
In Europe, Fake Jobs Can Have Real Benefits - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html
======
sakri
How they had it wrong. Instead of robotics liberating mankind from bullshit
jobs, we create imaginary bullshit jobs for those who aren't suffering from
one. Amazing. Pretty soon people will pay for these oppportunities.

~~~
stephengillie
Your perception is that a job is somewhere you go to be productive, work, and
get things done. For a lot of people, a job is - in Starbucks' marketing
phrasing, a "second space" \- a different physical space to occupy, and
different people to interact with. A way to occupy their day.

I've said it before: a large part of the reason I'm in IT, and not automotive
mechanics or environmental conservationism, is because I can spend my days in
temperature-controlled office buildings, instead of on the cold and muddy
ground or cold and damp forests.

Some people grudgingly leave their warm beds to stay in an office building in
exchange for currency they can use for food and shelter. I feel as though this
is a type of modern autarky, and it gets shamed by those of us whose dreams
and ambitions involve building useful or cool things with available
technology.

~~~
sakri
My perception is that a good job is one that doesn't feel like a job. I
remember a French vineyard owner say : "I want to teach my children how to run
this place, because then they never have to work again".

~~~
stephengillie
Yes, what denotes a good job lay in the eye of the beholder!

------
xefer
The reminds me of the dryly satiric, darkly comic Magnus Mills novel "The
Scheme for Full Employment"[1]. It concerns "UniVan" drivers delivering loads
to different UniVan depots around the country. It eventually becomes apparent
that the only thing they are delivering are UniVan parts and the only work
being done at the depots is maintenance and repair of the UniVans themselves.
The entire enterprise had been established to provide busy work.

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

~~~
bohm
Self-Driving cars will obsolete Univan Drivers

~~~
CPLX
The HN self-driving car fetish has apparently metastasized out of its usual
Uber and Google threads and has started infecting and spawning here in totally
unrelated topics apparently.

~~~
moron4hire
Dude, it's on-topic. The conversation is about people losing jobs because of
automation. The comment was that even the fake jobs will probably get
automated away.

------
aluhut
This is horrible and scary. I could imagine it would be possible to establish
such a business without telling the people that it's fake...

Why not simply give the people the money and use the space to help them
creating new ideas? Or hell....get another child and raise it properly. Or...I
don't know there is a whole universe of better solutions then this. This is
the nightmare version of the 60s/70s dream of less work through robots.

~~~
rsynnott
> I could imagine it would be possible to establish such a business without
> telling the people that it's fake...

I think they might notice that they weren't being paid... Bear in mind, this
is not actually a fake job, despite the title; it's a rather contrived
training scheme (and a reasonably successful one; as noted in the article most
people who do this do get a proper job after).

~~~
maratd
The frightening part really is that no _actual_ profitable business wants
their labor for _free_. So they must provide their labor for _free_ to a
_fake_ business.

That's insane. That means in all probability, their labor is a negative for
any employer even if it comes at no cost.

My guess is that this is a result of idiotic labor laws and tax practices.

~~~
rsynnott
> The frightening part really is that no actual profitable business wants
> their labor for free.

Accepting labour for free is illegal basically everywhere in the developed
world, and for good reason.

~~~
redblacktree
How do you account for unpaid interns?

~~~
dragonwriter
Unpaid interns are often illegal if they are doing productive work for the
benefit of a for-profit firm. For instance, in the US, according to the
Department of Labor [0], for an "internship" not to be an employment
relationship subject to the FLSA, including minimum wage provisions, one of
the criteria that must be met is: "The employer that provides the training
derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on
occasion its operations may actually be impeded"

[0]
[http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm)

------
RyanZAG
Would it be legal for these people to start a real business in that office?
Even if it's something like knitting a jersey and then spending the next week
trying to sell it for 10 bucks, at least they'd be 10 bucks richer than
spending all that effort doing nothing.

It's not like they don't have time or resources to run a business - they're
running a fake one.

~~~
weddpros
I'm ashamed I'm french... How can one think "let's start a fake company"
instead of asking real companies to train these people for real? and for
free...

