The Modern Phenomenon of Nonsense Jobs

[Zaune]

Sydney Morning Herald

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. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people in the Western world spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes's promised utopia - still being eagerly awaited in the 1960s - never materialise? The standard line is he didn't predict the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we've collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment's reflection shows it can't really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the 1920s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture. Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ''professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers'' tripled, growing ''from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment''. In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the ''service'' sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries such as financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors such as corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza-delivery drivers) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call ''bullshit jobs''.

It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as it had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem that market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking business is going to do is shell out money to workers they don't really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the lay-offs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50-hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their Facebook profiles or downloading television series.

The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on its hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the 1960s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinetmakers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Nor does the task really need to be done - at least, there's only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there's endless piles of useless, badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it's all that anyone really does.

I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.

—————

Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: ''Who are you to say what jobs are really 'necessary'? What's necessary anyway? You're an anthropology professor, what's the 'need' for that?'' (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And, on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.

I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago, I got back in touch with a school friend whom I hadn't seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that, in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the frontman in an indie rock band. I'd heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he'd lost his contract and, plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, ''taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school''. Now he's a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.

There's a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with: what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1 per cent of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call ''the market'' reflects what those people think is useful or important, not anyone else.) But even more it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I'm unsure I've ever met a corporate lawyer who didn't think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. 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.

This is a profound psychological violence. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment? Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, rubbish collectors or mechanics, it's obvious that, were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or stevedores would soon be in trouble, and even one without science-fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity chief executives, lobbyists, public relations researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet, apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it in Britain, when tabloids whip up resentment against transport workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that the workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It's even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilising resentment against schoolteachers or car workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or car industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told: ''But you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and healthcare?''

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it's hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a 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 - but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working three to four-hour days.

David Graeber is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. This article first appeared in Strike! Magazine, a radical British quarterly that covers politics, philosophy and art. The article has subsequently struck a chord worldwide and we thank Strike! and Professor Graeber for allowing the Informant to republish it.

[Spoonist]

That is several shades of stupid at the same time.
a) there is no collective ruling class that have decided that free time is dangerous - that is tinfoil hat kind of stupid
b) the arbitrary division into productive/unproductive is not up to him, sales being the most obvious example of his stupid reasoning, without sales/marketing most of consumer products couldn't exist, so stupid ignorance of reality
c) there is no reason at all to believe that the 15h work week was ever "reasonable", this because it is not preferable for the employer nor the employee, so its a stupid premise as well
d) most people in non-production jobs do not feel that their job shouldn't exist, especially so in the service sector, that is a stupid projection and a failure at anthropology
e) and the hyperbole of "profound psychological violence" is just simply dumb stupid
f) Then how many in the production industry doesn't complain about their jobs being pointless and redundant? Has he talked with temp laborers on farms? That is check your privilage kind of stupid.

[PainRack]

I been seeing that Keynes prediction for the last two weeks now. What prompted Keynes to make that?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

a) there is no collective ruling class that have decided that free time is dangerous - that is tinfoil hat kind of stupid
b) the arbitrary division into productive/unproductive is not up to him, sales being the most obvious example of his stupid reasoning, without sales/marketing most of consumer products couldn't exist, so stupid ignorance of reality
c) there is no reason at all to believe that the 15h work week was ever "reasonable", this because it is not preferable for the employer nor the employee, so its a stupid premise as well
d) most people in non-production jobs do not feel that their job shouldn't exist, especially so in the service sector, that is a stupid projection and a failure at anthropology
e) and the hyperbole of "profound psychological violence" is just simply dumb stupid
f) Then how many in the production industry doesn't complain about their jobs being pointless and redundant? Has he talked with temp laborers on farms? That is check your privilage kind of stupid.

A) No one said it was a deliberate conspiracy. Just that it's a system that benefits the ruling class and so is unconsciously favoured by it and thus helped perpetuated.

B, D, and F) The writer himself puts two conditions at least for the division: the person doing it can't find meaning and that it didn't seem to be necessary before and the change isn't mandated by shifts in technology or understanding. Also, it's not just a division of Industry vs Service like you're reading it: the writer puts musicians and housecleaners as essential jobs! And while no one's saying it's going to be universal anywhere, your example seems a bit weird. It should be pretty obvious to anyone how farming is incredibly essential. Maybe it's a matter of "a machine could do my job" but that's different from "is what I'm doing even really helping anyone".

