The Modern Phenomenon of Nonsense Jobs

[Highlord Laan]

2. Companies should never be allowed to exploit their workers. The whole 2.50 + tips falls under this.

No it doesn't, because if the amount of tips you receive doesn't put you at or over the minimum wage, the employer is required to make up the difference. If they don't, they're breaking the law.

And if you try bringing it to light, they make up a reason to fire your ass. This is america, Rogue. You're not allowed to be anything other than a wage slave.

[Simon_Jester]

@simon and GMJ
You are trying to write in a narrative where my criticism of the article would be some kind of implicit approval of the status quoe or reverse of what the proffessor is tryin to argue.

Uh, no, I'm not. You're wrong. My point is that when we combine multiple true things about what you've said, the result is a conclusion pretty similar to the author's. Namely, that our society is wasting large amounts of people's time and energy on jobs that either don't really need doing, or only "need" doing because we're trying to artificially stir up demand for various goods and services.

[Also, you might want to check your spelling]

I think you're really missing that the big thing the article's talking about isn't so much "people should work less" so much as "why is there such an expectation of long work being a necessary part of everyone's life if it's not necessarily required".

Nope. The article is making a lot of false assumptions based on flawed reasoning.

Why we are experiencing an increase in people feeling that their work isn't contributing isn't that there suddenly are more jobs like that, instead it is that we as a society have it better and better and that we therefore demand more and more of life and thus also from our work. So the professor got it backwards. That more and more people are unsatisfied with their work is a good thing - it means that we have it better than before.
Maslow etc.

I disagree. We have the datum "more people feel that their need for self-actualization is unsatisfied."

That doesn't mean that they are only now conscious of the desire to feel self-actualization. It could just as easily mean that... well, they have lost that feeling, which they had before. Or that their parents and older siblings had in the past.

And really, what's going on is more complicated than a simple "high-order needs not met." In large parts of the developed world, we're seeing an actual reversal of progress on mid-level needs: people feel less safe, loved, and self-confident than they would have ten or twenty years ago.

but I think the dynamics behind that trend are more complex than you imply.

huh? Me pointing out flaws in GMJ's argument equates to me saying things about complexity? Nah, I don't think so. Here is my original statement again: "there is no collective ruling class that have decided that free time is dangerous - that is tinfoil hat kind of stupid" towhich GMJ replied "Just that it's a system that benefits the ruling class and so is unconsciously favoured by it and thus helped perpetuated."

But I was replying to your statement that the elite ought to fear education, not free time. I disagree with that statement, even as a matter of theory.

The writer's argument is that there are more bullshit jobs nowadays based on people he meet who complain about their jobs being meaningless. That is flawed and stupid.

No, the writer's argument is based on something else. It is based on the fact that more and more people work in jobs that do not produce a concrete, self-evidently desirable result, where the negative impact of the job not getting done are obvious.

I am a teacher. I know what would happen if teachers all stopped teaching, and it is bad. I may think all sorts of negative things about my job, but I'm not going to worry that it's an inherently pointless activity, that it fails to contribute to society. A bricklayer, likewise, knows what would happen if bricks stopped getting laid- if buildings are no longer built. Again, it may be repetitive and exhausting, but it's not pointless, and no one would seriously claim that it is.

A marketing staffer or a lawyer whose job is to draft EULAs for software companies may not be able to tell themselves that their job has a real point to it... and those sectors of the economy, those subsectors of the service economy, are on the rise.

The individual people who complain about their jobs being meaningless are illustrations. You do understand the difference between

Consider- you have told me that having two competing sellers of soda who market aggressively expands the total market for soda. I actually believe you- though I'd never heard that before in my life.*. But the implication is that at least part of the increased standard of living, and desire for goods/services/whatever, which motivates us to work harder is artificially produced by marketing. In which case it is reasonable to argue that marketing is 'superfluous,' in that it serves mainly to stimulate an unnecessary appetite.

Ah, that is making the assumption that a consumer society somehow would be less able to provide for its citizens' needs than a non-consumer society...

What? That makes no sense, I don't understand. How do you go from "Simon thinks marketing creates unnecessary appetite" to "therefore, Simon must think consumer societies can't provide for citizens' needs?"

Suppose that the world consisted of corn farmers and pill-makers. ... But perhaps all that time and effort could be used in a more constructive way than just creating a disproportionate appetite for existing goods.

Too simplistic to make an interesting conversation, and see above.

...It's an obvious example. It's simple because I'm trying to make a point, to show the type of argument I'm trying to make. There are good grounds to criticize a society, when many of its people are busily employed in activities that are not desirable in and of themselves, and which directly profit no person. And when many people are busy trying to pump up artificial demand for goods, that is exactly what's going on.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

My pet theory on that: a lot of it has to do with the increasing use of electronics, particularly integrated circuits. In your father's time (and mine), things like engine timing were controlled mechanically and could be adjusted with a good set of wrenches. Brakes were pretty much just cable runs and shoes. Now the engine timing is all baked into one chip, there's another chip between the brake pedal and shoes to do things like antilock and antiskid, and so on. In most cases this made driving better- for example, as I understand it a lot of the improvements in gas mileage over the past 20 years is because ICs allow much finer and more consistent control over engine timing than in the past.

The problem with ICs from a do-it-yourselfers perspective are twofold. They're difficult to repair in the field, and in a lot of cases can't really be fixed at all- when a chip burns out it's probably because of a microscopic flaw, and there's nothing you can do short of getting a new chip. They're also expensive and specialized enough that you can't really keep a supply of backup chips around the house, because you don't know what will fail next and having an engine chip doesn't help if your braking chip packs it in. That in turn means that "minor" repairs now require ordering a part and waiting to get it in, so having a pro install it costs no more time and only a little more money. Not surprising which way people jump.

I often wish I'd grown up in a world where the "guts" of things were more accessible. I think that's some of what drew me to computers- can't exactly tinker with jalopies anymore.

This is very true, but only part of the story. The chips and sensors themselves cost very little to make, and they could be easy to replace if the cars weren't deliberately designed to require special tools or partial disassembly / lifting of the engine in order to access them. In the old days, people would have refused to buy a vehicle designed in such a manner. I see it as a vicious cycle of people becoming less interested in DIY maintenance, causing manufacturers to able to get away with making DIY harder in order to gouge for parts and labor at the dealerships, causing even less interest in DIY maintenance, etc.

I think the decline of handiness is related to several phenomena:

1) The rise of electronic games, which often take the place of pleasure activities we might summarize as "tinkering." Fewer people build things for fun.

2) More people in the lower class (formerly we'd say "blue collar," but now it includes a lot of low-level white collar functionaries) who have so little leisure time that they ignore or delegate (at considerable expense) the job of actually fixing anything.