How is it OK to work for a fake company, but it's bad to work for free for a
real company and gain some real experience... How come?

~~~
seszett
> _How is it OK to work for a fake company, but it 's bad to work for free for
> a real company and gain some real experience... How come?_

These people are unemployed, right?

What if you let a company hire them for free? Let's see...

    
    
      1. company has one paid secretary
      2. company hires free secretary
      3. company lays off paid secretary because the free one is cheaper
      4. previously paid secretary is now unemployed
      5. previously paid secretary gets hired for free by company 2
    

You _KNOW_ this is what would happen. Don't even start about how companies
autoregulate themselves and how the market will punish bad behaviour and how
employees can simply choose to work for a better one or whatever. These things
are wishful thinking.

~~~
stephengillie
This is what happens with unpaid internships?

~~~
seszett
In a limited way, yes, that's why unpaid internships are now limited to two
months as far as I know.

Even then low paid, longer, internships still do displace legitimate jobs to
some extent.

As I said, _good manners_ and _sound business practice_ are wishful thinking
at best.

~~~
weddpros
Limiting this kind of program to startups could help. Limiting to certain jobs
and job levels too (I guess the fake companies don't "employ" PhDs in compsci
either).

It's not my job to make it work or make it right. But tossing the idea
altogether is rather radical.

------
danbruc
Every time a come across the topic of unemployment I wonder what the
fundamental thing is that is broken in an economy with a high unemployment
rate. I mean unemployed people mean unused workforce and it seems that there
should be a strong desire to make use of unused workforce. So what is it?

Are the unemployed not needed? Because we reached a level of efficiency and
automation so that we no longer need all the available workforce to satisfy
all the demand, i.e. is it a work distribution problem? This seems not to be
the case because there are not enough teachers, the infrastructure is in bad
shape, there are heavily overworked people and so on.

Do they have the wrong profession, one where no additional workforce is
required? Is it a latency effect, i.e. available workforce in one sector lacks
behind needed workforce while it is the opposite in another sector? Are they
obsoleted by cheaper labor abroad?

Is it some kind of local extremum or vicious cycle in which the economy got
stuck, e.g. unemployed would consume stuff if they were employed and earned
money but because they are not and they do not there is less demand and in
consequence the jobs to employ them are not created? This seems easily solved
with loans breaking the cycle by creating the demand first.

~~~
slvr77
Healthy economies will always displace workers through creative destruction.
For example, the internal combustion engine decreased demand for horse whip
makers but increased demand for oil workers. While few horse whip makers could
make the transition to oil workers a healthy economy can usually adjust.

Structural problems in economies can also create sub-optimal use of labor. For
example, in a debt based economy debt and savings are just call options on
future labor (production). In a healthy economy the concept of debt and
savings is used as a way for people to buy and sell call options on their
labor. For example a student may choose to sell a call option on his labor by
taking on debt for an education with the expectation that his labor will be
more valuable in the future. Somebody in middle age may chose to buy a call
option on the students labor with the expectation that the value of his labor
will decline in his old age.

However in a pathological economy structural problems can create sub-optimal
use of labor. For example, if deflation becomes entrenched then all rational
actors may chose to defer consumption into the future where labor will be
cheaper. This can create structural unemployment like it did in the 1930's.
Other examples where the available call option on future labor is smaller than
the demand. For example the demand from Baby Boomers looking at retirement,
demand from the 1% to maintain their relative wealth, corporate coffers that
can't be repatriated due to tax minimization strategies and sovereign wealth
funds may exceed the productive capacity of the future labor pool.

In that case the economic system may be 'signaling' to the rising generation
to defer their labor but in a way that exceeds their actual capacity to defer
the labor creating sub-optimal use of labor.

------
gexla
I'm pretty sure I used to do something like this as a kid. And after the fake
job, let's all meet up for a tea party in the back room. If you aren't into
tea, then feel free to grab yourself a fake cold one from the fake fridge.

If you are going to fake something like this, at least you could be a fake
lawyer (you can't handle the truth,) doctor (whoo, that might be scandalous!)
or astronaut.

Personally, I could come up with a really long list of things to spend my time
on that would be helpful to society and potentially land me a job (or make me
money.) Just allowing people access to the basics of putting something
together (internet connected terminals) might be more worthwhile. Too bad
these places can't teach people how to think outside the system in creating
roles in society.

------
garagemc2
Wow it's like a whole another world. I really like the idea - much more
effective form of training than traditional types. Everyone knows about the
scarring effects of long term unemployment (if not
[http://bit.ly/1Qf8ue3](http://bit.ly/1Qf8ue3)). This is a good way to combat
that scarring.

~~~
benoitg
Seconded, there's a discouraging element to being unemployed. Besides the
training angle, this helps people to stay confident and even improve their
skills.