C) 15 hour work week doesn't mean the employee has to do 15 hours and then can't work anymore. At 15 hours, two jobs is more than reasonable if you want (and so long as 2 jobs is a luxury, not a necessity like it is for many nowadays). And for the many people who WOULD like a shorter work week of 15-20 hours, this is a marked improvement. As for helping employers, as long as it helps PEOPLE I don't care about if it helps the system we have now

E) One of the biggest nonchemical causes of suicidal depression is the simultaneous feeling of obligation and being useless. This system seems primed to help aggravate that by making everyone work long hours to get by or else be an EVIL PARASITE while at the same time putting many people in a job where they can't really see how what they're doing helps anything.

[Simon_Jester]

Sydney Morning Herald

...
It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as it had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem that market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking business is going to do is shell out money to workers they don't really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

Part of the problem is the "red queen's race," on which more below- that part of it's not an active conspiracy of capitalism, it's a passive result.

...A world without teachers or stevedores would soon be in trouble, and even one without science-fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity chief executives, lobbyists, public relations researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet, apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

[/quote]Some exceptions to that- bailiffs you need to have a working court system, actuaries you need to make insurance work, or to make informed judgments about whether to take a business risk. But I get the basic point, and have observed much the same myself.

If you removed all the PR departments, they'd tend to disappear because the net effect of PR is to cancel itself out: if both Coke and Pepsi quit trying to advertise and expand into new markets, they'd probably keep roughly the same market share they already have, because their existing efforts are acting mainly to cancel each other out. On the other hand, if one stops and the other doesn't, the one that stops will probably go out of business within a few decades. Oops.

So we get into an arms race, because the endless competition between companies requires them to find some way to gain an upper hand. If you can't improve your product noticeably (and the cola warriors can't, they've tried)... you have to improve your salesmanship. So you hire a bloated sales department, and your rival does the same to match you, and it all ends in the results we see.

A similar process obtains for lobbyists, telemarketers, and (especially!) legal consultants and lawyers. Law is particularly bad because the consequences of having the best lawyers are very asymmetric, compared to the consequences of having no lawyer.

[Spoonist]

@GMJ
a) free time isn't dangerous regardless of what tinfoil you are wearing - that is what TV and internet are there for, in the modern age the ones with more free time is more complient than the ones with less. What "the rich" should be fearing are education and students - those are always the first on the ramparts - but guess what, corporate america is demanding more education not less. Hence why people feel that diplomas are no longer the gateway to privilage that it used to be.
b-d-f) the writer is contradicting himself and thus only one side needed to be pointed out - either it is a massive problem with a large% then those points of mine apply, if it isn't massive with a large % then the whole observation is redundant.
I mean almost none of his observations are new for the last 50 years, instead they are all equally "true" if we were standing in the 50s looking back. With better societies, education and information more and more people will realise how useless their jobs are, or how artificial they are, yay - go humans. It is a good thing, most people who drive that stupid kind of reasoning as the writer are from societies where trivial, meaningless jobs are looked down on. Check your privilage kind of stupid like I said. Having been to China or Pakistan I've met plenty of people who competed to get jobs like doorman, or elevator operator, or car attendant, or any number of such jobs which from privilage would be considered meneal or meaningless - while for them it would be a huge step up. This is not because the job itself is less or more meaningless but whether relative to our status and expectations it is on par. He is complaining about progress making us demand more from our lives, wow, that is some grand conspiracy of the rich and privilaged right there.
c) the two jobs thing is what has really happened - over and over and over - but for the same employer, it simply means you get more done in less time, why would anyone ever consider two 15h jobs would be better than one 30h? It would be a very privileged individual who would get something better out of that equation.
Now what you and the writer fail to understand is that in most of the work above minimum pay it is possible to work less hours than we do and still get by - however our expectations on life has increased and hence increased living costs going with it - so the vast majority of people would work extra to be able to consume more - just like they do today.
Same thing with the "productive" people like farmers, if you don't make yourself redundant every now and then you will be outcompeted by someone who did - better faster stronger and all that.
e) wut? "this system"??? What system are you refering to here? Yes feeling of obligation and uselessness etc but what did that have to do with the stupidity of the article? Your point is the opposite of true to what you are trying to argue. Unemployment is a much higher suicide factor than a pointless job. Creating pointless all-day jobs would decrease suicidal depression - not increase it. Also the suicide rate is higher among the privileged than among the non-privileged. The worst demographic in the US is older white male - it is the difference about your expectations and reality that drives suicidal actions.