3) Children get less practice working with hands-on, practical things. (1) contributes to this. (2) does as well, because parents with less free time are less likely to teach their children to cook, maintain a vehicle, or do basic woodworking. The school system also does less of this than it used to; vocational or technical education, in the sense of getting people familiar with physical technology, at high schools is more or less a dead letter.

So people put less effort into maintaining their homes and vehicles, are more likely to replace furniture rather than try to fix it, and so on. Arguably this is a sign of rising standard of living, but at the same time it also suggests that people have less time or mental energy to spend on non-work parts of their life.

[I think the difference between 'time' and 'mental energy' is important. People with office jobs may theoretically have the time to get a lot of things done outside work, but in a draining environment, a lot of them will lack the will to do so. Psychological exhaustion is a real thing for certain people, although less consistently a problem than physical exhaustion]

I agree with all of the above reasons, and I think it represents a societal sickness that is encapsulated by the term "standard of living". So many people work in physically sedentary but emotionally and mentally draining jobs, many of which don't even provide any societal value, so that they can buy ever-increasing quantities of cheaply-made, low-quality things that they don't value, live in larges but cheaply-made houses, and eat large quantities of cheap food that is mostly devoid of both nutrition and taste. Yet because the modern individual can afford a greater quantity of crap and spends less of a percentage of income on it, they are said to have a higher standard of living, and experts are positively baffled that depression and similar ills have skyrocketed. I'm not trying to rail against modern society as a whole, as it is far more enlightened in most respects than in the (mostly horrific) past. But the trend of a higher and higher percentage of the population lacking the skills to cook for themselves, take care of their possessions (or even the desire to own fewer possessions that are actually worth taking care of), or engage in honest livelihoods that involve real skills and engage the mind and body, is unsustainable.

[Simon_Jester]

Even the honest livelihoods are pretty emotionally and mentally draining...

[RogueIce]

Having wages covered by tipping in general is a pretty terrible practice, though. In addition to the fact that when a restaurant drops tipping from its practices employee morale and service both tend to improve, studies have found that women get tipped less than men, and I wouldn't be surprised if the trend also was apparent for visible minorities.

Either way they still have to make at least minimum wage, so if you took out tipping altogether they'd just be getting that. Which depending on how busy the restaurant is, how good they are, how generous customers are and so on, could be a loss of money.

A few states though do have it so that there's no tip credits allowed. I'm a little on the fence there, but then I guess it comes down to your stance on tipping in general. It's a bit complicated, IMO, especially since tipping has become something of a "requirement" in the US, and since not every employee in the restaurant will be benefiting from tips to the servers. If there was a societal shift that people did see tips as being for exceptional service and not something you "had" to do, I'd be all for abolishing the tip credits nationwide.

And if you try bringing it to light, they make up a reason to fire your ass. This is america, Rogue. You're not allowed to be anything other than a wage slave.

That would be wrongful termination, then.

And while I'll grant that odds are someone working (or who was working) as a server probably doesn't have the money for a lawsuit, you could just not complain to your boss and go straight to the Department of Labor or possibly the state Attorney General and hope they'll help you out. And also get whistleblower protection, too.

But anyway it is against the law, and if that law isn't enforced it's a problem, but a lot of people seem to think that tipped employees only get that less-than-minimum wage from their employers and if tips don't cover the rest they're screwed. But that's not the case and I was aiming to correct that misconception.

[Channel72]

The article makes an interesting point, and I think Simon's point about artificially produced markets is pretty accurate. Technology has progressed to the point where, in theory, there's a lot less shit to get done. So we artificially create things to do to drive consumerism, which generates a nice feedback loop.

But without this artificial demand, what would everyone be doing? They still wouldn't necessarily be doing anything useful. Most people aren't talented, inspired, or motivated enough to become amazing poets or songwriters. And the Internet has pretty much demonstrated that when anybody can produce and publish creative content, what we end up with is a lot of crap for which there is no demand. There are probably more people than there are positions for bricklayers, janitors, teachers, musicians, and air-conditioning repair men. It may simply be the case that without the artificial impetus of consumerism and marketing, there simply wouldn't be enough demand for everyone to work - a problem which would become exacerbated as the population and lifespans increase. Massive unemployment is probably a worse outcome than too many unfulfilling administrative jobs.

One additional factor which the article sort of glosses over is that Keynes prediction may have been invalid because he failed to realize how much additional "work" the continued maintenance and advancement of technology creates. We're not living in the Jetsons here. We need iOS programmers and Android kernel patchers and Roomba repairmen, you know.

[Channel72]

Another thing is that in order to drive the innovation and technology that Keynes predicted would free us all from labor, companies like IBM, Google or GE have massive R&D departments, which need to be run efficiently. This requires.... Managers and HR people.

Also, there's no silver-bullet for living a meaningful, fulfilling life. Factory workers in China, who, according to the article don't have bullshit jobs, are probably more likely to commit suicide than most corporate lawyers. At least, last time I checked, they don't have suicide nets on Wall Street.

[Spoonist]

You are trying to write in a narrative where my criticism of the article would be some kind of implicit approval of the status quoe or reverse of what the proffessor is tryin to argue.

Uh, no, I'm not. You're wrong. My point is that when we combine multiple true things about what you've said, the result is a conclusion pretty similar to the author's. Namely, that our society is wasting large amounts of people's time and energy on jobs that either don't really need doing, or only "need" doing because we're trying to artificially stir up demand for various goods and services.

*sigh* Yes, what you were trying to argue was quite clear, but the only reason for you to try to make that argument with me would be if I somehow would disagree. Otherwise you are simply repeating what I've already stated but with other words as if that would prove something new.
Also how could you think putting in a "you're wrong" and then try to exemplify that with showing that I indeed am not trying to advocate for the status quo nor the reverse of what the proffessor is trying to argue??? Uhm, you just proved me right. I even said that in the line below what you quoted: "Just because I think the writer is stupid and makes totally unfounded arguments doesn't mean anything vs if I agree with his general sentiment or not.".

Yes we are artificially creating demand, yes there are lots of jobs which is beneficial to the employer but which does not feel meaningful to the employed. Yes society is getting more and more complex creating a need for experts to decipher how things work. Yes increased surplus means more unproductive jobs. No that is not a bad thing in itself. No that is not a sign of those jobs being "bullshit". Could we as a society do better? Off course we can, but not if we focus on stupid shit like this but on what actually could change things for the better. You do that not by complaining about the players playing the game, you do that by changing the rules.
Those jobs are not bullshit because they are beneficial to their organizations, and no the concept of such jobs are nothing new since they have been there for hundreds of years nor is it "profound psychological violence" nor a "moral" issue.

