The overproduction of elites - educating our dumb little children - is part of the problem. If you take a four-year course and get a degree in grievance studies, you have to go out there and do something with that newfound knowledge. The fact that what you do fucks everything up is no consequence. In fact it is never even reviewed.
We lost our industrial jobs so we sent Junior to college for education in human resources. Now we have a bunch of losers - junior -!running things and every thing is broken.
I actually did go straight to the hustle out of high school in ‘86. I didn’t start college until ‘91 when I knew that I wasn’t going to quit working in the field of pharmacy but was as smart as or smarter than all the pharmacists I was working with at the time. I didn’t graduate until ‘97 but it’s been the best decision I could have made, both delaying college and finally going once I knew I would be better off financially with that specific degree. By the time I went I was a home owner and a mom. It was hard but not much different in the end to what I would have been doing had I not gone. Sadly, I don’t think this trajectory is even possible now as affordable homes are a thing of the past. Either way, as someone who never stopped going to work during Covid I have been fully informed as to my job’s viability in society. I have never stopped knowing that I make a difference in peoples lives, that what I do matters. It’s a strong motivation to keep pushing through, even though I’ve had to fight for it (shot exemptions, refusing to vaccinate others). But I agree wholeheartedly that we need to push our next generation to do things that matter—utilities, mechanics, engineering, and technology are all things that will never go away. And healthcare is also a viable option but needs to be fully tempered with helping people be more healthy, not more sick.
There are problems with engineering though. "Systems" engineering has devolved into a series of prescribed processes, without any design or test experience required. I've started on new jobs that were bid by non-technical experts. It's unpleasant - they let you know they are experts in writing proposals - technical expertise is not required!
What happened to "all those" is mass immigration that stomps all over the wages in the skilled and semi-skilled profession, because despite the blatantly racist view espoused by the commies, not every invader is here to pick strawberries and other jobs "Muricans won't do (at these artificially low prices)!", they all want to move up to something better paying (but likely still much cheaper than employing a native, certainly more than employing a native aboveboard.)
As the parent of three young kids in a hardcore striver town, the holy grail of human existence seems to be playing division 3 sports at an elite east coast liberal arts college followed by a career in IB, PE, or CRE. I understand how this can be a fulfilling path for certain alpha male types but I really don't want that life for my kids unless they really want it.
I worked in a hard core bull shit job for like 4 years after law school and came to many of Graeber's conclusions on my own. I was amazed by how many people thrive in that environment and love playing the political corporate game. Despite hating my life during those years, I'm grateful for the experience because working a demanding shitty job for some period of time builds character, but can also fortify your resolve to carve your own path in life. Nowadays I see the commuters going into the city and get a pit in my stomach to work harder on my own flexible and enjoyable business. I honestly think I'd have a breakdown if I had to go back to that life in my 40s.
Although I have plenty of friends, that are, again, absolutely thriving in the corporate world and seem to have plenty of time to do the things they like.
This reminds me of my brief, soulless stint as a clerk-typist for the NLRB. it was a year of unimaginable torture typing bullshit legalese for government bureaucracy while desperately scouring jobs lists for something—anything—more worthwhile to do. My almost 9 years with the VA was made bearable by the fact that six of them were only 16 hours a week because I was in pharmacy school earning my destiny to never work for the government ever again. Ugh!
We need to get back to what our Founders intend. For all intents and purposes they were libertarians. While they didn't have specific name for the type of capitalism and free-markets they envisioned, I think they most closely would've defined it as Pareto Optimization. And if we got back to these first principles, bullshit jobs and drag they create on the economy would vanish.
The whole point of Pareto efficiency is that there are no losers. Its quite literally the entire purpose of the idea. Pareto efficiency describes the end state of a series of win-win choices, where no more win-win choices can be made anymore.
The entire purpose of pareto optimal choices is that they harm no one. a potential pareto improvement is where someone wins more than others lose, which in theory would mean that the loser could be brought back to the level they started at. So it's, in theory, a win-neutral game, or even a win-win after compensation, hence the potential for it to be a pareto improvement. Sure, not all mutually beneficial trades or choices are "just". Still, the fact that it's an interaction with no losers is certainly a point in its favor.