[Spoonist]

If you removed all the PR departments, they'd tend to disappear because the net effect of PR is to cancel itself out: if both Coke and Pepsi quit trying to advertise and expand into new markets, they'd probably keep roughly the same market share they already have, because their existing efforts are acting mainly to cancel each other out.

Nope. Study after study shows the opposite. By having both Coke and Pepsi doing PR, the market for sodas increase.
When expanding into new markets the same thing happens. Consumers are driven by want, by creating that artificial want we create new markets and market shares that wouldn't otherwise have existed.

This is typically seen when a huge company make a massive marketing campain, then all of those in the market benefit - even the competitors. Typical studies are for things like cell phones, candy, soda, cars etc. They all increase total demand.

The only place in PR where you'd have a cancel out effect is where you are promoting essentials, but even then you can increase the market by dividing it into cheap/middle/luxury niches etc.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

It's funny how you talk about my perspective being privileged but then you say that all the extra work we put in today is purely to get more stuff for ourselves. I'm sure the massive upspike in people working but making less than a living wage in the last few decades is entirely irrelevant, right?

Your ideas about the depression do not match at all with what I've read and experienced. It's not just lack of contribution but expectation of contribution that does it, because the combination leads to feelings of being a burden. If there was no societal expectation that people had to work long hours (or even at all, a least in a formal employment sense), there would be a lot less issue with un- or (relative to now) underemployment causing people to have issues. I know from my personal experience that when I'm unemployed I don't yearn for any work at all, I yearn for being able to do something that matters; the only reason I go for jobs I don't see as doing much is because, well, I like getting enough money to live and our society is set up to require that.

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".

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Nope. Study after study shows the opposite. By having both Coke and Pepsi doing PR, the market for sodas increase.
When expanding into new markets the same thing happens. Consumers are driven by want, by creating that artificial want we create new markets and market shares that wouldn't otherwise have existed.

This is typically seen when a huge company make a massive marketing campain, then all of those in the market benefit - even the competitors. Typical studies are for things like cell phones, candy, soda, cars etc. They all increase total demand.

Ah yes, the world would be a much worse place if fewer people were unconsciously convinced they need to buy sodas. God bless the Pepsico and Coca-Cola marketing departments from saving us from that hellish potential life!

Some marketing is obviously good in some way, but not all of it. You should be able to know the difference between marketing in the sense of raising awareness and marketing in the sense of selling people on a product, no?

[Thanas]

What are you advocating for then?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Well as an endgame I'd like a society that doesn't link employment with survivability at all, even on a level of personal feelings let alone rules and outcomes.

But for first steps we can do now, things like a guaranteed income can work, and upping wages to the point that a single job is able to support a house again meaning people don't have to work multiple jobs should help. Both should cut demand for jobs for jobs' sake in addition to all the other benefits they'd provide to the lower classes.

Also, to clarify, I don't agree with all the article said; it seems easy to talk about firing all the lawyers and HR when some of them are obviously necessary to help things run better. It's the core concept, the idea that employment being seen as the natural and required condition rather than a means to an end is distorting our society.

[Patroklos]

Before about say 100 years ago musicians and actors were the basest of professions and even the most respected and patronized generally lived on the brink of backruptcy. Artists have never had it so good in the numbers that have made it today. His buddy is not the victim of the modern job market.

Thats one of a thousand problems I have with this piece.

[Zwinmar]

If I were working for a minimum wage job (U.S) or for 2.50 + 'tips' I would most likely also be working for a place that does not allow overtime and will, at their discretion keep you under 32 hours. However, If I were working part time they would routinely have scheduled a full time schedule of 32 hours since it isn't considered 'full time' while at the lower part time wages. Also as part time there are no benefits. Also, if you are required to work over time, good luck getting your pay.