[Also, you might want to check your spelling]

Probably lots of grammar as well, when I was writing that it was quite late. My english usually deteriorate with sleep deprivation.

The article is making a lot of false assumptions based on flawed reasoning.
Why we are experiencing an increase in people feeling that their work isn't contributing isn't that there suddenly are more jobs like that, instead it is that we as a society have it better and better and that we therefore demand more and more of life and thus also from our work. So the professor got it backwards. That more and more people are unsatisfied with their work is a good thing - it means that we have it better than before.
Maslow etc.

I disagree. We have the datum "more people feel that their need for self-actualization is unsatisfied."
That doesn't mean that they are only now conscious of the desire to feel self-actualization. It could just as easily mean that... well, they have lost that feeling, which they had before. Or that their parents and older siblings had in the past.

wut? Again, how can you follow up a "I disagree" with such an example?
If we both agree that the same job which used to be considered fullfilling and meaningful now isn't considered that by the next generation. Then that is proof that the job hasn't become "bullshit - psychological violence", instead it is proof that our perception of such jobs have changed.
If we both agree that they had the feeling of self-actualization and then lost it, then they are indeed just now conscious of their non-self-actualization. Its not that they didn't have a sense of what self-actualization meant, it is that the threshold for that feeling is different.
Lets go into examples for clarity: If we both agree that teaching isn't a bullshit job, then if professor Robin had landed the dream research job but got downsized and fired from it - then after years of unemployment land a simple teaching job in his field - but complains that it is "stupid and pointless" because of students and faculty not realising Robin's potential. Then that job still isn't a bullshit job, its just that Robin thinks that it is because of the difference in threshold.
Or if we have the salary & paycheck administrator who used to work manually and thus felt needed and important, then after years of service they retire, in comes a computer literate person who realise that most can be automated with some software and thus does so quickly, finding that soon all that work is now reduced to entering numbers into fields and hitting enter, which is finished after 1h with 7h of their workday left. Now that person have themself created a "stupid and pointless" job in which they are unhappy. Does that mean that salary & paycheck administration (HR) thus suddenly is bullshit?
Or take a telemarketing firm, renting out their staff to others, one day the individual telemarketer is pushing red cross - an organization which relies on donations to do good, the next day the individual is pushing weekly underware subscriptions. To the telemarketer its a "stupid and pointless" regardless getting similar abuse from people who didn't want to get disturbed, and it is the exact same job they perform. Does this mean that telemarketing in itself is a bullshit job? Does it mean that telemarketing is meaningful when pushing one and not the other regardless of the feelings of the telemarketer?

And really, what's going on is more complicated than a simple "high-order needs not met."

Of course it is more complex than that.

In large parts of the developed world, we're seeing an actual reversal of progress on mid-level needs: people feel less safe, loved, and self-confident than they would have ten or twenty years ago.

Yes? And? In what way do you think that didn't fit with what I was saying? And also how can you not see that that is another criticism of the way the article reasons?
That we feel less safe doesn't mean that we are less safe. A singular violent crime in a usually quiet place is much more scary to the residents, than regular fights when the local bars close. Studies show that fear of violent crime has usually very little correlation to actual danger of violent crime (unless you live in ghetto like conditions).
That we feel less self-confident in a world which is increasing exponentiallly in complexity is natural. There is lots of research on this. Our humility isn't 'evolving' as fast as the vast areas that we no longer are capable of understanding. Your handiness list/car fixing is a perfect example of this. That doesn't mean that such technical advances is a bad thing, or that the need to have a computer to troubleshoot your car diminishes your worth as a car mechanic.
That we feel less loved, is very interesting from an anthropology angle, but that also fits in with progress. Studies show that people in poorer communities in underdeveloped countries have a better sense of self-worth and being loved (barring war) than people in the developed countries. Does that make them subjectively or objectively better off?

but I think the dynamics behind that trend are more complex than you imply.

huh? Me pointing out flaws in GMJ's argument equates to me saying things about complexity? Nah, I don't think so.

But I was replying to your statement that the elite ought to fear education, not free time. I disagree with that statement, even as a matter of theory.

Which had nothing to do with complexity or simplicity. And note that I said eduction and students.
But your disagreement is interesting specifically due to the complexity of the issue. For instance free time when earned is usually used in a way that sooth and calm us, while free time forced upon us as with unemployment makes us resentful and angry. In the arabian spring both unemployment and students using social media and spreading info was key factors. Same thing when looking at the occupy movement in the developed countries or similarly minded riots in EU countries.
Do you think that it is a coincidence that it is usually highly educated young males that form the core of the action until it gets momentum?
Do you think that it is correct to assume like the author does that if people earned enough to get by working part time they would use that free time to upset the powers that be? Or do you like me think that people who earn enough in part time would spend their earned free time doing recreation and thus be complacent with regards to the powers that be? Some other opinion?

The writer's argument is that there are more bullshit jobs nowadays based on people he meet who complain about their jobs being meaningless. That is flawed and stupid.

No, the writer's argument is based on something else. It is based on the fact that more and more people work in jobs that do not produce a concrete, self-evidently desirable result, where the negative impact of the job not getting done are obvious.

You are reading something else into that text. Here let me quote him:
"There is a whole class of salaried professionals who, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their jobs really are."
Do you really think that this observation is something new?
"larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) - and particularly its financial avatars",
Marx wrote something eerily similar over a century ago, and he did a much better job than this wankfest.

A marketing staffer or a lawyer whose job is to draft EULAs for software companies may not be able to tell themselves that their job has a real point to it... and those sectors of the economy, those subsectors of the service economy, are on the rise.

Yes? And?
There is a lot of redundant jobs, yes. That is a side-effect of increased economic growth and increased effectiveness. Each of those jobs were created by their organizations for a percieved purpose - all of which are not necessarily 100% effective. But the same thing happens to productive jobs as well, people realising that their car production line has two extra redundant workers won't tell management either. Its just that some things are easier to hide or get away with.
In your example it might be that the software companies think they need the EULA since some software companies have gone bankrupt because they didn't have it - them not being experts in the field. While the actual expert realise its a simple copy-paste job of something he has done hundreds of times. Simple matter of increased complexity. Now if you instead had some regulations in place that replaced the need or the over usage of EULA then we could have a decent conversation.
Its not a detriment to society that increased complexity will create these kinds of situations.

Consider- you have told me that having two competing sellers of soda who market aggressively expands the total market for soda. I actually believe you- though I'd never heard that before in my life.*. But the implication is that at least part of the increased standard of living, and desire for goods/services/whatever, which motivates us to work harder is artificially produced by marketing. In which case it is reasonable to argue that marketing is 'superfluous,' in that it serves mainly to stimulate an unnecessary appetite.