Also there is a notable absence of allocation here, but again, allocation isn't what Pareto improvements are about. It's more about minimizing "heat loss" of a system, ergo efficiency, not equity
Here's a recent example someone should show FEMA or Newsome:
The takeover of the economy by government-aligned corporations contributes to this accelerating phenomena of bullshit jobs, the wealth gap, bureaucratic domination, and government engineered theft (including inflation). The Wall St/Congress/Bureaucrat conspiracy has steered trillions into elite coffers. DEI and many government jobs are the epitome of "bullshit jobs," which, are just collateral damage to the Too-Big-to-Fail class.
Recent revelations that the private sector has been in recession while government has grown are symptomatic of the ongoing racket. Same for government's choosing winners and losers.
But there's a new sheriff in town. And he's deputized some gunslingers.
I first became familiar with David Graeber for his wonderful collaboration with an archeologist named David Wengrow on the book: The Dawn of Everything. No matter what your politics, it is a delight. (It's very long and comprehensive, but reasonably neutral politically.) That led me to Graeber's Debt, and the book with the same title as the above-mentioned article. The latter 2 are heavily influenced by his Marxist beliefs, but he is a talented writer and they are interesting in their way. Having performed numerous "Bullshit Jobs" in my working life I find it a fascinating topic. I'm taking a particular delight in watching Doge illuminate the BS jobs in government. One of my less popular sayings is from bitter experience: Ultimately, There Is NO Security.
My concern is who are we going to get to apply DOGE principals to the state and city governments.
We have a bunch of cities (like Austin, where I live) that spew money on stupidity and couldn't get a project done if it involved construction paper and glue stick.
Lost my job of 35 years in the public sector in 2022, partly (male, pale and stale) due to a desire by the organisation to balance DEI statistics. I spent most of that 35 year period convincing myself I was happy as I was getting one over on society by only actually working about 5% of the time.
Finished there on a Tuesday and started in a private sector job on Wednesday. Now I have an amazing and fulfilling role in which I learn every day. I never once realised the importance of personal growth to my well being. It is vital to me. For all those wailing and bitching about DOGE doing a job on govt employes, losing mine was the best thing that could've happened to me. My only regret is that it didn't happen sooner.
Lost my teaching job in 2002 due to government cutbacks. Ended up working in Asia afterwards for 15 years, which was one of the best things to ever happen to me.
You're lucky, particularly that it didn't happen when thousands of former government employees are about to hit the job market. Look, I get it that losing any job precipitously is traumatic. I had it happen numerous times in my life when I thought I'd finally settled into a career. Stuff happens and there are no guarantees. It seems like a lot of these who've been let go feel they were entitled to a security that simply doesn't exist.
“ The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger ”
He got that right. There are different ways that free time is being eliminated, and productivity is being punished, and it unfortunately doesn’t all come from the Marxists.
We can’t even imagine what a world might look like when people are actually free.
But a lot of the hard work is being done for the ruling class by the much larger mediocre class. Most times I have been stopped in life has been by someone, or an institution who or which has felt threatened by what might become apparent if I were allowed to proceed freely….and what would become apparent is that the person/institution in charge of me is either incompetent or unnecessary or malignant. So I (and millions of others) have been shut down. We have been shut down even when what we propose to do is a 100% win-win, and would make more money for our malignant overseers. They will often sacrifice yet more profits to maintain their longer term position or even reputation.
So unfortunately I don’t share your optimism that we are about to shed the oppression of the professional managerial class, or the professional mediocre class, as I prefer to designate them.
In the end today it is the classic yuppie Nuremberg defense, “I don’t want to rock the boat, I have a mortgage to pay.” Americans, myself included have a morbid fear of being broke and destitute, so we go along; we check the box, agree that all whites are racist, and hope the paycheck comes in, but all it takes is a layoff or downsizing and if we can’t have our Starbucks or Taylor swift, it’s a revolution.
Paraphrasing and adjusting one of the greatest quotes from Star Trek Deep Space Nine (season 7), “let me tell you something about Americans; we are a wonderful, friendly people, as long as our bellies are full and our instagram is working. But deprive us of creature comforts, deprive us of food, sleep, hot showers, WiFi, put our anxiety into overdrive, then those same wonderful, fun, decent people, will become as nasty, and as violent, as the most bloodthirsty terrorist.”
We are all a day away from humility, and as Silvio Dante said, “you’re only as good as your last envelope,” and we know it so it is all about Huxley’s nightmare, work hard, even if your don’t, and be happy! This is why the aliens won’t talk to us……..
