
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs - gu
http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
======
zeteo
I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class"
sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is
more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended
extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the
zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them.

To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on
michaelochurch's (now sadly inactive) blog [1], and he may well have
originated it. Here it is, in a better explanation than I could provide:

"The Marketing and Sales Treadmill

In the modern world [...] there are no unexploited resources and no surplus
jobs to be had processing those resources. [The worker] needs a job, but their
labor is surplus and unnecessary.

[...T]he most common path is that our prospective worker enters the sales and
marketing business. [...] Even engineering focused companies like Facebook
have more sales people than engineers. [...] So everyone’s energy is focused
on imagining some gimmick – a six bladed razor, a beer can that turns blue
when [it's] cold, a funny talking gecko – that gives someone a reason to give
you money when there is no real differentiation based on product value.

The sales and marketing economy is zero sum. Each business must work harder
and harder at new tag lines, gizmos, tricks, and jingles. And when sales guys
at the other company work harder, you must work harder too.

Past writers who imagined the future thought that as machines saved our time,
we would have more time for leisure. That has not happened. Instead [...] we
must work in sales and marketing to convince someone with money to trade cash
for our trinket, so that we can have purchasing power to access the natural
bounty of the land. [...] The future is here, and it is the sales desk at
Dunder Mifflin."

[1] [http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-
econom...](http://intellectual-detox.com/2013/04/14/rent-seeking-economy/)

~~~
api
I think you are largely correct: it's an emergent pathology. Complex systems
are full of those.

But that doesn't answer the question as to why we never read articles like
this. Why doesn't anyone ask this question?

So I also blame the Puritan work ethic. "Idle hands are the devils tools,"
we're told, and work is (like Soviet Russia) both a duty and a right. Nothing
offends our ultimately Puritan-rooted morality more than someone "sitting
around doing nothing," even if that nothing happens to be art or philosophy or
caring for their children. The latter is a great illustration: look at the
crap that stay-at-home parents sometimes get.

So I _do_ believe there is an ideological basis for this. It causes us to see
the perverse treadmill you describe as a _good thing_ rather than as the
cancerous tumor of waste that it is. It's a tumor that makes us tremendously
poorer, especially in ways that are not readily measured by money: friendship,
family health, intellectual and aesthetic fulfillment, etc.

An analogy: it's sort of like if we had this weird moral belief that high-
crime ghettoes were a good thing. They "make people into men," etc. So imagine
if we let the "projects" pathology that evolved in many cities in the 20th
century go completely unchecked because we semi-secretly liked it that way.
The pathology is emergent, not by design, but our _tolerance_ and even
_encouragement_ of it is definitely ideological in basis.

~~~
burgreblast
Before we go too far, raising children is definitely not Biblically
categorized as idle hands, but in fact praised and respected.

The old-school Puritan would prefer you spend time teaching and raising
children than helping an ad company sell more clicks. Or generally make a
Skinner box.

Don't know much about Soviet Russia but 19-teens Russian avant-garde art was
pretty boss. To say nothing of Kandinsky.

My perspective is that idle hands are actually idle: not building, not
thinking, not active, not contemplative, not searching, not trying, not even
resting. But idle. Un(der) used. And rather hard to defend. Consumption is
easier than creation.

~~~
api
Great job mentioning Skinner boxes. I think this might be another dimension to
this pathology: to what extent is our economy a Skinner box?

And you're technically right about classical Puritans. They would regard a lot
of what we "do" today as BS make-work, not true work. But I think that
distinction has been lost. The "work ethic" is an example of what I call a
"zombie idea," an idea missing its head that continues to march on through a
culture and eat peoples' brains.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I work in the ad industry. I'd argue that the entire ad industry exists as a
skinner box, tweaking settings and turning knobs with the sole goal of having
consumers consumer more of their product.

~~~
crooneys
Same and agreed

------
Filligree
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, a large part of why working hours aren't going down. You
could work less, but then you'd lose out to someone who doesn't.

~~~
mixmax
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, etc. But I'm not very materialistic so that's quite cheap too.

The surprising result (for me at least) is that I'm out of the status race,
and people envy me for the freedom I've gained. By choice I haven't been
working for more than a year, and I can afford it, and don't feel much
pressure taking any old job. I'm looking for something interesting, but if it
doesn't turn up I can live without. In the meantime I spend time doing all the
sideprojects, art things, and hanging out a lot of other people are dreaming
about while they slave away.

To quote Fight Club: "the things you own end up owning you"

~~~
thyrsus
That sounds wonderful, but the line I'd always heard was "A boat is a hole in
the water you throw money into" \- that is, they are expensive to maintain.
How do you avoid that?

~~~
mixmax
If you are a little handy and know how to work an angle grinder and a circular
saw it's really not that expensive. Plus you have something to do in the
weekends :-)

~~~
Filligree
In other words, you're substituting your own time for money.

That's no different than working and paying someone else to do it,
economically, but I imagine you enjoy it. More power to you. :-)

Actually, my family owns a country home (far from anywhere; land tax is ~zero)
that's also next a fjord. As in, a meter and a half from the water. We've got
a floating dock.

I've been wondering about how to maintain it, now that our patriarch is
getting too old to do so. The main issue, really, is how to get back and forth
- I'd love to live there semi-full-time, but realistically can't do so in the
winter, and the roads are getting worse every year now that all the farmers
are gone. Using a suitably large boat seems like an interesting option, and
would give me the choice of living closer to some town if I need to work
closely with people on some project.

If you have some figures - how much it actually costs, etc. - that'd be great.
I certainly wouldn't mind doing maintenance myself, but I expect it still
won't be free. Also, what model boat do you have?

~~~
mixmax
Send me an e-mail, it's in my profile. I'll be happy to answer any questions
you might have, and help in any way I can.

Sounds like a great project!

------
jonnathanson
We need to distinguish between two separate, tangentially related issues:
bullshit _jobs_ and bullshit _hours_.

Most of the classes of jobs mentioned in this piece are not, in and of
themselves, entirely bullshit. Rather, the idea that each of these people
actually needs to be in the office, pretending to be continually and evenly
busy, for 50+ hours a week -- that's bullshit. Work ebbs and flows in a very
different way for each type of job; it is not evenly distributed across the
day or week. The belief that it is leads us to create busywork, the dread and
bane of all office workers.

We are struggling to unshackle ourselves from the remnants of the old,
industrial workweek, which was developed around assembly lines at automobile
factories. Most of us aren't building Model T's anymore. And yet, we have laws
and/or employment contracts charting mandatory minimum workweeks, mandatory
minimum hours per day, etc.

Some jobs really do require 40, 50, or even more hours per week. Many, and I'd
dare say most, do not. Especially the white-collar administrative and "paper
pushing" positions mentioned in this article. The jobs themselves aren't
unnecessary (at least not in reasonable quantity), but the idea that _all jobs
are normalized around the same schedule_ is absolute lunacy.

~~~
tbrownaw
A significant part of my job is being _available_. I can leave a few minutes
early if I check my email before the next day starts (ignoring social
pressure; nobody's usually going to have questions at the very end of the day
that can't wait for morning) or come in a half hour to occasionally an hour
and a half late (nobody has immediate questions that early in the day), but
mostly I need to be around during the times that everyone else is working.