Ah, that is making the assumption that a consumer society somehow would be less able to provide for its citizens' needs than a non-consumer society...

What? That makes no sense, I don't understand. How do you go from "Simon thinks marketing creates unnecessary appetite" to "therefore, Simon must think consumer societies can't provide for citizens' needs?"

*sigh*
Then you are retracting that marketing is superfluous? If not, then yes you are making that argument.
Marketing, in a consumer society, through the creation of markets and thus growth of the economy and production will have side effects that will provide for the citizens needs. This was recognized before the middle ages through this thing we call trade and taxes. Without the 'need' for foreign products like silk or tobacco trade would be insignificant. It was later recognized that expanding markets drove research leading to progress even in unrelated fields.
By calling marketing superfluous as you do and as "bullshit jobs" as the proffessor did you are ignoring hundreds of years of history.
If we were to take away sales & marketing we would collapse.
Its a shitty example based on flawed reasoning and ignorance of how marketing works.
With that said there is a humongous amount of redundant marketing - facebook banners anyone? But that is due to the nature of the game - not any proof that marketing is redundant as a concept.

Suppose that the world consisted of corn farmers and pill-makers. ... But perhaps all that time and effort could be used in a more constructive way than just creating a disproportionate appetite for existing goods.

Too simplistic to make an interesting conversation, and see above.

...It's an obvious example. It's simple because I'm trying to make a point, to show the type of argument I'm trying to make. There are good grounds to criticize a society, when many of its people are busily employed in activities that are not desirable in and of themselves, and which directly profit no person. And when many people are busy trying to pump up artificial demand for goods, that is exactly what's going on.

Its too simplistic which makes it useless for discussion. It is the same way bad economists theorize about perfect conditions which somehow always fail in reality.
In that world of corn surplus and pill makers, there would be plenty of side-effects leading to unforeseen positive effects which might counterbalance the harmful spiral that you base your argument on. But you rule them out directly because nothing else exist but corn makers and pill makers. That makes your model totally useless to the real world which isn't as simple as that. Especially since your whole exercise is based on the assumption that only one side would improve - the corn makers, where the pill makers would stay the same and that other time consuming activities are non-existant.
I can make up a just as silly counter scenario, to show you how useless such dialog is.
What if there exists only corn makers and scientists? In the beginning there would be very little corn to spare so very few scientists. Then the scientists improve corn production making room for more scientists, making better corn. Eventually we would have a society of scientists with robot corn makers making a better and better world, finally creating a corn-replicator, then we boldly go into a galaxy far far away - and everything is a happier, greener and very very silly. Except that my silly scenario is closer to reality than yours.

[Purple]

Massive unemployment is probably a worse outcome than too many unfulfilling administrative jobs.

But as others have already said that problem too is artificial. Jobs have long since stopped being just the means to acquire money so that you could live and instead shifted to being the focal point of ones life. If there is no need for more than say 1% of the population to work in order for 100% to be sustained than there should by all sane logic be no need or desire to find jobs for the other 99%.

[Channel72]

Massive unemployment is probably a worse outcome than too many unfulfilling administrative jobs.

But as others have already said that problem too is artificial. Jobs have long since stopped being just the means to acquire money so that you could live and instead shifted to being the focal point of ones life. If there is no need for more than say 1% of the population to work in order for 100% to be sustained than there should by all sane logic be no need or desire to find jobs for the other 99%.

Except we don't live in some post-scarcity tech-utopia. Just sustaining the lives and pleasures of hundreds of millions of people REQUIRES a huge amount of overhead. Distributing goods and services, providing sanitation, infrastructure maintenance, energy, public safety, education, etc. etc. requires a lot more than 1% of the population to work. So, let's say it requires like 50% of the population to work. Why should half the population work to provide for the life and happiness of the other half? It's doubtful society would tolerate that arrangement. Plus, with so few people working it may even be the case that the alleged technological breakthroughs which are supposed to free us from working would never materialize, since there would be no massive R&D corporate infrastructures.

I'm not saying the current situation is ideal, by the way. At least, in the United States, there is WAY too much dependence on employment for basic sustenance, because there is really no substantial social safety net system. Regardless, the original article is interesting, but I think the overall point is exaggerated. Basically, it comes down to the fact that an anthropology professor finds it a bit silly that the fastest growing sub-sector of the economy are administrative jobs, I guess. Shrug? I guess human corporate entities favor bureaucracies?

[Guardsman Bass]

Except we don't live in some post-scarcity tech-utopia. Just sustaining the lives and pleasures of hundreds of millions of people REQUIRES a huge amount of overhead. Distributing goods and services, providing sanitation, infrastructure maintenance, energy, public safety, education, etc. etc. requires a lot more than 1% of the population to work. So, let's say it requires like 50% of the population to work. Why should half the population work to provide for the life and happiness of the other half? It's doubtful society would tolerate that arrangement. Plus, with so few people working it may even be the case that the alleged technological breakthroughs which are supposed to free us from working would never materialize, since there would be no massive R&D corporate infrastructures.

To a lesser extent, that already happens with Social Security. It's a shift in norms and laws to support a portion of the population outside/not as active in the labor force off the taxation of the population that remains in the labor force. That portion of the population is increasing over time as well.

I think the "administrative" aspect of human work might increase over time beyond what it is now, if robots become cheaper and much more capable of replacing tedious, routine tasks. You'll want lots of people around to "shepherd" the robots, like what this Economist article talks about with workers interacting with new, more human-interaction-friendly robots.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that an anthropology professor finds it a bit silly that the fastest growing sub-sector of the economy are administrative jobs, I guess. Shrug? I guess human corporate entities favor bureaucracies?

Graeber puts out some odd essays every now and then. One of his previous long-form essays was an argument that capitalism ruined the 1960s dream of space colonies.

[Purple]

So, let's say it requires like 50% of the population to work. Why should half the population work to provide for the life and happiness of the other half?

Because that means you can employ 100% of the population with 50% working time per man. Seemingly a situation where everybody wins. But instead, modern society has opted to make 100% more work in the form of pointless jobs to fill said time up and keep everyone working full time. That is the professors ultimate point.

You your self mentioned the concept of a post scarcity utopia. And I feel that this actually cuts to the core of the problem. Modern society no longer strives to achieve such a system. And indeed the way modern society is build such a system would be impossible to attain because even if technology allowed it men would just find more and more pointless jobs to keep everyone working.

It's doubtful society would tolerate that arrangement. Plus, with so few people working it may even be the case that the alleged technological breakthroughs which are supposed to free us from working would never materialize, since there would be no massive R&D corporate infrastructures.

You don't need corporate infrastructures to develop stuff. Science and technology did not start with the corporation or any modern form of organized labor.