Layoffs don't result in lack of Starbucks and Taylor Swift. They result in loss of one's home and access to medical care.
That fear is realistic, not morbid, especially given the hiring practices of corps now days. If they can replace you with an H-1B they will, no matter how good you are at your job.
I laud this essay. Graeber was the typical marxist moe-rawn and had to use all the buzzwords and otherwise go about pushing the agenda. But Graeber did correctly identify a thing: the bullshit job. I've worked plenty of 'em; try being unarmed security...now THAT's a BS job.
Some of the associated anecdotes about BS jobs are pretty amazing.
The real problems here are two-fold, getting the fascistic alliance between corporations/banks/gubbamint out of the way and reconstructing an industrial base that really builds actual stuff that we need. Personally, I want a toaster that is as well made as the Sunbeam toasters dating from the middle 1920s (some of these have lasted a CENTURY of use! A modern toaster is a good one if it lasts longer than 6 months.) We CAN have that kind of quality again. We CAN have an industrial base that can support space colonies and Methusala-toasters and cars that look good. We CAN have architecture that is astonishingly beautiful. There are jobs aplenty in those things.
It will take a century to build all that up again but it's worth it.
My only complaint about this essay is that the redoubtable and excellent author didn't spend more time making Graeber look like the Gigantic Dubmass that he was. Graeber did a fine job of that himself while he was alive but it never hurts to pile on when dealing with a marxist moe-rawn.
One challenge to durable appliances is all the BS energy and water efficiency regulations. Hopefully, Trump's administration will clear those out.
One way to make things more efficient is often to use lighter and less durable materials, which may use somewhat less energy, but just don't last very long. This also results in a false economy actually detrimental to the regulation's original intent (assuming intent was efficiency and not just making everyone miserable).
Even if Trump does clear out these BS regulations, I wonder if corps will go back to producing better appliances, or if they will keep the crap designs, because they fear that the regulations will be back, or they've found that hyper-obsolescence is working in their favor.
In a real capitalism, someone would spring up to build reliable units, you would think....
It's not more efficient to use less materials if the appliance fails. You wind up replacing the appliance more often. Which is less costly, one properly built toaster that lasts 100 years or 200 lightly built toasters? The regs are only a part of the problem; MBA Bros running corporations that do not face real free market competition are the ones to blame. They use planned-obsolescence as part of their product designs. They build cheaply made toasters knowing they will fail. Why sell you one toaster when I can sell you two hundred over your lifetime?
Corporations don't have to face a free market because they get the gubbamint to tilt the game table in their favor. Suppose you start up a super-toaster manufacturing company...you don't have battalions of lawyers to defend your company, nor do you have vast legions of boorocrats to interpret gubbamint regs to ensure compliance. That's where the regs become barriers to free market competition.
Totally agree about efficiency and the rest. Hence my comment about "false economy". Saving a little energy doesn't help much if one must replace the entire appliance ten times as often.
At the turn of the last century and before, schooling ended at 8th grade and then you worked or went to university or something… not too much bullshit back then.
Young people went to university at 14…
My great grandfather decided to apply to Annapolis at 15 in 1871 and got in. Graduated at 20 and had 45+ year career in the Navy retiring as Admiral
Excellent! I was an (ahem) English teacher at the community college level for almost 30 years. During that time I saw the astronomical bloat of the administrative class grow with each passing year. In Kalifornia, where I live, at both the UC and State systems, administrators OUT NUMBER the teachers--by wide margins. And this bullshit positions ain't cheap. It's a disgrace.
I don't know, but strongly suspect that education administration is a favored place for patronage jobs. Jobs given to people as a favor to them or their relatives.
While there is certainly some truth to the concept in general, I read this book a couple of years ago and was not impressed. For one thing, it felt like an essay stretched into a book--kind of in the way Netflix turns what might have been an OK movie into a boring 10 episode series.
Ironic that Keynes predicted a 15 hour workweek. The Keynesian paradigm is all about using government to stimulated the economy to prevent "unemployed resources." (I write paradigm as I haven't read Keynes himself. I'm referring to Keynes as translated by Paul Samuelson.)
A return to satisfying work requires massive amounts of unemployed resources. Most of a craftsman's tools sit idle. The purpose of the assembly line is to keep all the tools at full utilization.