If I'm having a slow period, or if I'm stuck and need time to percolate, I'll
bring a book or spend more time than usual on HN.

------
fab13n
(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 it, then those
bureaucracies are best understood as a life form, distinct from the homo
sapiens individuals which serve it. You need to see them as a whole, for the
same reason as why you can't make sense out of an animal if you mainly see it
as the sum of its individual cells.

From a biologist's point of view, they need to compete for resources, they
show some adaptability, they reproduce themselves with some amount of
mutation: they have everything needed to benefit from Darwinian selection, and
they do.

The resulting current generation of bureaucracies has evolved a very good
effectiveness at diverting resources, from other consumers including humans,
towards themselves (that is, maintaining and growing the bureaucracy itself).

As a result, they exhibit many "intelligent" traits, including some selfish
sense of purpose. Conspiracy theorists wrongly look for The Man, the
mastermind driving bureaucracies. There's none, no more than there's a single
neuron nor small group thereof which drives your brains: a complex enough
bureaucracy has a non-human mind of its own.

Keynes was right about the amount of work we'd need, what he failed to predict
is a phenomenon very similar to eutrophisation: we dream of full employment
when we don't need to, so we produce much more "nutrients" (people willing to
offer their workforce) than we can use for survival and human enjoyment. So
instead of being consumed by/for homo sapiens, this energy is consumed by that
competing life form that are bureaucracies.

~~~
Patient0
Exactly. You don't need a conspiracy to describe a stable but sub-optimal
outcome: you just need it to be a Nash equilibrium.

~~~
fab13n
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.

~~~
singingfish
> 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.

------
RyanZAG
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 who is unemployed as some kind of failure. When a child gets
out of school they need to find work or they have failed. If someone has no
job their perceived lack of purpose ultimately pushes them into mental
illness, drug abuses or even suicide. This has nothing to do with someone
forcing people to work and everything to do with the human brain's need for
purpose forcing working - even if that work is pointless. For example, you
often hear someone say with pride how they have worked so much they don't have
time to eat or sleep even when the work they are doing is something like
filling out pointless bureaucratic paperwork.

 _" How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly
feels one’s job should not exist?"_

Most people in these kind of jobs actually believe that the job is necessary.
Especially in academic and administrative disciplines the very thought of
their work not being useful will have most people very defensive and angry.
They'll probably go as far as to sabotage genuine useful production in an
effort to prove their value.

~~~
impendia
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?

~~~
RyanZAG
That happens less in academics - I was thinking more of administrative areas
in corporations. For example, there are no shortages of stories of
administrators in procurement adding in additional required paperwork when
more efficient computerized systems make their stamp on documents less
required.

Actually, this has happened in academics in a way too - consider the
requirement of ever lengthening literature reviews in PHD theses. These have
come about because of the ease of access to academic documents through
digitized journals making libraries and supervisors less valuable. The answer
is to increase their value by increasing the amount of work required so that
they will still be necessary to wade through it. I'm not sure how much this is
sabotage and not just the result of electronic journals making this easier
though, which is why the example in the paragraph above is far more relevant.

~~~
roel_v
" consider the requirement of ever lengthening literature reviews in PHD
theses. These have come about because of the ease of access to academic
documents through digitized journals making libraries and supervisors less
valuable."

I'm not sure I understand your conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo correctly, but I
cannot help but take from this that you are saying that because finding
literature has become faster due to electronic access to papers, the added
value of the Phd supervisor has gone down. If this is so, you have absolutely
no idea what you're talking about, a position for which I find additional
evidence in your use of 'PHD' with all capitals which nobody in academia would
do. Look, if you have something valuable to add to the discussion, please do;
but if you're just going to make things up to fit your ideological
predispositions, stay on Reddit.

~~~
jclos
I agree. If anything, the explosion of digital libraries and thus of available
information would tend to make librarians and supervisors with deep domain
knowledge even more essential to sort through all the noise.

------
objclxt
> _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.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Besides, this is a classic game theory example of cooperation vs. competition.
Sure, everyone would live rich and happy lives if everyone would cooperate,
but that would be for only as long as there are no new lobbyists, etc. Once
they appear - they win all the money, and everything goes back to how it is
now.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ok, so how do you create an enforcement mechanism to keep the capitalistic
bullshit from coming back once you've gotten rid of it?

------
ap22213
For those that don't know, this is the same David Graeber [1] who wrote "Debt:
The first 5000 years" [2].

"Debt" is a pretty great book, and I recommend others read it. At least, I
found it illuminating to the popular concept of debt, the historical idea, and
its ramifications.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
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 capital allocation, but we know that doesn't work. And what's
_not_ bullshit about modern doctoring and nursing? 90% of the time they're
treating lifestyle ailments for which the treatments don't actually do very
much. What's not bullshit about being a teacher of tenth graders who can
barely read?

~~~
ap22213
What would be the serious ramifications of vanishing corporate law and private
equity?

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

~~~
ap22213
Is it really so difficult to allocate capital that just about every city needs
skyscrapers full of finance people? I'm asking that as a completely legitimate
question - I really have no idea of how much work is required to give my small
business a line of credit.

~~~
snowwrestler
For most of history there were not big companies allocating capital, and for
most of history it was nearly impossible for most people to obtain capital to
start or grow their own business.

Put another way--the modern financial system was created for a reason. The
author supposes that it was a big conspiracy theory to give us all shitty
jobs, but in counter I would point out that it has likely never been easier
for people to start or grow businesses than it is today.

~~~
ap22213
Well, that's not necessarily true (at least, in my case). I can't walk down to
the local bank and be approved for a small amount of capital without providing
equal collateral. Even with a strong business plan. I have to show quite a bit
of history of revenue and cash flow for a minimal credit line.

On the other hand, it's relatively easy for me to ask a bunch of my friends to
each lend me $10,000. And, that is more because of the cumulative result of
decades and decades of productivity increases in addition to a society that
values electronics and computers and the internet. Those factors give these
software engineer friends the extra discretionary money to lend to me. It's
not because of the magic of the financial system.

The author is saying that there's a huge excess of capital and productivity
that could theoretically 'pay' for other types of work. But, instead, we as a
society, decide to funnel most of our excess to people who push around
accounts ledgers, ruminate on legal logic, generate sales ads, and do other
sorts of 'educated' busy work.

~~~
snowwrestler
One reason the modern financial system is so huge and complex is that so many
of its features have been extended to individuals.

I, a rather average middle-aged dude, maintain 4 bank accounts, 6 lines of
credit, 4 investment accounts, and 4 lines of insurance [1]. Think of the
complexity involved in providing those services to me--now multiply by tens of
millions of other people. This does not even get into the financial
instruments of businesses and governments, which are far more complex.

The end result of all this complexity is that individuals like your friends
can accumulate and access large sums of money to lend to you to start a
business. Most new business financing does not come from banks, it comes from
individuals, families, or alternate financial businesses like angel funds,
venture capital, hedge funds, etc.