I'm wondering how this could be translated to software development. Setting up
an IT department in these virtual companies would be a very good idea. Going
further, you could even sell the software and kickstart real software
businesses in the B2B space, this could be a tremendous opportunity to help
software developers to learn about marketing, sales, accounting, etc.

------
jqm
Sounds like an interesting simulation. I would suggest they throw in some
politically backstabbing co-workers, 20 hours a week of useless meetings and a
psychopathic self serving boss to make it more lifelike.

------
neil1
It seems like it would be a much more productive use of human capital to
actually do the work below cost so something is actually being accomplished.

~~~
rsynnott
At that point, the state (who is ultimately paying for most of this) would be
competing unfairly with private companies (in particular, it would not be
paying minimum wage). This is probably not a good idea.

In Ireland we have a scheme where an unemployed person can get an extra 50
euro a week on their unemployment benefit, in return for which they do an
internship for a private company, which must at least in principle be
training-oriented. In practice, this can cause a problem where these
'internships' displace the need to create real jobs.

~~~
pjc50
The UK has a nastier version of this: you can be compelled to do unpaid work
or lose your unemployment benefit. Some of this is displacing real jobs in the
low-paid retail sector. Some of it results in people standing around in hi-viz
jackets doing nothing for 35 hours a week.
[https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/workfare-
force...](https://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/workfare-forced-
labour-and-the-new-business-and-community-wardens/)

The (rather idealised sounding, by the NYT's description) European version is
about keeping people engaged with society by giving them things that feel like
work so they have colleagues, a familiarity with working practices, and a
feeling of usefulness.

The British version seems to regard sitting at home while unemployed as an
outrageous privilege; drudgery must be imposed on those people otherwise
they're better off than the 'hardworking' people who must suffer commuting and
not seeing their family. A previous version was declared illegal, so the
government enacted "emergency" legislation to retroactively legalise it.
[http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/03/19/ids-emergency-
jobs...](http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/03/19/ids-emergency-jobseeker-
law-sparks-civil-liberties-outrage)

~~~
vixen99
It's a free lunch for all is it? Someone pays (if not the descendants yet to
be conceived who will be making interest payments on current debts) so it's
certainly drudgery on the folk who have to pay for those sitting at home.

~~~
pjc50
I suppose that's how you keep the chain of economic coercion through threat of
starvation going.

"We are giving you this free lunch, because we're uncomfortable with people
starving to death in a first world country, but in order to maintain the
strict ranking that citizens are only allowed happiness in proportion to their
income, we're going to inflict useless activity on you. Don't have a nice day
or it'll come out of your benefits."

(Current debt is being issued at 0.5% interest rates, a historic low)

~~~
areyousure
Though you are correct that interest rates are very low, I believe it is
disingenuous to quote the rate of a gilt with a maturity under 10 years. (You
have mentioned the 2-year gilt.)

------
kokey
I think this is a bit extreme on the fake side, but I have found somewhere
between that and a real job that works quite well, while not being fake. There
are agencies that will make you come in like a 9-5 job, help you write your
CV, help you communicate with recruitment agencies and give you interview
training, will effectively teach you about the recruitment industry and the
sales industry since you will be selling yourself. You will do this with other
people in an office who are either looking for work like you are, or who are
between temporary or contract jobs, so it also offers an opportunity to
network.

~~~
jarek
> There are agencies that will make you come in like a 9-5 job, help you write
> your CV, help you communicate with recruitment agencies and give you
> interview training, will effectively teach you about the recruitment
> industry and the sales industry since you will be selling yourself.

This is an extension - teaches you what to do once you actually get the job.
As far as training for skills required in modern office goes, it sounds pretty
good actually. We don't need superheroes to answer email.

------
gls2ro
There might be a solution to do real work and not disrupt other people jobs
(or lower the salaries) and this might be to do Volunteering. I'm thinking
everybody wins in this case: the worker who is actually doing work and
contributing to something, the NGO/non-profit who always needs more labor and
(maybe) the society in general.

------
pingou
"The success rate of the training centers is high. About 60 to 70 percent of
those who go through France’s practice firms find jobs, often administrative
positions, Mr. Troton said. But in a reflection of the shifting nature of the
European workplace, most are low-paying and last for short stints, sometimes
just three to six months."