Imagine if all the bullshit jobs people had to do productive work...then where would all the illegal immigrants work? We'd probably be left with too many houses, cars and prices would fall. Seems like we'd suffer from the dreaded deflation that the Fed warned us about for two decades.
The poolside PM girl was truly peak "WFH / digital nomad / fully remote" nonsense. It's so great really, such a funny self-indictment. And why are there so many pretty PM girls? I've met reincarnations of those two in every company I've worked at. It's such a woman's realm it seems, "We are better at multitasking than men" they'll tell you (as I've been told by a PM gal who grew up in SF but chose to float down a river in Zurich and barhop while checking in on Slack). Whereas us manly louts can't walk and chew gum at the same time (also been told this).
Alas, we've all heard for awhile now: "America doesn't make anything other than financial bubbles." The saying isn't entirely true of course, but in the big picture – it kind of is. Where does all this fakery come from? Why are there billions of dollars opening markets for things and services that no one needs and no one wants? My only hypothesis is that this is what accumulates when the world is pegged to a fiat currency that has been printed without accountability for the past hundred years. Perhaps if we had a commodity currency, we would have a more commodity (i.e. "Realville") focused economy and workforce.
I also imagine that certain things that are fundamentally neither produced nor consumed but inherently meaningful and thus invaluable – like musical literacy and literacy in general – would increase if fakery wasn't constantly being subsidized by the grand _fiatshed_ (i.e. watershed) called the Federal Reserve that corporate America is downstream of.
The social and psychological implications of a BS workforce is pretty lame too. Just look at Lumpedin and see the droves of striving drones build entire "careers" on nothing but _perception management._ And then, consistent with the "upside down world", people who are actually innovative and competent are sidelined because they threaten the performative managers galore. I think of that early scene in Dante's Inferno where all the throngs of go-getters are chasing wraithlike banners, grasping at the fleeting opportunity; that's Lumpedin.
I watched a microcosm of this era-wide shit show happen while at a startup in Boston: we were product focused and cashflow positive with a small team (I was one of the engineers) then a predatory VC group plopped $12M on the table (a "B round"). As part of the deal requirements, the startup then hired EXCLUSIVELY middle management who did nothing but put asses in chairs that looked good when shareholders visited. An "innovation focused product manager" was hired who had never innovated anything before (and had zero engineering skills) but she had an MBA and a lot of confidence I suppose. Of course, she got paid twice as much as any of us engineers who actually made the brand what it was – all the other Harfraud MBAs filing in regarded us as children, those silly kids who actually play with ideas and materials! Alas, that PM, and all the other B-round people got fired six-months later. I saw the writing on the wall and left before the bubble burst, but it was low-key tragic because the company could've grown organically if the founders didn't make the oldest mistake in the book: inflate their value.
Of course, that's what we're doing as a society too and when the global debt bubble bursts, I suspect AI – and "universal HIGH income!" as Elon touts – will be conveniently waiting for us just in time, as the devil collects his dues no matter what, we'll have many pounds of deferred flesh to hand over! An abstruse philosophical thesis of mine is that AI is simply the fruits of sowing fakery for over a hundred years – why didn't the Byzantine empire develop AI if they were so prosperous for over a millennia? Perhaps because they didn't finance BS jobs with fake money, and their currency was real: gold. I mean, maybe it's straight up literal and not just metaphoric: "bad money is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 1:11) which is to say, if you build a whole civilization on bad money, then it's the devil's job (i.e. "the accuser") to come collecting these debts.
The overproduction of elites - educating our dumb little children - is part of the problem. If you take a four-year course and get a degree in grievance studies, you have to go out there and do something with that newfound knowledge. The fact that what you do fucks everything up is no consequence. In fact it is never even reviewed.
We lost our industrial jobs so we sent Junior to college for education in human resources. Now we have a bunch of losers - junior -!running things and every thing is broken.
Nailed it.
A hobby of mine is calling peoples children, dumb. It’s nasty but fun.
More vocation training. What happened to all those?
People need to learn how to work with their hands again.
Its satisfying, requires critical thinking and gives purpose.
College is not for everyone.
In fact, at this point, the higher the tuition the less value. My alma maters tuition is literally 20X what it was when I graduated college in 93'.
It was an excellent school but I might just have went straight to "hustle" in the real world if it was like now, back then.