[1]

Bank accounts \- 2 personal checking \- 2 savings

Credit \- 1 mortgage \- 3 credit cards \- 2 check cards

Investments \- IRA \- 401k \- HSA \- Brokerage (trading)

Insurance \- Home \- Auto \- Life \- Health

------
spindritf
I liked the article but there is no conundrum here:

> the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is
> actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people

Yes, people are not paid in accordance to the direct tangible benefit their
work brings. Salaries are broadly determined by the same laws of supply and
demand that determine prices for other stuff.

Tube workers are not seen as worthy of high compensation, or high-status in
general, because people believe, correctly or not, that it's easy to do the
job. On the other hand, programmers usually command high wages, despite being
viewed as nerds and rather low-status, because it's hard to replace one.

Some professions may have an artificially constricted supply, through
regulations for example, which throws those observations off a bit.

> It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success
> mobilizing resentment against school teachers

I'd argue that if you replaced school teachers with babysitters, the only
catastrophe would be all those damaged egos.

~~~
craigyk
>I'd argue that if you replaced school teachers with babysitters, the only
catastrophe would be all those damaged egos.

The keyword you used is "replaced", not "do away with". Actually I think an
argument could be made that teacher pay does already treat them somewhat as
babysitters. Babysitters would likely be more expensive on an hour * kids
basis than teachers given current babysitter rates.

Anyways, you are right, wages are determined by "supply and demand",
unfortunately collective bargaining is seen as a bad thing, whereas I see it
just as another way for a truly "free market" to communicate the value of a
job.

------
netcan
" _The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population
with free time on their hands is a mortal danger_ "

I don't know what to call this fallacy, but it needs a name. In a way it's
similar to saying "nature abhors a vacuum," "this evolutionary strategy aims
to", "the market will.." etc. Those are all personifying emergent phenomenons.
They are non person things that behave amusingly as if they have a
personality. The "ruling class" is different though because it is made of of
people. I don't think the author is trying to suggest thousands (or millions)
or people conspired to make "the masses" waste 30 hours per week on
motivational seminars, but using that language makes it sound like he is, sort
of, without committing to it too much.

Worse, it absolves one from exploring the most interesting part of this
argument. If There is a literal conspiracy, who? how? details, please. If it's
a metaphor for some sort of emergent phenomenon, explore that. What are the
forces at work that make this happen. Is it the proliferation of zero (or
small) sum games like litigation or advertising? Is it about opaque
performance in modern snowflake jobs? This is the most interesting part of the
discussion and " _The ruling class has_ " just absolves the writer of
addressing it.

~~~
pcrh
I think the word you are looking might be "teleology".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology)

------
DividesByZero
Buckminster Fuller had it right back in the 70's -

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to
earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a
technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of
today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.
We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be
employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian
theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of
inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.
The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about
whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told
them they had to earn a living."

------
blackdogie
[http://paste.ie/view/de115ebd](http://paste.ie/view/de115ebd) Cached version
(black on back text was all that was show from Googel Cache, this is a bit
more readable ) as strikermag seems to be having issues at the moment

------
bilalq
I've found myself thinking about this a lot lately. I don't know about
corporate law, but I can certainly see many jobs becoming obsolete in the not-
so-distant future. Automation is advancing and accelerating like never before,
and that is a good thing. Of course, this means fewer workers are needed.
Factor in population growth, and this quickly becomes a major issue.

I've seen people bring up basic income when such concerns are raised. I myself
am undecided on how effective it would be, but it seems like now is a good
time for conversation on the matter to begin.

~~~
FrojoS
One place to look for that discussion is Switzerland. They collected over
130,000 signatures on a law proposal for basic income. So now there will be a
direct vote on it.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Switzerland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Switzerland)

After the swiss people voted against an extension of mandatory vacation, from
four to six weeks, recently, I highly doubt that this law has a chance to
pass. However, it sure will be an interesting and passionate discussion that
will force everyone to ask the right questions. In fact its already going on.
If you speak German you can e.g. read the comments on all the major newspaper
articles, like here [http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/schweiz/schweizer-koennen-wohl-
ueb...](http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/schweiz/schweizer-koennen-wohl-ueber-
grundeinkommen-abstimmen-1.18126122) (I suppose the same is true for French
and Italian.)

PS: This is the best HN thread in a long time. There are opposing views and
intelligent, passionated discussion about what could be boiled down to the
question "What is the meaning of life?" for each participant.

~~~
bilalq
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that until now. It may not pass, but it's
amazing to see it even being considered for a vote.

And I agree, this thread has been a great read.

------
einhverfr
I really enjoyed this piece. Very thought provoking. I only have one issue and
that is the question of what causes pointless jobs.

Graeber suggests this was a decision by the ruling class, collectively, to
push us to work harder and keep us from being the competition. To some extent
there is some support for that. One of Hilaire Belloc's complaints about the
early welfare state was that it would effectively chain people to corporate
work.

But I don't think it is the whole or even the primary driver. One of the most
interesting books I think one can read is "The Collapse of Complex
Civilizations" by Joseph Tainter (another anthropology professor) who suggests
that the rise of these sorts of paper pushing jobs is caused not by a desire
to keep the poor poor and dependent on work (something early Capitalists like
Adam Smith advocated outright) but as an overall measure of complexity. These
are coordination jobs. They have become at once pointless and necessary.

Take for example Graeber's example of corporate lawyers. These jobs are needed
because we have seen an explosion in the complexity of corporate law.
Corporate lawyers thus effectively pilot a corporation through hazardous legal
waters (with the officers still nominally at the helm). The job is BS. The job
is necessary because we had problems and passed laws, and now everyone needs
corporate lawyers.

Interestingly Graeber's view is much more optimistic than Tainter's. If
Graeber is right the world will hum along with or without these complexity-
related jobs. But if Tainter is right then we are nearing a danger zone where
we risk societal collapse when the complexity becomes one level too high. I
hope Graeber is right, but in my heart I fear and believe that Tainter is.

~~~
davidgerard
<i>"Graeber suggests this was a decision by the ruling class, collectively, to
push us to work harder and keep us from being the competition."</i>

He explicitly states this is not what he thinks. The reading comprehension in
this thread is very selective.

~~~
einhverfr
I reread, and I can't see where he explicitly says this is not what he thinks.
He claims that this is a fairly accurate picture of he moral state of our
economy. I would be interested in what you are seeing that I am not.

------
api
"Silicon Valley" (as a euphamism for our industry) has a chance to lead the
culture here, and also to respond to an emerging criticism of itself in a way
that is socially positive.

I'm seeing more and more articles to the effect that high-tech destroys jobs.
Our response should be: "good, now we should move to a four-day work week." If
high-tech work destroys jobs, it should leave people more time for friendship,
family, art, learning, play, ...

Attack the Puritan bullshit-work ethic and the associated economic broken
window fallacy directly. Make it a "culture war" issue if necessary.

That would be the first step: a four-day work week, a three-day weekend. More
jobs for those who don't have them, less work for those who do. The energy
savings in transportation would also be immense.