Doesn't seem that high a success to me. I'm sure it helps, but we don't know
how much it cost, and it doesn't seem really scalable. It would be interesting
to know how it compares to other training methods.

~~~
LaurensBER
It might not be the most effective way but it also gives people a reason to
get up in the morning and some structure and social interaction in their
lives. I think that's a very important benefit that's often overlooked.

This is as much about making unemployment bearable than it is about training
people.

------
thadd
This article makes me feel like Yossarian

------
deepnet
[https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_te...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learn)

Jobocalypse

------
dataker
I wonder if rate of governments barricading SMBs is a good metric for tyranny.

------
fab13n
As developers obsessed, sometimes unhealthily so, with optimization, this
strikes us as an inadmissible waste.

However, we need to remember that a lot of what we perceive as "legitimate"
jobs are also bullshit jobs. Even if they're not exactly zero-sum games, many
jobs are more about diverting money from company A to company B than creating
net wealth. Take marketing and advertising departments operating on inelastic
markets: every dollar taken to Adidas by a Nike marketing guy is cancelled by
a dollar taken to Nike by an Adidas marketing guy. And even if they can
convince you to buy more shoes, every additional dollar spent on shoes is one
less dollar for your video game budget.

We treat salaried work as an intrinsically good thing rather than a necessary
evil: that's the fundamental fallacy that makes the mock companies in this
article morally justifiable in many people's eyes. To sustain that "work
ethics", we pretend that people wouldn't do anything socially useful if they
didn't get a salary in exchange, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary
(stay-at-home parents, most retired people in sound health and financial
situations, philanthropists... People only work for salary, because they're in
a vital need for a salary. And as every decent manager knows, extrinsic
motivation kills intrinsic motivation)

Central planning won't solve the problem of inefficient exploitation of human
workforce, as demonstrated by communist countries. But the situation is very
comparable to an arms race, and there already are many multilateral agreements
to limit this arms race, some legal (can't hire a hitman to dispatch your
competitors' executives), some informal (no-employee-poaching agreements), and
some illegal and secret (cartels). If we were to admit that wealth creation,
not salaried occupation, is what we should thrive for, multilateral agreements
to limit unproductive work could be set up. The net result would be orders of
magnitude bigger that thwarting the couple of ridiculous initiatives, such as
illustrated here, to conceal unemployment and unemployability.

Here are some examples of wealth-creation-promoting reforms, which don't
require central planning: punitive taxes on advertizing; mandatory long
warranties on product to tackle obsolescence; limiting lottery-like legal
actions by banning "no gain=no fee" lawyer hiring, and by making it standard
for the loser to pay the winner's fees (that would probably kill patent
trolls).

A key reason why we focus on preserving jobs rather than maximizing job
efficiency is that we use salary both as a way to create wealth through work,
and to distribute it through wages. It becomes a poorer and poorer way to
generate wealth on average, but as long as we don't set up better
complementary ways to distribute wealth, we're doomed to create more and more
bullshit, pointless jobs. Capitalism reaches its limits later than communism,
but when it does, it also becomes a wildly inefficient converter of human
work.

Another reason is that the jobs which give power are often those which control
and displace wealth flow, rather than those creating net wealth. What's the
lawyer/engineer ratio in Senate and Congress? You can't expect those in power
to destroy their power tools, if they can help it.

------
yummyfajitas
I don't understand why they don't simply do real work. Are all possible useful
services in France already provided? Why not simply have these unemployed
people work for the government, instead of hiring overpriced union workers?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Because there is no real work? If there was a pet webshop like the one
described in the article, these people could go there and work there. There
isn't though, else they'd be working. Simple economics, really. As for working
for the government, that depends on whether the government has any jobs that
suit these people.

If you're suggesting they could work for their unemployment benefits... that's
a legal problem, because then they'd technically not be unemployed anymore and
would cost the government / tax payer more money. Although they'd be tax
payers themselves again via income tax. It gets very confusing really.

TL;DR: One does not simply create jobs.

~~~
nhaehnle
_Because there is no real work?_

Really? I suspect that our eyes are merely blinded to positive things that can
be done but that currently nobody is willing to pay for.

In ageing societies, think about services for the elderly. The elderly
benefit, and if the job is designed humanely (i.e. _not_ with the aim of
extracting as much profit as possible at any cost), it could also benefit the
one who does it.

What about making the cities we live in more beautiful by creating new
municipal gardens and tending to them?