[Channel72]

So, let's say it requires like 50% of the population to work. Why should half the population work to provide for the life and happiness of the other half?

Because that means you can employ 100% of the population with 50% working time per man. Seemingly a situation where everybody wins. But instead, modern society has opted to make 100% more work in the form of pointless jobs to fill said time up and keep everyone working full time. That is the professors ultimate point.

You your self mentioned the concept of a post scarcity utopia. And I feel that this actually cuts to the core of the problem. Modern society no longer strives to achieve such a system. And indeed the way modern society is build such a system would be impossible to attain because even if technology allowed it men would just find more and more pointless jobs to keep everyone working.

It's doubtful society would tolerate that arrangement. Plus, with so few people working it may even be the case that the alleged technological breakthroughs which are supposed to free us from working would never materialize, since there would be no massive R&D corporate infrastructures.

You don't need corporate infrastructures to develop stuff. Science and technology did not start with the corporation or any modern form of organized labor.

No, I think Spoonist is more or less correct. It's nice to poke fun at all these silly administrative jobs, but they don't exist because some weird combination of social forces has come together to encourage meaningless work. They exist because of complexity and increased specialization - specifically, they exist because of the increasingly complex interactions between corporate America, the Legislative branch of Government, the media, the technology sector, and the financial sector. Far from collaborating together to create meaningless work, each of these sectors are usually working towards different goals.

For example, I work for Major Corporation X as a computer programmer. If one day I come in to work and my keyboard breaks, I can't work - and thus I can't do anything productive. So I need someone to replace my keyboard quickly. This requires some kind of technical support department. Since Major Corporation X has over 10,000 employees, there needs to be an orderly, efficient system to interact with the technical support department, or they'd quickly be overwhelmed - say, a ticketing system of some kind. This requires additional programmers to implement the ticketing system, and system administrators to make sure it runs smoothly. It may require IP lawyers to make sure the ticketing system doesn't include any code that violates copyright laws. It requires HR personnel to screen and hire said programmers/system administrators/IP lawyers who work on the ticketing system, pay their salaries, and resolve employee conflicts. It requires administrators and managers to write and distribute documentation or presentations which explain how to use the ticketing system, and translators to translate said documents into 6 different languages, so it can be distributed to the corporate offices in Tokyo, Dubai, Paris, Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro. It may even be beneficial to hire efficiency experts to analyze the ticketing system logs, to see what the most commonly requested employee problems are, and research ways to solve these problems more efficiently.

Yes, corporate bureaucracy is often hilarious. It's so hilarious, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) made an entire career out of making fun of it. But it exists because human beings have difficulty managing complexity, and no one person can do that much by themselves. Humans like to implement efficient policies and systems that streamline a lot of common processes, and as a side-effect this generates various types of additional work (which the article calls "bullshit"). I'm still not sure exactly why this is a bad thing. The problem is mainly that large organizations rarely implement said policies/processes in the most efficient way possible, or certain corporate policies have inconvenient side effects which actually reduce productivity. But that's simply a matter of humans not being omniscient, and the overall problem that PLANNING IS HARD and making large-systems work efficiently is even HARDER.

[Spoonist]

So in lieu of Simon keeping up his end of the dialog I'll address some of the things I didn't have time for before.

...they could be easy to replace if the cars weren't deliberately designed to require special tools or partial disassembly / lifting of the engine in order to access them.

Another slightly more obvious example of this kind of profit optimizing is lights. The lights on your car is one thing that you should and could always exchange yourself.
However over time it has become obviuos that since what consumers look at when buying a new car is list price, then the manufacturers need to make more of their profit in spare parts and authorized maintenance. (Most car manufacturers don't make a profit on the sale itself anymore, relying on options and service to make up the difference).
One thing that thus has been deliberately made more difficult is changing your lights, trying to get you to get service for that instead. Its now almost standard that you need to have multiple tools to access the light, and also that most cars move away from non-standardized lights as long as regulation allows them to.
Lights being the obviuos one but the list of parts that should be easy but isn't is quite long.
However, again, this is not due to the manufacturers being evil or that complexity necessarily leads to harder-to-use. Its just that they need to adjust their business case to take into account consumer stupidity. Consumers nowadays are not prepared to pay up front the whole cost + profit of a car. Consumers will consistently select a car with a smaller up front price tag which has a bigger pricetag for service and spare parts. If we are talking the US the consumers are also less likely to pay up front for safety and lower mileage costs.
However the solution wouldn't necessarily be consumer education, but that ever present bogey man - regulation. When regulation insist on standardization and on information availability then this drives a better consumer behavior.
A bizarre example would be the auto-stopping cars nowadays that break automatically if it detects an imminent collision. In the cost calculation for that they need to make a lot of overhead due to loss of profit from collisions. Making the option so expensive that it becomes less attractive from a consumer perspective.

But the trend of a higher and higher percentage of the population lacking the skills to cook for themselves, take care of their possessions (or even the desire to own fewer possessions that are actually worth taking care of), or engage in honest livelihoods that involve real skills and engage the mind and body, is unsustainable.

This is a bit flawed. Its specifically the working poor that have this trend and they are by their definition more likely to hold livelihoods that "involve real skills" etc. Its the old "cost of being poor" thingie again. If you are unfamiliar with the concept - its worth checking out.
If you are looking at the well-off the trend is reversed. They are less likely to have such livelihoods but they are more likely to follow cooking trends with personal skills to match, also they take better care of their belongings, since they are actually worth taking care of, etc.
So while I agree on parts of the sustainability angle, but the "societal sickness" is wealth distribution and wellfare inadequancy creating those extra costs for being poor, not some sort of illusion of "sedentary but emotionally and mentally draining jobs".

Jobs have long since stopped being just the means to acquire money so that you could live and instead shifted to being the focal point of ones life.

This is a hindsight imperfection illusion, not reality. The real trend is the opposite.
For hundreds upon hundreds of years your job and what it was, was the only thing that mattered. To the point that unemployment was illegal and could get you branded with a hot iron, check out vagrancy and vagabonds as a historical concept.
This continued well into the 20th century with people judging you on your title alone etc, getting fired could easily make you a social outcast even among what you considered to be best friends.
The actual trend is that we place less and less value on what people do for a living and subsequently what we ourselves do for a living.
Its also wrong that we spend more and more time at work. The trend is again the opposite. Check out stats for working hours in the world. In the US it drops about .2% per year. That is a lot over time.

You don't need corporate infrastructures to develop stuff. Science and technology did not start with the corporation or any modern form of organized labor.