Tech industries would be largely unaffected. Why? Because our work is largely
intellectual in nature, and intellectual work does not come in continuous
streams. It comes in bursts of productivity. I bet removing one day from the
work week would negligibly impact productivity in our field. It might even
increase it in some cases.

------
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).

~~~
doctorwho
Politicians make unions and "bullshit jobs" possible by creating the
incentives for companies to hire people they don't need. Unions then make it
impossible to get rid of the deadwood. In the case of pure government jobs
we're doubly damned.. they create bullshit jobs for paper pushers and then
governmentt unions make sure those jobs exist for as close to forever as they
possibly can. It's not conspiracy, it's stupidity.

------
bane
An enduring image for me is of the kind of bullshit jobs that you really can
only find in certain parts of East Asia these days.

For example, drive to a parking garage at a shopping mall and there will be a
guy who's entire 8 hour work day is spent wearing an over elaborate bell hop
uniform and bowing to cars as they drive in. That's it...his entire job is
bowing to cars. If he disappeared off the face of the planet tomorrow, it
wouldn't affect a single thing. People would still come to the mall, cars
would still manage to park, not one thing would change.

Or how about the nice costumed sales ladies standing in every aisle in the
grocery store, not giving out promotional samples (a la Costco), but simply
holding up gift packages of cheap processed food items. My favorite is the
gift package for your salaryman husband, a beautifully wrapped container of
instant coffee. That's actually two BS jobs, the lady holding the package
(which you were going to buy anyway), and the person who packaged up the $20
container of instant coffee in an overly elaborate gift package that will go
directly into the trash 10 seconds after it's received.

I remember travelling in Russia, and going into one of those amazing Stalanist
subway stations, and there was a booth with a person in it. They didn't do
anything, they weren't really an attendant, didn't help anybody or have any
particular function, they just sat there for a 8 hours.

Of course for the really unbelievably useless jobs you have to look inside the
U.S. government.

------
rarw
(1) As a lawyer I love how to non-lawyers the legal industry (usually BigLaw)
is always the go to example for things that cost a lot but do nothing.

(2) All these lofty ideas and conspiracy theories are great but bullshit jobs
exist for one reason - most people suck at their job and are perfectly O.K.
with it.

It's nice to think of labor as a machine. A system where everyone tries to be
efficient and strive to do the best work possible. In reality that just
doesn't exist. Most people go to work for a paycheck. Their one goal - keep
getting that paycheck. In that context it's easy to see how what could be
accomplished in 15 hours suddenly takes 40. If there is no incentive to work
hard, better, faster, or stronger, why bother? Anyone here ever work a union
job? You don't exactly get to leave early if you finish early. You don't
exactly get a raise either.

Additionally most people don't have a passion that they'd rather get back to.
Very few people think of anything besides (a) work (b) family (c) friends (d)
misc. rec. activ. (sleep, sex, vacation, whatever). So this idea that the
Bullshit Job is somehow preventing people from doing something more productive
is, well, bullshit. Most people would do nothing with their time if not for
work.

It's nice to dream the world works otherwise but at least in my experience it
does not.

~~~
craigyk
The legal industry is mostly "bullshit" work. To think otherwise you'd have to
believe both: (1) the system is perfect at making good laws which have the
precise consequences desired. (2) the average number of laws decreases, rather
than increases over time (barring major overthrows, revolutions)

~~~
rarw
I don't even know how that argument makes any sense.

------
no_wave
This fails to engage with any economic reality.

Realistically, the reason that bullshit jobs exist is because it is possible
for a low amount of work to result in a good amount of profit. Let's look at
Microsoft Office, for example - you can charge $200 per copy for effectively
zero cost. Therefore, if somebody can manage to sell 1000 copies of it, their
job is justified, along with an assistant or two. This could take a very short
amount of time.

The reason there are "bullshit jobs" is because profit margins can be so high.
The higher the margins, the more bullshit jobs, and the lower the margins, the
fewer. Restaurants have few to no bullshit jobs because there simply isn't
enough money to be made with labor that isn't running at 100% most of the
time.

If you want a world without bullshit jobs, you'll want a version of the world
where products are NOT sold at 4x markup from their cost of production, and
instead a 1.5x to 2x markup. Then, companies will HAVE to be lean, because a
marginal increase in sales/support will not translate to an enormous increase
in profits.

Look at companies with low margins and high costs of production, and you may
see inefficiency (it happens everywhere), but there will not be many bullshit
jobs.

------
dccoolgai
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?".

~~~
baggachipz
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 whiled the day away in "meetings" and water
cooler discussions. They could not, however, be bothered to observe that the
reason their office server was not functioning was due to its power cord not
being plugged in. I wish I was making this up.

~~~
cygwin98
Sounds like communist countries used to be.

------
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.

~~~
vasilipupkin
the arms races are essentially competition - and competition often creates
positive externalities which are not immediately obvious to a naked eye, such
as new technologies, etc. Perfect example is Jane Street Capital pouring
resources into O'Caml libraries because they feel it gives them an edge in the
high frequency trading arms race

------
johnmacintyre
"if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call
“the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody
else."

Are you freak'n kidding me? The 99% _is the market_ not the 1%. Who do you
think is buying what the 1% is selling? It's the 99% who determine what is
being made by buying what they buy!

I've had a few jobs like this, not many though, and I can tell you that none
of them were at companies small enough for an owner to know who I was.

I'd like to propose a different reason for these jobs; middle manager decision
makers who have ulterior motives than to optimize ROI. Like what you ask? Like
getting a bigger budget next year. Like empire building. Like maximizing the
illusion of importance. I could go on, but since I've never had one of these
positions, I'm sure I could never do the list justice.

Law (since it was mentioned) and consulting are slightly different since you
might end up doing something pointless where your company is maximizing ROI
because the market is paying for you to do something pointless. ... and given
that situation, I'd venture to guess that either a) it was one of the non-
stakeholders mentioned above that brought you in, or b) an owner who bought
into your industry/company's marketing BS and hasn't been disillusioned yet.
... yet.

There may be situations I can't think of, but I'd suggest that it's the 99%
who has created this situation in most cases.

------
samatman
Not surprised that the top four comments at the moment disagree with the
author. I strongly recommend that anyone who was affected by the 2008 economic
crisis read his best-known book: _Debt, the first 5000 years_.

You may still disagree with his conclusions, but you're more likely to do so
in an informed way. It is the only treatise on the subject of debt, which I
have been able to find, that actually makes sense. I say that as someone who
has read far more Hayek and Rothbard than Marx or Bakunin.

------
BetaCygni
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.

~~~
asfasfafwF
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.