These are just two examples. Once you look outside the usual economic spheres
you can certainly find more. Somehow, I have the feeling that it would be more
valuable to society if the people working fake jobs as described in the
article actually did something useful instead. That could still provide
training as a side effect.

~~~
FeepingCreature
Money is exactly the measure of "value to society". If nobody pays these
people to do this, then it literally means that it's not worth a living wage
to do it. You may like municipal gardens, but how many dollars per month do
you like them? Run a Kickstarter or Patreon to start a charity, go out and
advertise that garden project, or contact your elected representatives to pay
for that garden in exchange for a modest tax increase.

The capitalist system is set up to measure value in a common unit called
"money". If you value something, paying for it is exactly how you express
this. So put your money where your mouth is. Cash is the unit of caring.

~~~
nhaehnle
Your argument is not really an argument, but merely the statement of the
assumption that value (in general) and monetary value are the same thing.

It is hard to define value in general (and I cannot do it) simply because
unlike money, there is no clear way of numerical measurement. It may be
tempting for technical folks to believe otherwise, but things can matter very
much even when they are not easily measured numerically.

So why is your assumption incorrect? The fact that different market
institutions lead to different outcomes given the same underlying preferences
of individuals is really enough to show this. If you can keep the same set of
people with the same set of beliefs and preferences, but obtain different
prices merely by changing the market institutions, then this means that the
prices do not accurately reflect the underlying value (in the general sense).

Yes, money is an _extremely_ useful proxy for "value to society", but it is
only a _proxy_.

Consider this thought experiment. Suppose that tomorrow, your city council
decides to put more money into work making the city more beautiful. More
people will be paid to tend to municipal gardens, among other things.

Does this mean that suddenly, society values a beautiful city more? Did
preferences change over night? I would argue that it is the other way around:
Society has always valued a beautiful city more, but the existing market
institutions did not translate this valuation into monetary terms. People
noticed the discrepancy and effected political change to bring the money in
line with underlying valuations.

The belief that "the market" is this objective institution is very widely
spread today. This is unfortunate, because "the market" is not a fixed thing.
Market institutions can be changed via politics, and those in power use that
fact for their own benefit. I would be so happy if more people recognized that
the assumption you stated is really part of an ideology and should be treated
as such: potentially useful at times, but not a universal truth.

~~~
icebraining
_Consider this thought experiment. Suppose that tomorrow, your city council
decides to put more money into work making the city more beautiful. More
people will be paid to tend to municipal gardens, among other things. Does
this mean that suddenly, society values a beautiful city more? Did preferences
change over night? (...) People noticed the discrepancy and effected political
change to bring the money in line with underlying valuations._

My city council has existed for decades, as have the gardens. Why did people
chose this particular moment to effect political change? I think that clearly
indicates that preferences did change.

That said, I do agree that monetary value is just one possible measure of
value.

------
dazmcg
Wasn't this the plot of the matrix or something?

------
jokoon
as a french, this cracked me up.

I've been unemployed for a long time, and I'd love to try this.

------
WordSkill
Europe is broken.

------
liberte82
Workfarce

------
aselzer
Fake jobs might be necessary but there is a danger of making them half fake
jobs that get things done slowly and end up as a cost to society and the
people supporting the workers.

An example of that I've observed are construction workers maintaining railway
infrastructure. There are probably a few times as many people working there as
needed. When walking by you'll see them standing around talking, or maybe one
of them is sitting in an excavator and four are staring at him. Meanwhile
people have to take the replacement buses for two months. Most of the work
only gets done in the first and last week, largely using machines, while
everyone relying on the train connection is at risk of delays or has to spend
extra time on the journey.

~~~
mattmanser
This is so incredibly ignorant and judgemental I don't know where to start.

[http://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-always-look-like-
constructi...](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-always-look-like-construction-
workers-are-standing-around-doing-nothing)

~~~
themartorana
Yes and no. While there is legitimate "standing around" as your link makes
clear, and safety _should_ be paramount, most building projects from where I
am - Philadelphia - take twice as long as the Empire State Building at 1/4 the
size. We have labor unions that contribute to the problem, but you can't
imagine how slowly work goes around here.

I'm aware that OSHA rules are different, and we have a higher standard of
safety now than we did, but so too have materials and tools and building
methods improved.

~~~
saalweachter
The Empire State Building was completed in one year and 45 days ... with 7
million man-hours of labor. Given 2000 man-hours in a work-year, that is 3100
people employed full time building the Empire State Building.

I would be surprised if the buildings you're thinking of in Philadelphia are
employing even a tenth of that full time, continuously.