I actually did go straight to the hustle out of high school in ‘86. I didn’t start college until ‘91 when I knew that I wasn’t going to quit working in the field of pharmacy but was as smart as or smarter than all the pharmacists I was working with at the time. I didn’t graduate until ‘97 but it’s been the best decision I could have made, both delaying college and finally going once I knew I would be better off financially with that specific degree. By the time I went I was a home owner and a mom. It was hard but not much different in the end to what I would have been doing had I not gone. Sadly, I don’t think this trajectory is even possible now as affordable homes are a thing of the past. Either way, as someone who never stopped going to work during Covid I have been fully informed as to my job’s viability in society. I have never stopped knowing that I make a difference in peoples lives, that what I do matters. It’s a strong motivation to keep pushing through, even though I’ve had to fight for it (shot exemptions, refusing to vaccinate others). But I agree wholeheartedly that we need to push our next generation to do things that matter—utilities, mechanics, engineering, and technology are all things that will never go away. And healthcare is also a viable option but needs to be fully tempered with helping people be more healthy, not more sick.
There are problems with engineering though. "Systems" engineering has devolved into a series of prescribed processes, without any design or test experience required. I've started on new jobs that were bid by non-technical experts. It's unpleasant - they let you know they are experts in writing proposals - technical expertise is not required!
What happened to "all those" is mass immigration that stomps all over the wages in the skilled and semi-skilled profession, because despite the blatantly racist view espoused by the commies, not every invader is here to pick strawberries and other jobs "Muricans won't do (at these artificially low prices)!", they all want to move up to something better paying (but likely still much cheaper than employing a native, certainly more than employing a native aboveboard.)
sums it up.
As the parent of three young kids in a hardcore striver town, the holy grail of human existence seems to be playing division 3 sports at an elite east coast liberal arts college followed by a career in IB, PE, or CRE. I understand how this can be a fulfilling path for certain alpha male types but I really don't want that life for my kids unless they really want it.
I worked in a hard core bull shit job for like 4 years after law school and came to many of Graeber's conclusions on my own. I was amazed by how many people thrive in that environment and love playing the political corporate game. Despite hating my life during those years, I'm grateful for the experience because working a demanding shitty job for some period of time builds character, but can also fortify your resolve to carve your own path in life. Nowadays I see the commuters going into the city and get a pit in my stomach to work harder on my own flexible and enjoyable business. I honestly think I'd have a breakdown if I had to go back to that life in my 40s.
Although I have plenty of friends, that are, again, absolutely thriving in the corporate world and seem to have plenty of time to do the things they like.
We’re on the same wavelength. Think you’ll enjoy sundays post about my experience working one of those coveted bs jobs.
This reminds me of my brief, soulless stint as a clerk-typist for the NLRB. it was a year of unimaginable torture typing bullshit legalese for government bureaucracy while desperately scouring jobs lists for something—anything—more worthwhile to do. My almost 9 years with the VA was made bearable by the fact that six of them were only 16 hours a week because I was in pharmacy school earning my destiny to never work for the government ever again. Ugh!
Brilliant, Yuri.
We need to get back to what our Founders intend. For all intents and purposes they were libertarians. While they didn't have specific name for the type of capitalism and free-markets they envisioned, I think they most closely would've defined it as Pareto Optimization. And if we got back to these first principles, bullshit jobs and drag they create on the economy would vanish.
The whole point of Pareto efficiency is that there are no losers. Its quite literally the entire purpose of the idea. Pareto efficiency describes the end state of a series of win-win choices, where no more win-win choices can be made anymore.
The entire purpose of pareto optimal choices is that they harm no one. a potential pareto improvement is where someone wins more than others lose, which in theory would mean that the loser could be brought back to the level they started at. So it's, in theory, a win-neutral game, or even a win-win after compensation, hence the potential for it to be a pareto improvement. Sure, not all mutually beneficial trades or choices are "just". Still, the fact that it's an interaction with no losers is certainly a point in its favor.
Also there is a notable absence of allocation here, but again, allocation isn't what Pareto improvements are about. It's more about minimizing "heat loss" of a system, ergo efficiency, not equity
Here's a recent example someone should show FEMA or Newsome:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/01/pennsylvania_amish_build_a_dozen_homes_for_hurricane_victims_in_just_two_days_outpacing_newsom_s_promise_from_almost_two_years_ago.html
We need to get back to a "can do" attitude.
In other words we need to get back to "building" things and flesh out all the cretins who got fat wallets for doing nothing.
