On the Phenomena of Bullsh*t Jobs

[Typhoon]

Strike Mag | On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work 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 marshaled, 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 Europe and North America in particular, 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.

[manolo]

Strike Mag | On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work 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 marshaled, 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 Europe and North America in particular, 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.

Typhoon,

The protestant work ethic is a moral and spiritual idea that few will challenge. Governments of all colours talk about unemployment as the most serious of social ills, and in the same way they talk about economic growth as the only cure.

To think outside this box is heresy.

Alex.

[YMix]

A very interesting article. Thank you, Typhoon, for posting it. I am well aware of the fact that the job I've been doing for the past ten years or so is 90% useless. The article reminded me of Doug Stanhope's definition of the hourly wage for such work: "how much is it worth for them to have their lives suck".

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?

[Simple Minded]

Great Post Typhoon THANKS!!!

I'm surprised it has not generated more discussion. In some paragraphs the author seems to make some astute observations, in others he sounds like a pouty, spoiled teenager whining to his mommy! Must be a typical human, I guess.

Couple quick thoughts, that may only be relative to the US, but since people seem the same everywhere, probably not.

All my peers grew up in houses with no AC, one bathroom, one TV if you were lucky, and one telephone. No one had riding lawn mowers or dishwashers even though the yards were three times the size they are now and the families were twice as big. That's why you had kids! The families were twice as big back then, but the houses are twice as big now. Everyone was wearing their older bother's/sister's/cousin's hand-me-down-clothes. Using modern production methods, VW could produce the 1972 Super beetle today for probably under $1500, but no one would buy it! Same can be said for the Ford model T. Keynes blew that one! Why is it that economists seldom know Jack Squat about human nature?

After 5-8 decades of prosperity, even poor people are constantly making status symbols out of their clothes, houses, cars, children, hobbies, education, etc.

None of the above can be blamed on "da man!" Only on the psychological insecurities/pathologies of the individual.

Yet we still whine about how our lives are controlled by others???

Everyone I know in the lower middle class could easily cut their expenses by 60% simply by living like their parents or grandparents. They don't want to live like that!! Today's whiners sound just like us enlightened children of the 60s. Don't trust anyone over 30!!!! Ever!!!! Even the hippies have become the people they claimed were ruining everything!

ACA, ADA, EPA, OSHA, NHTSA - those who desired and actively campaigned for infinite regulation to make life "better" or more "fair"...... and who went out of their way to demand that lawyers and politicians must dominate their lives, now complain about the cost and effects of regulation on their lives!! Reaping what you have sown!

How stupid can people be? Answer: We don't know yet! We are still pushing the envelope!!

How can people NOT SEE the humor/irony in all this?

[Torchwood]

Roger Scruton summarised it well: about 10% of the population do useful jobs, the other 90% become "consultants" giving the productive people advice they did not realise they needed (in case of burgeoning legal regulation, compulsory advice). I see this as a higher form of capitalism, which originally emerged as providing goods which people did not previously realise they needed. He wrote this after moving to a rural community where his neighbours (with lower incomes and status than him) were producers, and as an academic and journalist, he was clearly in the "consultant" category. Like most people here, I suspect, I have spent my whole career as a "consultant".

The problem (as with the current crisis of developed world capitalism) is the lack of a clear alternative. Work does indeed serve the interests of our masters to keep the masses diverted, but it also provides structure, purpose and discipline to people's lives. There is a well known phenomenon (fortunately a minority of cases) of people reluctantly going to work for decades, retiring and having nothing to do, and quickly dying.

The only alternatives which have been tried and offered are training people to kill other people (how Germany solved the Great Depression...) or spending your time in nutty religious practices, endlessly learning the Koran or Torah by rote, or reciting Om Mane Padme etc, or attending environutty conferences . There is considerable overlap with the killing bit, The social usefulness is questionable, and there is blowback. Evangelical Christianity has missed a trick here, because of its AmericoPuritan work obsessed background, it is spreading by teaching Africans, South Americans, Asians etc. to become more effective useless job "consultants".

It's a bit like the fact that the giant human brain had evolved by 50000BC and apart from a few pretty cave paintings, does not seem to have been put to major use till around 5000BC. We have basically developed the Universal Cornucopia Machine and do not yet have a clue what to do with it.

At the very least we could forgo the Anglo Saxon/East Asian "real men work 14 hour days" insanity. Germans don't do this, but they have a lower proportion of "consultants". Noteworthy that among most the most pointless professions (corporate law, finance) the phenomenon is at its worst. It runs deep however - most people, for good psychological reasons, have convinced themselves that their job is important. The rather feeble ant-crisis/Occupy protests are asking for jobs (i.e make work consultancies) while their antecedents the Hippies were protesting that people expected them to have jobs.