This is being willfully ignorant due to a technicality. Look at the enlightenment - lots of science happening - however the infrastructure in place is huge, yes it wasn't necessarily corporate but that is in label only. You'd typically have 4-6 servants per "scientist" just taking care of the basic stuff, on top of that you'd have loads of assistants and manual laborers etc. And that is not even looking at the rich sponsor making it possible in the first place.
Have you seen the ledgers for the royal society? Its insane how much of their budget goes to what we call infrastructure and how little was spent on actual research and experiments. And that was when most had other funding to live off of.
Science started with surplus, an elite who could afford an education (mentors usually) and the luxury to spend their leisure on whatever. Look at he whole golden age of islam which was the forerunner of the enlightenment, etc.
Compared to the waste that feudal or imperial systems had when creating necessary infrastructure modern corporations are knights in shining armor of efficiency.
There is today only one thing that consistently beat corporations and that is state sponsored research, like public universities etc, and we all know which insane messes of labyrinthlike mazes of bureaucracy they are.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

But the trend of a higher and higher percentage of the population lacking the skills to cook for themselves, take care of their possessions (or even the desire to own fewer possessions that are actually worth taking care of), or engage in honest livelihoods that involve real skills and engage the mind and body, is unsustainable.

This is a bit flawed. Its specifically the working poor that have this trend and they are by their definition more likely to hold livelihoods that "involve real skills" etc. Its the old "cost of being poor" thingie again. If you are unfamiliar with the concept - its worth checking out.
If you are looking at the well-off the trend is reversed. They are less likely to have such livelihoods but they are more likely to follow cooking trends with personal skills to match, also they take better care of their belongings, since they are actually worth taking care of, etc.
So while I agree on parts of the sustainability angle, but the "societal sickness" is wealth distribution and wellfare inadequancy creating those extra costs for being poor, not some sort of illusion of "sedentary but emotionally and mentally draining jobs".

I am not sure that I understand your argument. I proposed that societal trends that have propelled the middle classes in developed nations for the past half-century toward a more and more disposable society cannot continue. This includes amassing a huge closet full of clothing made in sweatshops in Indochinese island nations, buying a new car every 5 years and a new smartphone every 1 to 2, etc. We also cannot continue employing so many people in industries that do not create wealth. The biggest imbalance is in the banking and finance sector, which has lured many of the best and brightest that otherwise would have ended up in the theoretical and applied sciences to instead use their brainpower transfer wealth to their firms from other sectors of the economy. With insufficient regulation, the amount of money that can be extracted from pension funds, municipal governments, DIY individual investors and other "dumb money", and other sectors of the economy is so large that it misallocates enough money and talent to threaten the long-term competitiveness of entire nations and empowers financial firms with enough political power to make sure that it is impossible to change course. Taken together, these trends represent a recipe for a long, slow decline for most developed nations.

With which of these postulations do you disagree?

[Spoonist]

I'd say that I don't disagree with anything in your new statement and I agree fully with your issues with the finance sector. Its one of those things that people usually miss - if you have money its more profit in finance than it is in investing in new businesses. However I think that the disposable society is going to last a lot longer and be much more destructive towards the end than what most of my peers speculate, I hope that I'm wrong though.

With the sentance that I quoted I disagreed on almost all of the key points, while I somewhat agreed with your sentiment. You were mixing three completely different concepts and then tried to tie it together with a sustainability angle. But most of the keys didn't combine and the conclusions were incorrect from a sustainability angle. For instance, its more efficient from a renewable society angle if people stopped cooking for themselves. It creates much more waste than prefab does (when done right). etc

[Starglider]

One reason I like working on foreign exchange (algo trading systems) is that it's essential to modern business and a large fraction of the flow is from commercial customers conducting international trade and associated hedging. Intense competition here reduces spreads and hence the cost of doing real (international) business for customers, as opposed to parasitic financial innovation common in structured credit etc. FX derivatives in particular are very useful for real companies (and the impact of speculation is usually minimal), versus say equity derivatives which are speculative tools essentially worthless or even harmful to the overall economy.

[Simon_Jester]

One reason I like working on foreign exchange (algo trading systems) is that it's essential to modern business and a large fraction of the flow is from commercial customers conducting international trade and associated hedging. Intense competition here reduces spreads and hence the cost of doing real (international) business for customers, as opposed to parasitic financial innovation common in structured credit etc. FX derivatives in particular are very useful for real companies (and the impact of speculation is usually minimal), versus say equity derivatives which are speculative tools essentially worthless or even harmful to the overall economy.

I think this is an interesting example of what I talk about more in the context of marketing below: there is 'good' and 'bad' finance, or marketing, or law, or anything else.

The real measure is: does this person working harder result in good things happening overall, as indexed across society? If the only thing that happens is "this person personally gets richer," then we can reasonably question whether we're better off encouraging people to spend their time that way. Especially when there are a LOT of ways to enrich yourself while creating net benefits for others.


[quote="Guardsman Bass]Graeber puts out some odd essays every now and then. One of his previous long-form essays was an argument that capitalism ruined the 1960s dream of space colonies.[/quote]Linky?


My apologies, Spoonist; this is a thread I more or less ignored for a while.

Uh, no, I'm not. You're wrong. My point is that when we combine multiple true things about what you've said, the result is a conclusion pretty similar to the author's. Namely, that our society is wasting large amounts of people's time and energy on jobs that either don't really need doing, or only "need" doing because we're trying to artificially stir up demand for various goods and services.

*sigh* Yes, what you were trying to argue was quite clear, but the only reason for you to try to make that argument with me would be if I somehow would disagree. Otherwise you are simply repeating what I've already stated but with other words as if that would prove something new.

...My brain does not work the way you think. I was attempting to take your point A and point B, combine them to present a point C you had not presented, but might well agree with for all I knew. And then observe that conclusion C is actually fairly close to the thesis of the article, C-prime.

I think you have this mistaken idea that I ONLY talk to people when I think they're wrong. As opposed to sometimes talking to them when I think they have this exaggerated sense of how their idea is different from everyone else's. Often, it isn't as different as they think.

Also how could you think putting in a "you're wrong" and then try to exemplify that with showing that I indeed am not trying to advocate for the status quo nor the reverse of what the proffessor is trying to argue???

You're wrong about my attitude, about the claim that "You are trying to write in a narrative where my criticism of the article would be some kind of implicit approval of the status quoe or reverse of what the proffessor is tryin to argue."

I don't give a damn about the narrative, I just thought your opinions were closer to the thesis of the article than X. Where X is how far away you appeared to me to be saying your opinions were.

If that appearance was wrong, then my original statement boils down to repeating something you think is obvious... but did not bother to say. In which case I hope you'll forgive me for drawing previously unwritten conclusions from your own statements, even when obviously you've secretly already thought of them already and just don't feel like talking about it.

Could we as a society do better? Off course we can, but not if we focus on stupid shit like this but on what actually could change things for the better. You do that not by complaining about the players playing the game, you do that by changing the rules.