~~~
Jach
The trick is getting into a government subsidized housing program, making use
of food stamps, and taking as many other handouts as you can get. A former
friend does this and works about 10 hours a week as a dishwasher (sometimes
more if they have a busy week) spending the rest of his time playing video
games or reading Objectivist literature.

~~~
olefoo
" reading Objectivist literature " while on food stamps?

Clearly he is doing so from curiosity and not conviction.

------
marvdm
“Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of
labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone.

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and
education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will become bored if
he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man
is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the
bulk of the population should suffer this deprivation; only a foolish
asceticism, usually vicarious, makes us continue to insist on work in
excessive quantities now that the need no longer exists.” —Bertrand Russell,
In Praise of Idleness

“Suppose the people around here decide that instead of having more consumer
goods they’d like to have more leisure. The market system doesn’t allow you
that choice. It drives you to having more consumer goods because it’s all
driven to maximizing production. But is the only human value to have more and
more goods you don’t need? In fact the business world knows that it’s not.
That’s why they spend billions of dollars in advertising, to try to create
artificial wants.” —Noam Chomsky

I strongly agree with the author, Russell, and Chomsky. I think Jacque Fresco
also has interesting thoughts regarding this matter.

------
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".

~~~
twoodfin
Just how do you propose eating without working? _Someone_ has to work so she
or others can eat.

~~~
dvanduzer
The sun generates nearly 400 trillion _trillion_ watts per _second_ but don't
let that fool you into thinking there's such a thing as a free lunch for more
than a few billion years.

~~~
twoodfin
And without someone doing at least some work, you will starve no matter how
many of those watts warm your reclined body.

Sure, the amount of that work is going down, and has been going down for
centuries, but that's not an inevitable, natural process: The technological
innovation to make food easier and cheaper to produce _also_ requires work.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Dividing work into:

1\. stuff people would do for free, for patriotism, for fun, or for kudos

2\. stuff it takes economic coercion to make people do

I can't offhand think of any #2 that couldn't in principle either be automated
away, or harmlessly abandoned.

------
zacinbusiness
I have been lucky enough to have a few jobs that paid the bills (though
barely) that gave me some perspective on this. Before college, I worked at a
gambling parlor where I was effectively paid to take other people's money from
them and to give it to my boss. The potential for a financial gain was there
as the establishment was...quasilegal at best...but it never happened that one
stranger would walk in and take the house, never to return. Instead, older men
and women would come in night after night and spend the majority of their
disposable income hoping to break even though they usually never did. This was
a bullshit job, and worse it was a job that directly contributed to the
detriment both of the local economy and to that of the greater economy. They
could have cut my job entirely by simply direct depositing money into the bank
account of my employer and it would have cost them less in the long run
(counting for gas and "concessions" consumed while gambling). However, the
majority of the customers were older, uneducated, and lonely. Thus, they paid
more for the social interaction than for the hope of winning big money. At the
time, I worked maybe 70 hours a week and though I always had a little pocket
money I was by no means "financially stable." What's more, the job in no way
contributed to my long-term financial well being. Luckily, this was my last
job before college, and since then I've been fortunate enough not only to find
a decent job, but a job that works to optimize customer-commercial
interactions - we try to help businesses actually figure out what their
customers want to buy and to help the customers buy it more easily - and at
the same time I have a roughly 20 hour work week that allows me to support my
family and to give us a fair amount of recreational time. Still, I know that I
am in the minority with my good fortune, and that makes me sad for others who
are less fortunate than I.

------
lmm
It bears saying that working hours have gone down, at least here in Europe.
But it took unions and laws to make it happen, and at every stage employers
have screamed blue murder - "oh noes, we couldn't possibly maintain
productivity with only a 60/50/40/35 hour work week". Of course, once the law
is introduced it turns out the company can remain just as productive.

I don't know what the figures are for the US, with its hatred of organized
labour and social legislation.

~~~
huherto
Reducing work hours may even have the benefit of creating jobs due to people
having more leisure time.

~~~
lmm
Possibly, but it could equally well go the other way - shorter hours means
smaller offices, less need for onsite canteens etc.

------
mathattack
It's hard for me to believe in grand conspiracies of a ruling class that is in
competition with itself. I'm more inclined to believe that bullshit jobs exist
because there is bullshit work to be done, and more of it piles on when there
isn't a market incentive pushing the bullshit out.

------
cbenkendorf
Where do I start with this half-baked article?

1) I've been through layoffs that disproportionately hit "paper-pushers"

2) Many of the "paper-pusher" jobs are extremely useful to society (e.g.,
actuaries), while the "manual" jobs may not be (e.g., why do we really need
dock workers? Can't technology eventually replace them all in the future?)

Now economic usefulness is definitely not linked with personal satisfaction /
some altruistic notion of "societal value".

At the end of the day, economic usefulness seems to always win out, because it
takes money to do most anything, and generally money goes to the places with
the highest potential economic ROI.

Insurance companies hire actuaries to help them manage their risk, while
record labels aren't signing a bunch of unknown bands to ensure we have enough
jazz musicians around.

------
pge
In addition to the factors described in the article, in the United States
there is an additional and very real incentive to work "bullshit jobs" and
that is that health insurance is tied to employment (far less expensive when
purchase through or by your employer). Unexpected healthcare costs are one of
the leading causes of personal bankruptcy, so this creates an unnecessary
incentive to have a job.

~~~
fab13n
Sorry if this question sounds dumb to US people, but wasn't "obamacare"
supposed to fix exactly that?

~~~
cliffu
Well at least you don't think it was supposed to create death panels :) it was
indeed supposed to make healthcare affordable and force insurers to cover
everyone, but it also makes health insurance mandatory. There's subsidies for
people that cannot afford it, but it's still potentially more of a financial
burden to lower income earners than a Socialist-style healthcare system. The
US has basically the worst cost:success ratio of anywhere and the insurance
rates reflect that.

------
chernevik
Reading economic discussions on this board is like reading Congressional
debates of SOPA.

------
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.

~~~
fab13n
> _That 's the result when the BS job class fully decides who does "menial
> tasks"_

Because there's a confusion between the need to dis-incentivise BS work hours
(as pointed elsewhere, it's more about BS hours than BS jobs, few jobs are 0%
or 100% BS), and the need for a bureaucratic body determining what is BS and
what isn't. The former is sorely needed, the latter would quickly turn into a
disaster, as illustrated by Adams and many real-life regulation bodies.

The difference between the two is the same as between natural selection and
eugenics: the later always fails because you can't effectively prevent metrics
from being gamed.

------
protonfish
Well, if Parkinson's law is correct
[http://www.economist.com/node/14116121](http://www.economist.com/node/14116121)
and bureaucracies expand by 6% every year regardless of the amount of work,
more and more of us will end up with useless jobs.

~~~
pegas123
All the time reading this discussion I was thinking about Parkinson. What if
overgrown beaurocracies created a system that protects their existence? Self
organized megabeurocratic society?

Another thought: the resistance to any corporate software that would
considerably increase efficiency is explained by selfpreservation of the
system.

------
ap22213
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 we really need? How many ORMs and MVC
frameworks? How many template engines? Do we really need to port all of those
libraries to yet another platform?

It seems its socially more acceptable to chase the incremental improvements
(or illusory improvements) than to chase those things that have high risk of
failure.

Let's say you're a musician. Would you rather spend your life working on a
entirely new genre of music that ends up never catching on? Or, would you
rather pursue the path of getting signed to a major label by churning out
rehashes of previous hits? At least the second path gives some opportunity to
pay the bills while still doing something that resembles what you love.