[monster_gardener]

Roger Scruton summarised it well: about 10% of the population do useful jobs, the other 90% become "consultants" giving the productive people advice they did not realise they needed (in case of burgeoning legal regulation, compulsory advice). I see this as a higher form of capitalism, which originally emerged as providing goods which people did not previously realise they needed. He wrote this after moving to a rural community where his neighbours (with lower incomes and status than him) were producers, and as an academic and journalist, he was clearly in the "consultant" category. Like most people here, I suspect, I have spent my whole career as a "consultant".

The problem (as with the current crisis of developed world capitalism) is the lack of a clear alternative. Work does indeed serve the interests of our masters to keep the masses diverted, but it also provides structure, purpose and discipline to people's lives. There is a well known phenomenon (fortunately a minority of cases) of people reluctantly going to work for decades, retiring and having nothing to do, and quickly dying.

The only alternatives which have been tried and offered are training people to kill other people (how Germany solved the Great Depression...) or spending your time in nutty religious practices, endlessly learning the Koran or Torah by rote, or reciting Om Mane Padme etc, or attending environutty conferences . There is considerable overlap with the killing bit, The social usefulness is questionable, and there is blowback. Evangelical Christianity has missed a trick here, because of its AmericoPuritan work obsessed background, it is spreading by teaching Africans, South Americans, Asians etc. to become more effective useless job "consultants".

It's a bit like the fact that the giant human brain had evolved by 50000BC and apart from a few pretty cave paintings, does not seem to have been put to major use till around 5000BC. We have basically developed the Universal Cornucopia Machine and do not yet have a clue what to do with it.

At the very least we could forgo the Anglo Saxon/East Asian "real men work 14 hour days" insanity. Germans don't do this, but they have a lower proportion of "consultants". Noteworthy that among most the most pointless professions (corporate law, finance) the phenomenon is at its worst. It runs deep however - most people, for good psychological reasons, have convinced themselves that their job is important. The rather feeble ant-crisis/Occupy protests are asking for jobs (i.e make work consultancies) while their antecedents the Hippies were protesting that people expected them to have jobs.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Torchwood.

There is plenty of work to do if we are willing to do it.

Mean Green Mother Nature has some nasty Space Rocks out there auditioning to do to us what one of them did to the Dinosaurs........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_impactor

If we don't get effective meteor shield services* up and running in Space, we will have ourselves to blame at this point in our technological development..........

Vital Lifesaving Work.........

Though it can be dangerous or drudgery........

Have read that being/training to be an astronaut can be one of the hardest/worst jobs there is.......

And the people doing the drudgery need to be paid and have service personnel to do the logistics work...........

Lots of Work to Do if We Are to Survive........

Without depending on G_D or the Culture to save us......

I wouldn't bet much on the Culture..........

Ian Banks is dead..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Overview

[Torchwood]

MG, most of the worthy things to do - space rocks perhaps, certainly new energy supplies, new agricultural varieties - involve not many people, who are mostly already in the productive part of society. We will still need lots of "consultants"

[monster_gardener]

MG, most of the worthy things to do - space rocks perhaps, certainly new energy supplies, new agricultural varieties - involve not many people, who are mostly already in the productive part of society. We will still need lots of "consultants"

Thank You VERY Much for your kind reply, Torchwood.

You may be right but IMHO, a proper Space Program could be a smaller version the military....

Remembering the long logistical tail that each American soldier/Astronaut has....

Lots of need for logistics workers.....

And suppliers....

Also Astronomy is a science where even amateurs can make genuine contributions in things like discovery of comets (Icy Space Rocks) and in observation of variable stars * for which professional astronomers often do not have time....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_A ... _Observers

*Some of which are another potential dangers, notably Eta Carina, which is a potential super/hyper nova or gamma burster especially bad as it is in the sky of the South Hemisphere giving it the potential to trouble what is the mostly non nuke hemisphere of Earth....



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carina ... s_on_Earth

[Enki]

Strike Mag | On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work 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 marshaled, 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 Europe and North America in particular, 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.

Typhoon,

The protestant work ethic is a moral and spiritual idea that few will challenge. Governments of all colours talk about unemployment as the most serious of social ills, and in the same way they talk about economic growth as the only cure.

To think outside this box is heresy.

Alex.

Challenging the protestant work ethic is my life's mission. The protestant work ethic is simply slavery made to sound pretty.

And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

[Simple Minded]

Working less and enjoying life more (assuming one does not enjoy their chosen vocation) seems relatively easy to do, if one is not obsessed with status.

The idea that wealth equals happiness and the desire for more material stuff both die shortly before the bull market dies of old age.

Overcoming vanity is an internal struggle. Although having poor peers and indebted parents seems an invaluable teaching aid.

[manolo]

Challenging the protestant work ethic is my life's mission. The protestant work ethic is simply slavery made to sound pretty.