If I might ask, how do we go about figuring out how to change the rules, if it's inappropriate to say bad things about the existing rules?

I disagree. We have the datum "more people feel that their need for self-actualization is unsatisfied."

That doesn't mean that they are only now conscious of the desire to feel self-actualization. It could just as easily mean that... well, they have lost that feeling, which they had before. Or that their parents and older siblings had in the past.

wut? Again, how can you follow up a "I disagree" with such an example?

You said:

"That more and more people are unsatisfied with their work is a good thing - it means that we have it better than before.
Maslow etc."

Maslow's hierarchy of needs only supports your argument IF you think that dissatisfaction with the job is good because it implies that we can now afford to think about dissatisfaction. To given an example, you might think that in previous eras, we were too afraid of starving to worry about being dissatisfied with jobs. But now we are dissatisfied with jobs, therefore this is simply evidence that we no longer fear starving, which is good!

I disagree with that.

It could equally well be that we made it to the point where "job satisfaction" matters a long time ago- say, 1970. And that for a while we HAD job satisfaction, plus physically sufficiency and freedom from being eaten by tigers and so on. But now, the job satisfaction is going away because of changes in the way we employ people.

In which case we are not necessarily better off, just because we now feel less satisfied with our jobs.

Or if we have the salary & paycheck administrator who used to work manually and thus felt needed and important, then after years of service they retire, in comes a computer literate person who realise that most can be automated with some software and thus does so quickly, finding that soon all that work is now reduced to entering numbers into fields and hitting enter, which is finished after 1h with 7h of their workday left. Now that person have themself created a "stupid and pointless" job in which they are unhappy. Does that mean that salary & paycheck administration (HR) thus suddenly is bullshit?

If the work of the HR department fills to expand the available space*, then yes this can become bullshit. It doesn't have to, but it can. The question here is where we draw the line between productive and unproductive uses of our time. The ones I feel an urge to criticize are the ones where one person works for an extended period of time, to make something happen, which creates unnecessary and nonproductive work for another person.

At the same time, there are areas of our economy which seem rather... anemic, in terms of how much of society's effort it is devoting to keeping those areas functional**. So I feel it reasonable to look at the productivity-cancelling work, ask "is this helping," and suggest that in a more sanely ordered system, we'd put less of our effort into productivity-cancelling work of various types.

*Say, by forcing all company employees to spend an average of an hour a week coping with new, semirandom productivity initiatives that seldom have any measurable effect...
**Like education and infrastructure construction, at least in the US...

That we feel less loved, is very interesting from an anthropology angle, but that also fits in with progress. Studies show that people in poorer communities in underdeveloped countries have a better sense of self-worth and being loved (barring war) than people in the developed countries. Does that make them subjectively or objectively better off?

One might suggest examining the forces and causes that underlie their happiness, and seeing if we can duplicate it by reforming institutions in the developed world, without dive-bombing the standard of living. Although honestly, reducing per capita income a bit if it makes people much happier and strengthens the nation as a whole in the long run... could easily be a good idea.

Do you think that it is correct to assume like the author does that if people earned enough to get by working part time they would use that free time to upset the powers that be? Or do you like me think that people who earn enough in part time would spend their earned free time doing recreation and thus be complacent with regards to the powers that be? Some other opinion?

I think we'd observe a mix.

On the one hand, many people would spend the extra time being fat and happy.

On the other hand, many people would also be less exhausted and pounded flat by their own lifestyle. Some of these people would thus have more time to indulge their curiosity, cure their ignorance of how the system works, and begin to air (and act on) opinions about the system that they do not now have time to form and act on.

Do you really think that this observation is something new?
"larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) - and particularly its financial avatars",
Marx wrote something eerily similar over a century ago, and he did a much better job than this wankfest.

Marx is saying something different. Marx's critique is that the rise of white collar work positions are designed by the ruling class to make the educated man identify with the ruling class. This guy is saying that the rise of white collar work positions is creating excessive, unnecessary work that gets in the way of our ability to enjoy the non-work portions of our lives.

He even referenced the Soviet Union, which had the same problem of excessive makework, only there it was deliberately engineered instead of being an accidental product of capitalism.

There is a lot of redundant jobs, yes. That is a side-effect of increased economic growth and increased effectiveness. Each of those jobs were created by their organizations for a percieved purpose - all of which are not necessarily 100% effective. But the same thing happens to productive jobs as well, people realising that their car production line has two extra redundant workers won't tell management either. Its just that some things are easier to hide or get away with.
In your example it might be that the software companies think they need the EULA since some software companies have gone bankrupt because they didn't have it - them not being experts in the field. While the actual expert realise its a simple copy-paste job of something he has done hundreds of times. Simple matter of increased complexity. Now if you instead had some regulations in place that replaced the need or the over usage of EULA then we could have a decent conversation.

Just how obtuse are you going to be about this? The whole point of having the conversation we have NOW is that we can then segue into talking about the details- for example, pointing out that we could reduce reliance on "unnecessary" corporate lawyers with reforms to corporate law, so that there's less endless deadlock between the corporate legal departments.

But somehow, because we're not already having that latter conversation, you dismiss the whole question out of hand, or appear to be doing so.

What? That makes no sense, I don't understand. How do you go from "Simon thinks marketing creates unnecessary appetite" to "therefore, Simon must think consumer societies can't provide for citizens' needs?"

*sigh*

Then you are retracting that marketing is superfluous? If not, then yes you are making that argument.

Marketing, in a consumer society, through the creation of markets and thus growth of the economy and production will have side effects that will provide for the citizens needs. This was recognized before the middle ages through this thing we call trade and taxes. Without the 'need' for foreign products like silk or tobacco trade would be insignificant. It was later recognized that expanding markets drove research leading to progress even in unrelated fields.

By calling marketing superfluous as you do and as "bullshit jobs" as the proffessor did you are ignoring hundreds of years of history.

What I consider unproductive is a certain subtype of marketing- that which serves mainly to influence which economically useful goods we buy, rather than whether we buy them. Or which influences demand for goods that have no long term value compared to the alternatives: getting people to drink bottled water instead of tap water is not necessarily a net win for society as a whole.

That's bad. On the other hand, it's good that people are aware of things that are of use, and which make their lives better directly and indirectly.

Abolishing all marketing would take out both classes of marketers.

Is that a concession? I'm not sure.

Suppose that the world consisted of corn farmers and pill-makers. ... But perhaps all that time and effort could be used in a more constructive way than just creating a disproportionate appetite for existing goods.

Too simplistic to make an interesting conversation, and see above.