Additionally if someone is working for minimum wage (or 2.50 + tips) they are expected to work like a slave and like it, it is a 'privilege' to flip burgers, work at Walmart etc. And yes they will tell you that 'you can quit if you don't like it.'

[Lagmonster]

If I were working for a minimum wage job (U.S) or for 2.50 + 'tips' I would most likely also be working for a place that does not allow overtime and will, at their discretion keep you under 32 hours. However, If I were working part time they would routinely have scheduled a full time schedule of 32 hours since it isn't considered 'full time' while at the lower part time wages. Also as part time there are no benefits. Also, if you are required to work over time, good luck getting your pay.

Additionally if someone is working for minimum wage (or 2.50 + tips) they are expected to work like a slave and like it, it is a 'privilege' to flip burgers, work at Walmart etc. And yes they will tell you that 'you can quit if you don't like it.'

So, after all this, what kind of system or fixes would you prefer?

[Simon_Jester]

@GMJ
a) free time isn't dangerous regardless of what tinfoil you are wearing - that is what TV and internet are there for, in the modern age the ones with more free time is more complient than the ones with less. What "the rich" should be fearing are education and students - those are always the first on the ramparts - but guess what, corporate america is demanding more education not less. Hence why people feel that diplomas are no longer the gateway to privilage that it used to be.

We may also be seeing a shift in the type of education, and its significance. Increased demand for college degrees in America has coincided with the decline of the high school diploma as a mark of distinction- to the point where the college diploma now signals more or less the same thing a high school diploma used to. Theoretically it provides more education and therefore makes the students more of a "first on the ramparts" threat, but I think the dynamics behind that trend are more complex than you imply.

I mean almost none of his observations are new for the last 50 years, instead they are all equally "true" if we were standing in the 50s looking back. With better societies, education and information more and more people will realise how useless their jobs are, or how artificial they are, yay - go humans. It is a good thing, most people who drive that stupid kind of reasoning as the writer are from societies where trivial, meaningless jobs are looked down on. Check your privilage kind of stupid like I said. Having been to China or Pakistan I've met plenty of people who competed to get jobs like doorman, or elevator operator, or car attendant, or any number of such jobs which from privilage would be considered meneal or meaningless - while for them it would be a huge step up. This is not because the job itself is less or more meaningless but whether relative to our status and expectations it is on par. He is complaining about progress making us demand more from our lives, wow, that is some grand conspiracy of the rich and privilaged right there.

The class of job you're talking about is sometimes more meaningful in that it is actually doing something useful to someone, and does not purely cancel itself out, even if a machine could do it perfectly well, or if every person could be expected to do it for themselves.

A 1950s gas station attendant had a real job, which was useful to people, even if his job could be replaced very effectively by automation and self-service with the rise of the credit card.

c) the two jobs thing is what has really happened - over and over and over - but for the same employer, it simply means you get more done in less time, why would anyone ever consider two 15h jobs would be better than one 30h? It would be a very privileged individual who would get something better out of that equation.

Now this is a relevant point; many employers are effectively hiring one person to do what was once the work of two, and relying on improvements in technology or procedures to make up the difference.

Now what you and the writer fail to understand is that in most of the work above minimum pay it is possible to work less hours than we do and still get by - however our expectations on life has increased and hence increased living costs going with it - so the vast majority of people would work extra to be able to consume more - just like they do today.

This is probably a factor... but when we combine it with what you say to me, we have a valid social critique of the modern order of things.

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.

Suppose that the world consisted of corn farmers and pill-makers. The pills stimulate an appetite for corn. Everyone grows enough corn, plus a little surplus. Then the pill-makers give everyone an appetite-stimulator. Suddenly they want more corn- so they work harder and grow more. Improvements in production result in loss of a few corn-growing jobs, because they overshot a little. The unemployed farmers become pill-makers. This further stimulates people's appetite, causing yet more increase in production... et cetera.

If everyone didn't keel over from terminal obesity, we could imagine a situation where a handful of corn farmers grow vast amounts of food for everyone, several times more than it would take to feed them all. While the majority of the population is busily making hunger-pills to get everyone to eat as much of the corn as possible.