And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

Enki,

Agree with your view although the prediction sounds a bit optimistic.

Working for the love of a vocation (or just to keep busy) is a fine thing, but I have known folks who worked their asses off for another reason - fear of poverty in old age. There was never quite enough money for them to feel secure, so more work........................................

Not really a work ethic, more a fear ethic.

Alex.

[Simple Minded]

.........................And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

Spoken like an Elliott Wave practitioner.....I agree with you on this one Tinker.

After watching the Boomers & Xers spend themselves into oblivion during the bull market of the last 30 years. I would expect that not only have most boomers and Xers learned their lesson, but also the next two generations. Or at least that is the cycle I would expect.

Now whether greed & materialism are causes and bull markets are effects , or austerity & ascetism are causes and bear markets are effects…. will be debated until the sun burns out.

Charts I have seen suggest spending in the west peaks at about age 46, if one is not raised in splender, the period where one is most susceptible to the peer pressure to take on a lot of debt is from age 18 to age 40. After about age 40, it is very easy to realize the lesson of our grandparents, that in many instances, it is better to “Learn to do without!”

For some bizarre reason, thruout the West, from about 1980 to 2005, people stopped looking at debt as a burden. Lousy parents? Cycles of history?

Blame “da man,” blame the Fed, blame Madison Avenue, blame your friends, blame yourself…… Rationalization of cause doesn’t matter, result or effect does.

You call it "the Protestant work ethic" I call it "the desire for free lunches and square circles"...... the generation gap in communication & terminology remains a constant.

[Enki]

Enki,

Agree with your view although the prediction sounds a bit optimistic.

Working for the love of a vocation (or just to keep busy) is a fine thing, but I have known folks who worked their asses off for another reason - fear of poverty in old age. There was never quite enough money for them to feel secure, so more work........................................

Not really a work ethic, more a fear ethic.

Alex.

Not so much optimistic as a recognition of the reality that a lot of labor is obsolete.

[manolo]

Not so much optimistic as a recognition of the reality that a lot of labor is obsolete.

Enki,

Yes, that is the fear.

Alex.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Challenging the protestant work ethic is my life's mission. The protestant work ethic is simply slavery made to sound pretty.

And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

Forgive me (and you know you're my boy and all), but you happen to live in one of the most expensive places on the planet, the capital of a global empire that uses military occupation and intimidation to divert 1/3 of the world's resources to the 5% of the world's population it houses. For the great portion of the world's population not living off the fat of global empire, your pronouncements about not working for a living sound ridiculous. Like a Roman citizen c.150 AD eating the free state-provided bread at the complimentary gladiator games talking about how scratching out a living through labor was a sucker's game that would be obsolete in ten years or less.

[Enki]

Challenging the protestant work ethic is my life's mission. The protestant work ethic is simply slavery made to sound pretty.

And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

Forgive me (and you know you're my boy and all), but you happen to live in one of the most expensive places on the planet, the capital of a global empire that uses military occupation and intimidation to divert 1/3 of the world's resources to the 5% of the world's population it houses. For the great portion of the world's population not living off the fat of global empire, your pronouncements about not working for a living sound ridiculous. Like a Roman citizen c.150 AD eating the free state-provided bread at the complimentary gladiator games talking about how scratching out a living through labor was a sucker's game that would be obsolete in ten years or less.

Robots replace people who think that I sound ridiculous more often than they replace people who understand what I am saying.

What I am attacking is the idea that poverty is a function of intellect and ability that you advance. The system of property ownership advantages the owners of property. And the protestant work ethic is the pernicious idea that those who aren't advantaged by being property owners as having some sort of mental or moral failing.

And I am not against work, what I am against is work for it's own sake. I am against the idea that working in and of itself is virtuous. If only Hitler had been lazier, or maybe more disciplined as an artist. And there are a very high number of busy work jobs that can be removed through efficiency gains not even automation. The protestant work ethic teaches us to value human beings by their ability to serve the owners of capital, and not because we value human life in and of itself.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Challenging the protestant work ethic is my life's mission. The protestant work ethic is simply slavery made to sound pretty.

And believe me in about ten years my ideas will be mainstream. Whether or not I get credit is irrelevant, but pretty much everyone is going to be recognizing that the protestant work ethic is obsolete.

Forgive me (and you know you're my boy and all), but you happen to live in one of the most expensive places on the planet, the capital of a global empire that uses military occupation and intimidation to divert 1/3 of the world's resources to the 5% of the world's population it houses. For the great portion of the world's population not living off the fat of global empire, your pronouncements about not working for a living sound ridiculous. Like a Roman citizen c.150 AD eating the free state-provided bread at the complimentary gladiator games talking about how scratching out a living through labor was a sucker's game that would be obsolete in ten years or less.