...It's an obvious example. It's simple because I'm trying to make a point, to show the type of argument I'm trying to make. There are good grounds to criticize a society, when many of its people are busily employed in activities that are not desirable in and of themselves, and which directly profit no person. And when many people are busy trying to pump up artificial demand for goods, that is exactly what's going on.

Its too simplistic which makes it useless for discussion. It is the same way bad economists theorize about perfect conditions which somehow always fail in reality.

In that world of corn surplus and pill makers, there would be plenty of side-effects leading to unforeseen positive effects which might counterbalance the harmful spiral that you base your argument on. But you rule them out directly because nothing else exist but corn makers and pill makers. That makes your model totally useless to the real world which isn't as simple as that. Especially since your whole exercise is based on the assumption that only one side would improve - the corn makers, where the pill makers would stay the same and that other time consuming activities are non-existant.

I can make up a just as silly counter scenario, to show you how useless such dialog is.
What if there exists only corn makers and scientists? In the beginning there would be very little corn to spare so very few scientists. Then the scientists improve corn production making room for more scientists, making better corn. Eventually we would have a society of scientists with robot corn makers making a better and better world, finally creating a corn-replicator, then we boldly go into a galaxy far far away - and everything is a happier, greener and very very silly. Except that my silly scenario is closer to reality than yours.

My point is that there is a force at work, which does not dominate ALL such issues, but which nonetheless matters. It would be more realistic to say:

There are three kinds of work: corn growing, science, and pillmaking. Scientists can improve the power of both corn-growing and pill-making. Improvements to corn-growing mean more freed-up labor to enter science and pill-making. Improvements to pill-making create further demand for more corn. Improvements to science cause faster improvements to the other two areas.

There are basically two stable equilibria to such a system: one which is mostly populated by scientists, and one which is populated by a combination of pill-makers and corn-growers. The more pill-makers you have around, the greater the risk of having to accept the second equilibrium state, which while functional is rather silly and arguably a waste of everyone's potential.

To achieve the desirable equilibrium, we want to ensure that the potential of science (and other productivity-multipliers) is not used to create random, unnecessary work. In other words, introducing a computer filing system for your paperwork should NOT mean you spend proportionately more of the day doing paperwork, all else being equal.

Sometimes, we get that condition. Sometimes we don't.

[Channel72]

Marx is saying something different. Marx's critique is that the rise of white collar work positions are designed by the ruling class to make the educated man identify with the ruling class. This guy is saying that the rise of white collar work positions is creating excessive, unnecessary work that gets in the way of our ability to enjoy the non-work portions of our lives.

He even referenced the Soviet Union, which had the same problem of excessive makework, only there it was deliberately engineered instead of being an accidental product of capitalism.

I'm having difficulty making sense out of what you mean here. What do you mean Marx "referenced" the Soviet Union? He died well before 1918 and his manifesto makes no mention of the USSR.

[Channel72]

Oh, never mind... you were referring to the article. Sorry, it's late.

Although, the article also postulates that a lot of white collar "nonsense jobs" are designed to make average people identify with the perspective of the wealthy.

[Ziggy Stardust]

People seem to just be using "unnecessary" to refer to jobs they don't like. Nobody has really given an argument as for WHY these jobs are unnecessary.

HR departments tend to make businesses more efficient, on the whole. The tasks they do need to happen in order for people in the company to get paid and for resources to be managed appropriately. Having a dedicated department to do those tasks frees up other people in the company to focus on (whatever that company does). Complaining about people wasting their time with TPS reports without providing some sort of statistic that shows that HR departments only waste time and don't help anything is idiotic.

And what about marketing? So far, all anybody has done is bitch that they don't like it, without showing why they think it is unnecessary. What people seem to be missing is that marketing isn't solely trying to trick people into buying X. Marketing is about making sales easier - yes marketing people advertise, but they also collect data. They research where and who buys products, and tries to optimize sales. They make a companies sales more efficient - again, allowing the sales people (remember, in most companies, marketing and sales are different - division of labor and all that) to NOT WASTE TIME.

The reason there are so many jobs is because companies have realized that division of labor is MORE efficient. Not because they are artificially making up jobs just for the sake of having people do work. Unless you can show some sort of study that shows that job X is actually just wasting time, all you are doing is bitching about a job you don't like and know nothing about.

[Simon_Jester]

I restrict my objections to two things.

One is jobs that involve person A actively laboring to increase the net workload on person B, in ways that could be more gracefully handled by, for example, giving supervisory person C more discretion about whether to hire/fire person B. This really isn't as large a swathe of the workplace as we might think.

The other is when arbitrary or unnecessary work proliferates to fill up gaps in a worker's schedule created by automation. We should be able to gradually shrink the hours worked per person as our techniques improve, while still providing a good standard of living. If we are not, something's gone wrong.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

One reason I like working on foreign exchange (algo trading systems) is that it's essential to modern business and a large fraction of the flow is from commercial customers conducting international trade and associated hedging. Intense competition here reduces spreads and hence the cost of doing real (international) business for customers, as opposed to parasitic financial innovation common in structured credit etc. FX derivatives in particular are very useful for real companies (and the impact of speculation is usually minimal), versus say equity derivatives which are speculative tools essentially worthless or even harmful to the overall economy.

The problem here is that employees and stakeholders of financial firms are the only people who understand these things well enough to differentiate between financial tools that benefit the broader economy and ones that only enrich the financial sector at everyone else's expense. Since the people working at the regulatory agencies and ratings firms are either gunning for positions at the companies they are supposed to regulate, or tried to make it in finance and failed, it's no wonder that banksters are always 2 steps ahead of regulation. It would almost certainly be worth spending a few billion dollars hiring the best and brightest to write the rules, but barring them from employment, contracting, or owning shares in financial companies for 5-10 years after termination of employment. We could even set up a commission system that treats taxpayer dollars saved as revenue, although it would need to be set up to be very difficult to game the system. The point is that being a regulator should be seen as a viable career path for bright, ambitious people and not just a springboard to private sector employment or the financial version of security guards that washed out of police academy.

[energiewende]

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour working week.

[url=http://earlyretirementextreme.com/]You can, and even less.[/quote]

The problem is that most people don't think that accepting a 1930s living standard in exchange for unlimited time to play sports and read books is a good trade. Keynes was an upper class intellectual, so maybe he would disagree.

[K. A. Pital]

The problem is that most people don't think that accepting a 1930s living standard in exchange for unlimited time to play sports and read books is a good trade. Keynes was an upper class intellectual, so maybe he would disagree.

It is impossible to have such a standard now and work for 15 hours a week. Food remains a big part of total expenditures for a working person, housing is simply unaffordable outside of crushing 20-year credit deals... I'd loove to, but even in a vastly superior position - no mortgage, no urging or professional necessity to get latest gadgets, etc. - I cannot.