If that happened, a visiting anthropologist might reasonably point out that the pill-makers' actions are counterproductive. Sure, if it weren't for them there would be less of an appetite for corn. But perhaps all that time and effort could be used in a more constructive way than just creating a disproportionate appetite for existing goods.

______________

*Consider that I referred to market share, though; if I wanted to lawyer it, I'd point out that having an equal share of a smaller market is still the same market share.

But seriously, yes, you make a very good point there, of which I was entirely unwitting before. Thanks.

[Esquire]

So... unless I missed something, this simplifies to the two statements that:

Money is at best an abstract measure of real, practical value,

and:

Capitalism optimizes for greater profit as measured in money, not (efficiency as such/human good/moral principles; delete as appropriate).

News at 11?

[Zwinmar]

This is not by any means all inclusive but some ideas:
1. Management needs to be able to not only see their employes perspective but also work fairly with them. Even the idea that someone who goes to college and automatically gets payed more (even if they do not know the job) than someone who has technical experience in the field is ridiculous. This is made worse by the order of magnitude difference in pay.
2. Companies should never be allowed to exploit their workers. The whole 2.50 + tips falls under this.
3. While I do not like unions (the current 'mob' controlled ones) in the slightest, I think there should be one for every job position so that there is a check against the corporations. These unions should be voluntary on the employees part if they wish to join or not.
4. There should be a competitive guild like system to a degree (sorry best way I can think to say it) where proficiency determines pay rates.
5. There needs to be heavier government regulations in some areas; such as the food and medical industries. The reason for this is that it has been proven over and over that corporations have only profit in mind and will have no safeties in place if they can get away with it.
6. CEO's (board members etc who are involved in making decisions) are personally responsible for their companies unethical actions. If say, dumping waste, is an accident ok, give a fine, but if it is a conscious or negligent act, make them pay. And by pay I mean a substantial percentage of the company's income before taxes/upkeep/wages. The same for the CEO/boardmember/etc.

Granted, I may well be fully off base with all this, and I realize there are, most likely, many factors that I do not know about/or not including.

Part of 1 is that employers need to realize that some people have injuries and disabilities and even if they (the managers) do not know what it feels like, does not mean they have the right to assume someone is faking, especially when they were told about it on the application and in the interview.

[Patroklos]

Guilds and Unions do not mix.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The author went off the rails before the halfway mark, but it is hard to disagree that the number of non-productive workers has spiked over the last few decades. A modern capitalist society does need a certain number of bankers, lawyers, administrators, etc., but these professions merely allocate physical and labour resources, and do not create or improve it. You only need a certain number of these workers in a society, and we are miles past that threshold. Handiness has also diminished almost to the point of non-existence. In my father's generation, a man was looked down upon if he couldn't perform basic maintenance on his own car. New cars, on the other hand, often don't even come with a dipstick, and most out-of-warranty maintenance and repairs are done at the rape room auto shop. I do not pretend to understand the cause of the shift, but it is real and worrisome.

[ChaserGrey]

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.

[Simon_Jester]

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]

[Spoonist]

@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.
Please stop that, neither can be supported from my posts. Not past, nor present.
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.

It's funny how you talk about my perspective being privileged

Nope, what is funny is that I wasn't talking about your perspective at all. Check my post again and this time take a step back from the fantasy version of it.

It's funny how you talk about my perspectivebut then you say that all the extra work we put in today is purely to get more stuff for ourselves.

Didn't say that. I like grey areas and a word like "purely" is too much of a black/white thing for my taste. What I said was that lots of people who have the choice to work part time - don't. Part of the explanation being that we do that to consume more, since it is within our expectations. So since those who could afford a 15h work week, simply don't do that, what are we to make of the "reasonability" of such a claim?
Now, I do know people who do things of that nature but usually that is a different consumption thingie, like working your ass off for a year and then go travelling for some months spending it all. Only to repeat the process. etc

I'm sure the massive upspike in people working but making less than a living wage in the last few decades is entirely irrelevant, right?

Yes? Because it has nothing to do with my criticism of the article, so why do you think it would have any relevance in arguing against that criticism? What does inequality have to do with that?

Your ideas about the depression do not match at all with what I've read and experienced.