Robots replace people who think that I sound ridiculous more often than they replace people who understand what I am saying.

What I am attacking is the idea that poverty is a function of intellect and ability that you advance. The system of property ownership advantages the owners of property. And the protestant work ethic is the pernicious idea that those who aren't advantaged by being property owners as having some sort of mental or moral failing.

And I am not against work, what I am against is work for it's own sake. I am against the idea that working in and of itself is virtuous. If only Hitler had been lazier, or maybe more disciplined as an artist. And there are a very high number of busy work jobs that can be removed through efficiency gains not even automation. The protestant work ethic teaches us to value human beings by their ability to serve the owners of capital, and not because we value human life in and of itself.

You know too many smart urbanites. The slobs on the bottom of the ladder need to be kept busy, even if the work is meaningless.

Although robots are the long-term future, it is actually semi-skilled and skilled labor that has been affected most by them so far. Unskilled labor has been mostly devastated by offshoring work to children in Bangladesh or by importing millions of unskilled immigrants since poor third world suffering is still cheaper than shiny new robots.

[manolo]

Folks,

I can't believe this. We are going to do the jobs that are below the robot's pay scale.

Sheesh.

Alex.

[Mr. Perfect]

Maybe you guys should think of trading for a living. IMO it is a very easy lifestyle.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Maybe you guys should think of trading for a living. IMO it is a very easy lifestyle.

I hear sex trafficking in underage girls is a laid back lifestyle as well. I'll pass on both, thanks.

[Demon of Undoing]

Actually, its pretty stressful. One day you're playing pinochle while waiting for the Croat party of 14 to finish, and then freakin' Liam Neeson comes in and fractures your windpipe with a pie plate. Do you know how hard it is to get Slaver BCBS to pay out for that kind of crap?

At any rate, the Protestant work ethic properly understood does not encourage senseless work. It encourages you to do your labor as unto God and as very nearly an act of worship, letting the peace and fullness of God's work in your life be manifested by every- single- thing you put your hand to. This is the case whether running a scythe in a wheat field or writing code. It is IMO a beautiful injunction, akin to the integration of Shinto/ Zen into everything from calligraphy and flower arranging to archery and suicide.

Alas, Babylon, the whore, that prostitutes worshiping God with the work of your hands into worshiping the people that merely sell it. They have to sell it to someone, and so the circle is complete.

Marketplace on NPR was recently on location with a small farm operation. Using Deere sub- inch tractors ( GPS that locates spray lines or what have you within an inch accuracy), it took three men to manage a 2500 acre plot. Three men. And not all year at that. When that tech hits the roadways ( 10 years), its the ending bell.

And yes, people have been talking about this. Go to any Greatful Dead parking lot and you'd have heard this in fine detail. Sitting around smoking pot may not be good for a lot of things, but its reeeeeealy good for ruminating on the nature of work and the future of the species. Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

[Mr. Perfect]

Maybe you guys should think of trading for a living. IMO it is a very easy lifestyle.

I hear sex trafficking in underage girls is a laid back lifestyle as well. I'll pass on both, thanks.

I can't really see any comparison.

[Enki]

Actually, its pretty stressful. One day you're playing pinochle while waiting for the Croat party of 14 to finish, and then freakin' Liam Neeson comes in and fractures your windpipe with a pie plate. Do you know how hard it is to get Slaver BCBS to pay out for that kind of crap?

At any rate, the Protestant work ethic properly understood does not encourage senseless work. It encourages you to do your labor as unto God and as very nearly an act of worship, letting the peace and fullness of God's work in your life be manifested by every- single- thing you put your hand to. This is the case whether running a scythe in a wheat field or writing code. It is IMO a beautiful injunction, akin to the integration of Shinto/ Zen into everything from calligraphy and flower arranging to archery and suicide.

Alas, Babylon, the whore, that prostitutes worshiping God with the work of your hands into worshiping the people that merely sell it. They have to sell it to someone, and so the circle is complete.

Marketplace on NPR was recently on location with a small farm operation. Using Deere sub- inch tractors ( GPS that locates spray lines or what have you within an inch accuracy), it took three men to manage a 2500 acre plot. Three men. And not all year at that. When that tech hits the roadways ( 10 years), its the ending bell.

And yes, people have been talking about this. Go to any Greatful Dead parking lot and you'd have heard this in fine detail. Sitting around smoking pot may not be good for a lot of things, but its reeeeeealy good for ruminating on the nature of work and the future of the species. Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

A lot of that stuff can be miniaturized as well to provide at the most local of levels.

[Typhoon]

Tech Review | Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization

Oxford researchers say that 45 percent of America’s occupations will be automated within the next 20 years.

[Parodite]

Old types of jobs disappear, new types of jobs emerge. This is going on for a long time now. Where does it hurt?