As a society we need a better way of 'paying' people to explore, experiment
and invent. We need better ways to capture the multitudes of failures and re-
incorporate them. I think this used to be the realm of the academic, but it
seems that the academic institution has now become just a hand of the
corporate machine.

~~~
alanctgardner2
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.

~~~
ap22213
I could probably make a list of things, but they'd be specific to my
particular needs. Generally, each week, I think of one or two services or
products that I wish I had.

At this very moment, I wish I had a service that would crawl the web and
extract recipes and save them in a standard format with standardized
ingredients, units of measure, equipment, and procedures. But, that's just me.

------
shaydoc
I wrote this song as a response to a bullshit job I was doing for a period of
time, thankfully I got my ass out because it drove me to write such
thoughts....

Title: The Ballad of a 30 something Office Worker

[https://soundcloud.com/swampscott/the-ballad-
of-a-30-somethi...](https://soundcloud.com/swampscott/the-ballad-
of-a-30-something-office-worker?in=swampscott/sets/streams-of-consciousness-
ep)

Yeah, I was in an environment (as a result of consulting) that sucked the very
life from my creative nature...

------
retube
On the phenomenon of bullshit articles....

His thesis is the ideology of someone young and niave. I can assure you that
no company employs anyone unless they have to, and/or they see a return on
their investment (ie payroll) in that person.

He may think a corporate law job is "bullshit" but I imagine that the law
firm's clients value and rely on the collective work that this person and his
colleagues are doing.

~~~
icedchai
You obviously never worked at a startup company during the dot-com boom.

------
ombro
How many of those pointless, time wasting bullshit jobs are directly linked to
the gross expansion of government in the 20th century? Finance, law, health
care, education... almost all of the jobs he complains about are built around
the requirements of bureaucracies and laws, and the exploitation thereof.

~~~
quadrangle
ok, I'll bite. Interesting hypothesis. What's the control? Given that
government exists and has a significant role in the system, how can we control
for that in order to identify whether it is cause, correlation, or mere
coincidence?

For the record, I think the issue with government isn't government per se but
the extreme levels of _regulatory capture_.

~~~
eru
You can try and compare different countries. Some have much bigger governments
than others. (E.g. Singapore's government lives of ~15% of GDP. European
governments are typically closer to ~50% of GDP.)

~~~
quadrangle
Holy moly, you could not pick a worse control comparison than a city-state
financial center when trying to discuss economics of large diverse countries.

------
adventured
"It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake
of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In
capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen"

Which is fitting, as America hasn't been a Capitalist nation in nearly a
century.

------
Attocs
What I find bizarre about this is that where I live, India, this seems more
prevalent than anywhere else I have traveled in the world. Its as if the
vestiges of British bureaucracy have left behind a middle class with such a
sense of entitlement that they seem to have no problem with the obvious fact
that their job is meaningless.

Apparently the official policy is that government employees cannot be fired so
are simply given something, anything, to do until they retire - don't quote me
on this.

The strange thing is that you have a non-english speaking, poorer, class
beneath this (of around 600 million people) that simply MUST make an economic
contribution in order to survive because no one will pay them anything unless
their economic contribution is undeniable.....

~~~
RougeFemme
It's not just government employees. . .this also happens in private industry.
. .especially in those companies that provide services to the government and
have cost-plus contracts with the government.

~~~
Attocs
I know what you mean, have seen the same thing - I just wonder if it is a
culture that started in govt? It surprises me for a country that is supposedly
struggling to gather the resources to meet the needs of its less fortunate
people that there is obviously a mountain of resources being supplied to those
that are contributing very little economically but could actually contribute a
lot given the motivation/opportunity/incentive

~~~
RougeFemme
I've worked on both sides of the government/contractor line and my gut feel
says it's a culture that started in government, but I could be wrong,
obviously. But since there are policy-makers and politicians who believe that
one of the functions of government is to provide jobs, it makes sense that it
would start on the government side. There would be little to no incentive to
be more efficient since that would result in a loss of jobs. And then some of
those inefficient processes and workflows become embedded in the contracts and
so it goes.

~~~
Attocs
Government should provide jobs - so they simply pay people to do unproductive
jobs rather than removing some of the hurdles to new business starts, lowering
costs of compliance etc etc....gosh I love this country

------
fbeans
The site seems to be experiencing problems. Here is an archive:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130818200653/http://www.strikem...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130818200653/http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs/)

------
digikata
I haven't seen the terms come up in this discussion yet, but the concepts of
post-scarcity economy or abundance economy are relevant. This article is more
focused on the gap of why we aren't in a post-scarcity economy now, and I
think there is weight to the thought that we all work so much now because the
ingrained philosophy & assumptions of a old system that makes increasingly
less sense in the modern world.

On a pure technology basis, does the world have sufficient resources to feed
and house every living person? Or are the problems that prevent that economic,
political factors?

