: post #48
guard-of-terra wrote: post #23

I wonder how much people we really need to replicate, sustain and exceed present levels of technology and culture (on another planet perhaps)? Given that we allow every person to develop their talents of contributing to the productivity of the society. Not just being a wage drone or an unemployed drone. My guess is: as few as a few million people today, hundred thousands when we figure out robotics.

I recall a reading very fascinating comment on Reddit a few years ago on this subject: if you want to maximise for maximum biological diversity at the lowest cost, the best option would be to have a small all-female crew, and as much diverse frozen sperm as possible (which is the most compact form of proto-human we got). Then upon reaching the intended planet, fertilise every female with a unique cell. Repeat every g…

I wasn't talking about diversity, rather about how much people are needed to sustain and industrial civilization. Perhaps this number is much greater than number of people you need for diversity (several hundred people populated the whole pre-Columbian americas and they didn't have terrible problems with diversity)

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#59

Post by Spooky23 »

asfasfafwF wrote: post #4
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.

I'm not really up on what the standard of living was like in the 30's, but is it really possible working 10 hours per week? That would barely pay rent in most places.

In rural areas, 1930's living did not include amenities like plumbing or electricity in most places. In urban areas, you're looking at an interior room in a cold water tenement or a boarding house type situation.

It would be tough to do it in the city without becoming a victim of crime, but you can pull it off in many rural areas. Note that the 10 hours of work would be paid work. You'd be doing all sort of tasks on your own behalf. If you lived in the northern US, for example, right now you'd be chopping wood and preserving food in preparation for winter, for example.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#60

Post by singingfish »

objclxt wrote: post #9

> It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) We'd probably lead full, rich and happy lives until we were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from an unexpectedly dirty telephone.

Thank you. I was waiting for a telephone sanitizer reference.
Post reply on HN