The takeover of the economy by government-aligned corporations contributes to this accelerating phenomena of bullshit jobs, the wealth gap, bureaucratic domination, and government engineered theft (including inflation). The Wall St/Congress/Bureaucrat conspiracy has steered trillions into elite coffers. DEI and many government jobs are the epitome of "bullshit jobs," which, are just collateral damage to the Too-Big-to-Fail class.
Recent revelations that the private sector has been in recession while government has grown are symptomatic of the ongoing racket. Same for government's choosing winners and losers.
But there's a new sheriff in town. And he's deputized some gunslingers.
Well met
I first became familiar with David Graeber for his wonderful collaboration with an archeologist named David Wengrow on the book: The Dawn of Everything. No matter what your politics, it is a delight. (It's very long and comprehensive, but reasonably neutral politically.) That led me to Graeber's Debt, and the book with the same title as the above-mentioned article. The latter 2 are heavily influenced by his Marxist beliefs, but he is a talented writer and they are interesting in their way. Having performed numerous "Bullshit Jobs" in my working life I find it a fascinating topic. I'm taking a particular delight in watching Doge illuminate the BS jobs in government. One of my less popular sayings is from bitter experience: Ultimately, There Is NO Security.
We create our own security, can’t rely on corporations for it.
My concern is who are we going to get to apply DOGE principals to the state and city governments.
We have a bunch of cities (like Austin, where I live) that spew money on stupidity and couldn't get a project done if it involved construction paper and glue stick.
I bet you'd have a lot of job security if you could monetize creating handles for authors!
Nah! I'm just an occasionally gifted amateur.
Lost my job of 35 years in the public sector in 2022, partly (male, pale and stale) due to a desire by the organisation to balance DEI statistics. I spent most of that 35 year period convincing myself I was happy as I was getting one over on society by only actually working about 5% of the time.
Finished there on a Tuesday and started in a private sector job on Wednesday. Now I have an amazing and fulfilling role in which I learn every day. I never once realised the importance of personal growth to my well being. It is vital to me. For all those wailing and bitching about DOGE doing a job on govt employes, losing mine was the best thing that could've happened to me. My only regret is that it didn't happen sooner.
Lost my teaching job in 2002 due to government cutbacks. Ended up working in Asia afterwards for 15 years, which was one of the best things to ever happen to me.
You're lucky, particularly that it didn't happen when thousands of former government employees are about to hit the job market. Look, I get it that losing any job precipitously is traumatic. I had it happen numerous times in my life when I thought I'd finally settled into a career. Stuff happens and there are no guarantees. It seems like a lot of these who've been let go feel they were entitled to a security that simply doesn't exist.
You were lucky to quickly move into a new position. In the tech world, age discrimination is so rampant, that if you're over 40 it's already a factor.
“ The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger ”
He got that right. There are different ways that free time is being eliminated, and productivity is being punished, and it unfortunately doesn’t all come from the Marxists.
We can’t even imagine what a world might look like when people are actually free.
But a lot of the hard work is being done for the ruling class by the much larger mediocre class. Most times I have been stopped in life has been by someone, or an institution who or which has felt threatened by what might become apparent if I were allowed to proceed freely….and what would become apparent is that the person/institution in charge of me is either incompetent or unnecessary or malignant. So I (and millions of others) have been shut down. We have been shut down even when what we propose to do is a 100% win-win, and would make more money for our malignant overseers. They will often sacrifice yet more profits to maintain their longer term position or even reputation.
So unfortunately I don’t share your optimism that we are about to shed the oppression of the professional managerial class, or the professional mediocre class, as I prefer to designate them.
But I hope you are right.
In the end today it is the classic yuppie Nuremberg defense, “I don’t want to rock the boat, I have a mortgage to pay.” Americans, myself included have a morbid fear of being broke and destitute, so we go along; we check the box, agree that all whites are racist, and hope the paycheck comes in, but all it takes is a layoff or downsizing and if we can’t have our Starbucks or Taylor swift, it’s a revolution.
Paraphrasing and adjusting one of the greatest quotes from Star Trek Deep Space Nine (season 7), “let me tell you something about Americans; we are a wonderful, friendly people, as long as our bellies are full and our instagram is working. But deprive us of creature comforts, deprive us of food, sleep, hot showers, WiFi, put our anxiety into overdrive, then those same wonderful, fun, decent people, will become as nasty, and as violent, as the most bloodthirsty terrorist.”