------
bulhitter
I find it cute that he thinks teaching is mostly not a bullshit job. apart
from the first 4 years it is as bullshit as any of his other examples. He just
fails to recognize that due to personal bias.

~~~
craigyk
Not as bullshit when you think of it as daycare that has allowed the two
parent working family to be possible. So while the parents may be off doing
"bullshit" reasonably well-paying work, the "real work" of raising the next
generation has been moved to teachers. The real reason "regular" people freak
out when teachers strike is because they think they can't afford not being
able to goto work.

------
dkrich
I think there is an inherent assumption at the heart of this logic that, when
questioned and revealed as false, causes the entire argument to fall apart.
The assumption is that because somebody believes that their job is "bullshit"
or pointless, that their own assessment is actually correct.

Usually when people I know moan about how useless they are and how boring and
pointless their jobs are, they are reflecting on inter-office politics, easier
methods that could and should be employed, and a host of solutions that could
render them useless. The only problem is that for whatever reason, those
solutions have not been pursued and somebody is willing to pay them for their
services.

It doesn't really matter whether you as the employee see the point in your job
if the person paying you sees the need. It's important to remember that when
you assume that your job could even be eliminated, you are making an
assumption without necessary data. After all, you were hired because a need
existed. In other words, I think people in many jobs underestimate their
actual economic value to society. Like it or not, most artists don't actually
contribute a whole lot of economic value. That is, they don't create wealth
for other people. Those who do are usually compensated accordingly.

------
LOSindignados
As a struggling musician this hits close to home. I've worked over a dozen
jobs in four states since leaving home at 18. I went into debt for college but
dropped out as my older friends reported back from the "real world" that the
promises of higher education were mostly empty. I camped out at Occupy
Portland to try to wrap my head around this propaganda-fueled global
enterprise. Thank you, David, for tirelessly speaking the truth.

------
rza
In a modern society, you will have complex systems where the individual worker
is so abstracted away from the concrete value that they will not be able to
see the immediate effect of their actions, but this does not make them
pointless. To an investment banker, all they see are numbers growing larger,
but that does take away from the fact that they're moving millions of dollars,
which invariably comes from somewhere.

This is not an issue of capitalism. If you work for someone else, then _by
definition_ , the motives for your work are not your own, thus you will often
fail to see the immediate point in your work past the description of your
company on Wikipedia.

Do truly pointless jobs exist? Sure, but the author sure seems to across as
simply listing jobs he doesn't understand as pointless. Perhaps his musician
friend could have fared better if he had a better 'PR researcher' to publicize
his work. Until we think of a system where we do not work for capital, our
lives _will_ revolve around creating capital to sustain ourselves, making it
hard for all 7 billion people on Earth to derive meaning from it.

------
est
Quote from steve jobs:

> So the people who make the company more successful are the sales and
> marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the ‘product
> people’ get run out of the decision-making forums. The companies forget how
> to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that
> brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running
> these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product.
> They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good
> idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in
> their hearts about wanting to help the costumers.”

> .... companies get confused. When they start getting bigger, they want to
> replicate their initial success. And a lot of them think, ‘Well, somehow,
> there’s some magic in the process of how that success was created.’ So they
> start to institutionalize process across the company. And before very long,
> people start to get confused that the process is the content. And that’s
> ultimately the downfall of IBM.

------
jotm
To make it simple, the jobs exist because people need money to trade for
things they need (including the vital food/shelter/health care). Since it's a
capitalistic world, nobody gets paid/given stuff for doing nothing, that's
considered parasitism. So the jobs exist, even though pointless, because the
people need and want them.

------
dhimes
For anybody who wants a lighter view of the subject, I recommend Stanley
Bing's book:

[http://www.amazon.com/100-Bullshit-Jobs-How-
Them/dp/00607348...](http://www.amazon.com/100-Bullshit-Jobs-How-
Them/dp/0060734809/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376923281&sr=1-1&keywords=100+bullshit+jobs)

------
kephra
> Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve
> collectively chosen the latter.

Those toys just create a high tech low life paradox. The problem is the iron
law of wages: "real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum
wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker."

This minimum is based on housing costs, health insurance, tax, and saving for
pensions. The main toy, a car, fuel, and car insurance, is often a requirement
for working, because of stupid zoning laws. The cost of food is nearly
negligible, compared to the above costs.

If you look at places that have high wages and low tax, then you can expect
high housing costs. So there will be always some days left end of the month,
when a typical family runs in danger of running out of money for food and the
like.

So regardless how much you work, the land lord or the bank in case of house
ownership, will eat the big part, forcing the average family to work 8 at
least hours.

~~~
iopq
So then if we eliminate government assistance for workers, the corporations
will be forced to pay them more? That means Walmart will be forced to pay
above minimal wage.

------
alexakarpov
Can't believe no one mentioned the best work on 'bullshit jobs' out there -
"Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. Back in 1952 he already guessed it all:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_\(novel\))

------
snowwrestler
I don't understand the alternative world that is being proposed. If all these
bullshit jobs could be magically eliminated, then most people would sit around
doing...what, exactly?

Eating pizza and playing videogames, maybe? But who's going to make the pizza
and video games?

~~~
iopq
Robots and Indian engineers.

------
beat
This is like a proper academic-language version of Bob Black's largely
superior text, _The Abolition of Work_ , which was posted here a few days ago
and promptly disappeared.

Google it. Read Bob Black's essay, which is shorter and more blunt than this
one.

------
btbuildem
"If 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call
“the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody
else"

From the entire article, this stuck out the most for me. It is such a simple
explanation.

------
kunle
We _ARE_ working essentially 15 hour weeks (or trending towards that). But
instead of each person working 15hour weeks, most people will just be
unemployed. The average will end up around 15 hours.

------
gdulli
> There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it
> say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand
> for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for
> specialists in corporate law?

It doesn't say much more than that a lawyer can only serve a small number of
people, but a musician can entertain millions at once. A less talented
musician, tens of millions.[1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/justinbieber](https://twitter.com/justinbieber)

------
Tzunamitom
First let me start by saying I am someone who has worked almost exclusively
doing a "bullshit job", in fact if there were a scale of bullshit jobs, I
think that Management Consulting would probably be placed at the apex of
bullshit.

I have felt the pain described, and was with the author right up until the
point where they started talking about the tube workers, which struck a nerve.
Tube drivers can bring the system to its knees because they are highly
unionised and can (and do) choose to strike en masse whenever they're not
happy with working conditions, salary, proposed changes etc. What is one of
their strongest oppositions? Automated tube driving systems. Systems that
would make the tube network cheaper to run, increase capacity, improve speed
and safety, and yes, make tube drivers redundant.

So here we are, and the TGWU (transport union) et al are basically ruining my
day-to-day commute to keep tube drivers in their cushy positions, maintaining
an inefficient situation that makes the tube drivers "indispensable". I'm
gonna call bullshit on that.

Now let's say that some miracle happens and somehow the TGWU racket is broken
and progress is allowed to happen. TfL (Transport for London) decide to
replace all of their train drivers (why the hell are humans driving trains in
the 21st century anyway???) with computerised systems. Who's gonna do that?
Who's gonna plan, design, build, test, implement and maintain such a massively
complex system? The tube drivers? Don't think so. I'll give you good odds that
you're going to be calling in the Management Consultants to do this. All of a
sudden my bullshit job isn't seeming like quite such bullshit when it is
saving the taxpayer millions of pounds each year and reducing your morning
commute by 20 minutes.

So here we come to the crux of the problem of this article. The yardstick by
which you've chosen to determine if a job is "worthwhile" is whether anyone
would notice if those workers disappeared. Given this definition, it is
unsurprising that those jobs that have a very direct reward will seem the most
worthwhile (i.e. nurse treats patient, patient feels better, patient happy,
sees value in nurse). This feels right because it fits in nicely with the
short-term worlds that most of us humans live in.

Unfortunately, the problem is not necessarily (or just) the bullshit jobs, but
our bullshit caveman short-term brains that haven't yet caught up to the 21st
century highly-optimised economy in which we live. As Dan Pink notes in Drive,
to be motivated, we humans need 3 things - autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Our
bullshit jobs are (for the most part) giving us autonomy and mastery more than
any grunt jobs since the Industrial Revolution began, but what is lacking is
purpose. We feel our jobs are bullshit precisely because they seem to lack
purpose. They seem to lack purpose because we are so many levels removed from
the output and effect of the things that we do.

I'll give you an example. I worked on a project that improved information
security standards at all of the petrol (gas) stations for an oil giant
worldwide. This project changed how things worked at 45,000 petrol (gas)
stations worldwide, and statistically speaking, likely saved quite a few
customers from card or identity fraud while refuelling their cars. Except I
have no idea if it did or not - I'll never meet these guys or hear their
stories, hell I barely left the office, and most of the things I did were in
Excel or PowerPoint.

So there's the problem. Did I make a difference? Yeah probably. Do I
emotionally feel like I made a difference? Nope. Not a bit. I was far too
detached from the outcome to feel that. Looks great on my CV (resume) though
for when I apply for my next bullshit job.

So to me, the answer isn't rushing out to quit our bullshit jobs and becoming
tube drivers, or building houses in developing countries, although we'd
probably be happier doing so. The answer is re-attaching the purpose element
to the highly-productive "bullshit" jobs that we do, and reprogramming our
caveman brains to realise that Excel really is mightier than the sword, and
that we can be of far more use to the world by adapting our highly-optimised
productivity systems to be more meaningful, rather than dismantling them and
returning to an enjoyable but unproductive primary-secondary economy.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I think this is a fantastic interpretation and hits some of the nails on the
head.

>The yardstick by which you've chosen to determine if a job is "worthwhile" is
whether anyone would notice if those workers disappeared.

This is how I judge mine and others' work on a normal basis. As a result, I
have always been jealous of those who are ultra-specified because they are the
literal choke points of production or whatever effort is happening.

Thinking about it more though, it would seem to me to make sense that people
should be fluid between capabilities. Much like you are instructed to
diversify your investment portfolio, perhaps you should be diversifying your
skill sets.

The trouble there is that you end up a jack of all trades and master of none.
This leaves folks like me in a gulch - and generally always dependent on a
subject matter expert to get things done in nearly any domain. On the flip
side I can move between domains fairly fluidly at a reasonable if not
sufficient level of competence to get the job done - making my core skill the
skill of persuasion (to hire people onto my teams etc...).

I don't know if there is an answer to this problem here but I think it might
be worth thinking about more.

Cheers!

------
squozzer
I think the author makes a good point, to which I would add a couple of
thoughts -

1) The danger of too much free time isn't because all of that brainpower would
somehow figure out how to topple the system or at least replace its' current
occupants -- but would be spent licentiously. Exhibit A - Jerry Springer show
guests.

2) The choice of more trinkets over less work has a very strong sponsor --
business itself.

------
mesozoic
Stopped reading when I realized the author was making broad sweeping
generalizations about things he didn't understand like capitalism. He claims
that firms won't employ unnecessary workers, when the truth is firms will
employ as many workers as they deem profitable to employ. A misunderstanding
that would go on to explain every one of his other "mysterious" claims.