Then you simply haven't been reading up on the statistics. There are lots of counterintuitive stuff in there. But I think that you might be falling into the trap of equating suicidal actions with depression. In your response to me you were talking about suicidal depression, but now you have switched to generic depression.
Lots of people with non-clinical/non-suicidal depression express apathy instead of despair.

It's not just lack of contribution but expectation of contribution that does it, because the combination leads to feelings of being a burden. If there was no societal expectation that people had to work long hours (or even at all, a least in a formal employment sense), there would be a lot less issue with un- or (relative to now) underemployment causing people to have issues.

None of that is different from what I said, I even covered that with the "it is the difference about your expectations and reality that drives suicidal actions." line. So I don't see how that would be an example of my idea not matching stuff.

I know from my personal experience that when I'm unemployed I don't yearn for any work at all, I yearn for being able to do something that matters; the only reason I go for jobs I don't see as doing much is because, well, I like getting enough money to live and our society is set up to require that.

And wasn't that also covered by me already???

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.

[Spoonist]

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."
Hence the that reply of mine.

The class of job you're talking about is sometimes more meaningful in that it is actually doing something useful to someone, and does not purely cancel itself out, even if a machine could do it perfectly well, or if every person could be expected to do it for themselves.
A 1950s gas station attendant had a real job, which was useful to people, even if his job could be replaced very effectively by automation and self-service with the rise of the credit card.

Yes? And?
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.
The amount of complaints are relative to our perception of what constitutes a meaningfull job. That most 1st worlders no longer see any given white collar jobs as meaningfull just because they are white collar is a good thing. That the % of people who think that a servant job isn't meaningfull just because it isn't backbreakingly agonizing manual labour, is also a good thing. That countries like china have such a large income disparity that the servant market is exploding, is a bad thing in the long run, but a good thing short term for all of those getting out of the backbreaking manual labour sector. Just like it was in the US in the 40s and 50s.
Now here is a counter question, do you think that a society with a growing economy and with an increasing industrial output will create more or less jobs that the employee will feel is meaningless?

Now this is a relevant point; many employers are effectively hiring one person to do what was once the work of two, and relying on improvements in technology or procedures to make up the difference.

And most importantly, those who didn't were outcompeted and are now gone.

This is probably a factor... but when we combine it with what you say to me, we have a valid social critique of the modern order of things.

This is an example of you taking criticism of that crappy opinion piece to be some sort of implicit approval of how things are.
Me, I can go on for hours criticising the stupidity of economics, corporations, managements and the stockmarket. You and I have done so before in this forum.
However just like ever if I make a flawed assumption or get a fact wrong, I'd expect to be called on that etc.

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. I don't think its safe to make any such assumptions. A consumer society will have the incentive to have a much larger economy. Thus driving a larger industrial production and research. Such a larger economy would drive not only research and production of consumer products but also everything else at the same time. Medicine, foodproduction, standard of living, etc.
Where we could get into an interesting argument is how the state should act responsibly in a consumer economy - should it be more like the US, more like mainland europe, or more like scandinavia, etc?
Lot's of the stupidity of corporations and so called markets are constructs of rules and regulations or their abscence created by states.
For instance the USA is a paradise for corporate lawyers specifically due to flaws in its legaslative processes in a way where it isn't in most other countries.

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.

*Consider that I referred to market share, though; if I wanted to lawyer it, I'd point out that having an equal share of a smaller market is still the same market share.

Actually you could even argue that they lose market shares through advertising their increasing of the market. Whenever the big two make huge cola campains the consumption of non-brand colas go up as well thus creating markets for cheapo-cola and antichoice cola as well (bio-cola, anticapitalist cola,etc etc). They have almost zero marketing budget but couldn't exist if it were not for the huge marketing budgets of the major brands.

But seriously, yes, you make a very good point there, of which I was entirely unwitting before. Thanks.

One of the interesting things is the power of good that marketing can be put to. There are lots of governement campains of the 40s to 70s that created needs and markets for things which were beneficial to individuals and society at the same time - that is largely gone from the 1st world. Such a thing could get me ranting like the article in questino.
While it is actively happening in the growing economies. Like the "no loo - no I do" campain in India:
http://bigthink.com/Global-Pedestrian/i ... oo-no-i-do

[RogueIce]

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.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

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.