We are all a day away from humility, and as Silvio Dante said, “you’re only as good as your last envelope,” and we know it so it is all about Huxley’s nightmare, work hard, even if your don’t, and be happy! This is why the aliens won’t talk to us……..
Layoffs don't result in lack of Starbucks and Taylor Swift. They result in loss of one's home and access to medical care.
That fear is realistic, not morbid, especially given the hiring practices of corps now days. If they can replace you with an H-1B they will, no matter how good you are at your job.
I laud this essay. Graeber was the typical marxist moe-rawn and had to use all the buzzwords and otherwise go about pushing the agenda. But Graeber did correctly identify a thing: the bullshit job. I've worked plenty of 'em; try being unarmed security...now THAT's a BS job.
Some of the associated anecdotes about BS jobs are pretty amazing.
The real problems here are two-fold, getting the fascistic alliance between corporations/banks/gubbamint out of the way and reconstructing an industrial base that really builds actual stuff that we need. Personally, I want a toaster that is as well made as the Sunbeam toasters dating from the middle 1920s (some of these have lasted a CENTURY of use! A modern toaster is a good one if it lasts longer than 6 months.) We CAN have that kind of quality again. We CAN have an industrial base that can support space colonies and Methusala-toasters and cars that look good. We CAN have architecture that is astonishingly beautiful. There are jobs aplenty in those things.
It will take a century to build all that up again but it's worth it.
My only complaint about this essay is that the redoubtable and excellent author didn't spend more time making Graeber look like the Gigantic Dubmass that he was. Graeber did a fine job of that himself while he was alive but it never hurts to pile on when dealing with a marxist moe-rawn.
One challenge to durable appliances is all the BS energy and water efficiency regulations. Hopefully, Trump's administration will clear those out.
One way to make things more efficient is often to use lighter and less durable materials, which may use somewhat less energy, but just don't last very long. This also results in a false economy actually detrimental to the regulation's original intent (assuming intent was efficiency and not just making everyone miserable).
Even if Trump does clear out these BS regulations, I wonder if corps will go back to producing better appliances, or if they will keep the crap designs, because they fear that the regulations will be back, or they've found that hyper-obsolescence is working in their favor.
In a real capitalism, someone would spring up to build reliable units, you would think....
It's not more efficient to use less materials if the appliance fails. You wind up replacing the appliance more often. Which is less costly, one properly built toaster that lasts 100 years or 200 lightly built toasters? The regs are only a part of the problem; MBA Bros running corporations that do not face real free market competition are the ones to blame. They use planned-obsolescence as part of their product designs. They build cheaply made toasters knowing they will fail. Why sell you one toaster when I can sell you two hundred over your lifetime?
Corporations don't have to face a free market because they get the gubbamint to tilt the game table in their favor. Suppose you start up a super-toaster manufacturing company...you don't have battalions of lawyers to defend your company, nor do you have vast legions of boorocrats to interpret gubbamint regs to ensure compliance. That's where the regs become barriers to free market competition.
Totally agree about efficiency and the rest. Hence my comment about "false economy". Saving a little energy doesn't help much if one must replace the entire appliance ten times as often.
At the turn of the last century and before, schooling ended at 8th grade and then you worked or went to university or something… not too much bullshit back then.
Young people went to university at 14…
My great grandfather decided to apply to Annapolis at 15 in 1871 and got in. Graduated at 20 and had 45+ year career in the Navy retiring as Admiral
Excellent! I was an (ahem) English teacher at the community college level for almost 30 years. During that time I saw the astronomical bloat of the administrative class grow with each passing year. In Kalifornia, where I live, at both the UC and State systems, administrators OUT NUMBER the teachers--by wide margins. And this bullshit positions ain't cheap. It's a disgrace.
I don't know, but strongly suspect that education administration is a favored place for patronage jobs. Jobs given to people as a favor to them or their relatives.
Start cleaning them out and see who howls...
Yuri, David Graeber and Office Space in the same article. Thanks 2025.
While there is certainly some truth to the concept in general, I read this book a couple of years ago and was not impressed. For one thing, it felt like an essay stretched into a book--kind of in the way Netflix turns what might have been an OK movie into a boring 10 episode series.
Ironic that a socialist turned a great essay into a mediocre book to make more money ;)
"Bullshit Jobs is one of the best essays written by a leftist, but that is equivalent to winning the special olympics."