~~~
gray-shine
> Stopped reading when...

So you're explicitly stating that you're basing this comment on only a partial
understanding of the article?

You wish to state that you're ignorant of a number of the points made in it.
Okay. Thanks for the warning, I'll disregard any point you're trying to make.

------
shortstuffsushi
Reading... reading.. oh... it's the Republican's fault; they caused this...

Eventual point invalidated.

I think I've commented on HN before -- I come for tech news, which is where I
could see this going. Suddenly it turned into a political discussion, and all
hope for some useful resolution immediately gets lost. I really wish it would
have turned out differently.

------
tragomaskhalos
This resonates particularly wrt what has happened in the UK to the health,
electricity and rail sectors, where privatisation, or movement thereto, has
created a vast class of white collar jobs whose only function is to administer
the labyrinth of utterly pointless complexity that imposing a market model
onto these sectors has introduced.

------
kevinthew
This article reads like conspiracy-laden bullshit. Not surprisingly, it came
from a professor -- ego-driven, vanity jobs for rich white men. Maybe he's
projecting based on his probable lifetime experience in the fake-world rat
race that is the university syste, just maybe.

------
kenster07
Why do we continue to work 40+ hour weeks when 15 would suffice? The answer is
quite simple -- over the past tens of thousands of years, the primary survival
pressure on our gene pool has been scarcity, and thus we are genetically --
not socially -- programmed to want to work.

~~~
iopq
I spent several years working 40 hours a month. I am not programmed to work. I
hate working 40 hours a week.

-written from work

------
jacob019
Thought provoking article, we all want a better world. Seems arrogant to think
that most people believe their jobs are meaningless, I get no sense of that
here in Indianapolis. The last sentence really turned me off, "We’re an anti-
profit, radical publisher."

------
arh68
> _Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time
> working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at_

So, as a young person who might end up in a bullshit job, what are the best
ways to enjoy it? It's not _all bad_ , after all

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Although Einstein worked in the patent office, didn't he?

Some jobs don't matter and on top of that freedom is hard to manage, but the
idea that we're all doomed sounds like something an anthropologist would imply
in 400-1000 words.

------
wuliwong
Today's economy produces goods far more efficiently than ever before. Although
it might seem like there are lots of unproductive workers, the average worker
today vs. the average worker in 1930 is far more productive.

------
keithpeter
Did anyone else have a strong feeling of Douglas Adams while reading the OA?

------
geophile
Along these lines:
[https://sites.google.com/site/rulezerorules/](https://sites.google.com/site/rulezerorules/)

------
javert
The LSE should be deeply embarassed that this person is one of their
professors. His assumptions are incredibly juvenile.

------
circa
For a quick second i thought this was a review of the new movie

------
beefxq
Gotta keep the people busy so they don't focus on the real issues.

------
cLeEOGPw
Competition.

This article is wrong. I'd go even as far as say he is a failure as an
anthropology professor. The answer is as simple as this - competition.

Survival is not enough for living organisms - they must also reproduce. Every
organism tries to maximize it's own rate reproduction and minimize others. Any
other behavior will drive it to extinction.

To talk in human terms, those who control technology and machines that could
provide 15 h work week, have no interest in doing so. It's the opposite. They
don't need others neither to survive, nor to breed. You need them. You must
prove them that you are worthy of him giving money to you.

Besides, the bigger the population, the bigger the competition. It is seen
very clearly in big cities like New York. There's even saying "If you can make
it in NY, you can make it anywhere", because the competition makes it harder
and harder as the human count increases.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
So in your estimation, 'bullshit jobs' exist because the majority of people
need to battle it out amongst each other in order to be rewarded by the elite
controllers of 'technology and machines'?

I think you have unwittingly restated the author's thesis.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Author simply stated this and made it look like it's a bad thing, while I
explained why it is as it is and why it is not bad.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
It's clear that most of the population certainly _thinks_ it's bad.

------
burgerz
Part of the explanation lies in the hiring process. At the company I work we
have a ton of useless people - 'office manager', 'coordinator' and other
titles that don't mean anything - which make you wonder how they got the job
in the first place. Usually answer is they are hired because they know someone
at the company, and it's so easy to get somebody who has no skills to fit into
paper pushing jobs. Of course there isn't anybody to oversee all this. The
chief executives aren't checking if some guy in the building is really needed
there. At every step down from CEO somebody is getting hired by someone
because they need a job.

------
guard-of-terra
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.

~~~
vanderZwan
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 generation until you run out of frozen sperm. Hey presto,
biological diversity for cheap.

Of course, if anything this shows the problems with optimising for one
variable at the expense of ignoring of all others.

~~~
zanny
By the threshold of technology you mention (intersteller travel to habitable
planets) you would certainly have the technology to grow and maintain an
artificial womb. So you just stock the ship with self-replicating printing
machines that can deploy artificial wombs, and have millions of frozen egg /
sperm to populate them.

Really though, at that point, you might as well send the learning AI robots
instead. Fleshy emotional meat bags with difficult to replicate reproduction
are a liability.

~~~
guard-of-terra
The whole idea is to get a functioning human civilization in another untainted
place.

AI robots surely can't do that. It's not about research, it's colonization.

------
cLeEOGPw
This is basically cooperation vs. competition, not much more to be said.