That's MEAN!!! MEAN MEAN MEAN!!!!
Ironic that Keynes predicted a 15 hour workweek. The Keynesian paradigm is all about using government to stimulated the economy to prevent "unemployed resources." (I write paradigm as I haven't read Keynes himself. I'm referring to Keynes as translated by Paul Samuelson.)
A return to satisfying work requires massive amounts of unemployed resources. Most of a craftsman's tools sit idle. The purpose of the assembly line is to keep all the tools at full utilization.
Imagine if all the bullshit jobs people had to do productive work...then where would all the illegal immigrants work? We'd probably be left with too many houses, cars and prices would fall. Seems like we'd suffer from the dreaded deflation that the Fed warned us about for two decades.
Ah this is gold! I think about this way too much.
The poolside PM girl was truly peak "WFH / digital nomad / fully remote" nonsense. It's so great really, such a funny self-indictment. And why are there so many pretty PM girls? I've met reincarnations of those two in every company I've worked at. It's such a woman's realm it seems, "We are better at multitasking than men" they'll tell you (as I've been told by a PM gal who grew up in SF but chose to float down a river in Zurich and barhop while checking in on Slack). Whereas us manly louts can't walk and chew gum at the same time (also been told this).
Alas, we've all heard for awhile now: "America doesn't make anything other than financial bubbles." The saying isn't entirely true of course, but in the big picture – it kind of is. Where does all this fakery come from? Why are there billions of dollars opening markets for things and services that no one needs and no one wants? My only hypothesis is that this is what accumulates when the world is pegged to a fiat currency that has been printed without accountability for the past hundred years. Perhaps if we had a commodity currency, we would have a more commodity (i.e. "Realville") focused economy and workforce.
I also imagine that certain things that are fundamentally neither produced nor consumed but inherently meaningful and thus invaluable – like musical literacy and literacy in general – would increase if fakery wasn't constantly being subsidized by the grand _fiatshed_ (i.e. watershed) called the Federal Reserve that corporate America is downstream of.
The social and psychological implications of a BS workforce is pretty lame too. Just look at Lumpedin and see the droves of striving drones build entire "careers" on nothing but _perception management._ And then, consistent with the "upside down world", people who are actually innovative and competent are sidelined because they threaten the performative managers galore. I think of that early scene in Dante's Inferno where all the throngs of go-getters are chasing wraithlike banners, grasping at the fleeting opportunity; that's Lumpedin.
I watched a microcosm of this era-wide shit show happen while at a startup in Boston: we were product focused and cashflow positive with a small team (I was one of the engineers) then a predatory VC group plopped $12M on the table (a "B round"). As part of the deal requirements, the startup then hired EXCLUSIVELY middle management who did nothing but put asses in chairs that looked good when shareholders visited. An "innovation focused product manager" was hired who had never innovated anything before (and had zero engineering skills) but she had an MBA and a lot of confidence I suppose. Of course, she got paid twice as much as any of us engineers who actually made the brand what it was – all the other Harfraud MBAs filing in regarded us as children, those silly kids who actually play with ideas and materials! Alas, that PM, and all the other B-round people got fired six-months later. I saw the writing on the wall and left before the bubble burst, but it was low-key tragic because the company could've grown organically if the founders didn't make the oldest mistake in the book: inflate their value.
Of course, that's what we're doing as a society too and when the global debt bubble bursts, I suspect AI – and "universal HIGH income!" as Elon touts – will be conveniently waiting for us just in time, as the devil collects his dues no matter what, we'll have many pounds of deferred flesh to hand over! An abstruse philosophical thesis of mine is that AI is simply the fruits of sowing fakery for over a hundred years – why didn't the Byzantine empire develop AI if they were so prosperous for over a millennia? Perhaps because they didn't finance BS jobs with fake money, and their currency was real: gold. I mean, maybe it's straight up literal and not just metaphoric: "bad money is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 1:11) which is to say, if you build a whole civilization on bad money, then it's the devil's job (i.e. "the accuser") to come collecting these debts.
The BS Jobs book is great, and you might also like The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart: https://mwstewart.com/books/the-management-myth/
Dante's third circle of the Lumpedin opportunists: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1001/1001-h/1001-h.htm#CantoI.III
Proverbs 11:1 – https://www.bibleref.com/Proverbs/11/Proverbs-chapter-11.html