Anyone else read this before? I just finished it yesterday, never seen anyone talk about it here.
I definitely thought it was fun and generally light-hearted while also pointing out an interesting social phenomenon. Nothing to shit your pants over but definitely worth the read.
What do you think?
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What is the thesis/gist of it?
I don't know,but it was fun and light-hearted, would definitely read again
>fun and generally light-hearted
>it was fun and light-hearted
why waste time repeating yourself over shallow stuff
>why waste time repeating yourself over shallow stuff
i just want to be fun and light-hearted
Can't wait for the second part: Bullshit lives, we live to consume
I worked in a bullshit market for the past decade so I already get the authors gist, having heard him promote the book a couple times. It's tough to visualize what isn't bullshit, however. We assume the surgeon leaning over the anasthetized patient is needed, same as EOD and firemen and teachers and the jobs that make the things purchased by those jobs and the tight and shrewd management of the finances keeping those jobs resourced and jobs for creating frivolity and festivity so people can enjoy something outside of their job. Now we've re-affirmed a great deal of the economy already. But the author isn't wrong. People don't set out to design dystopia, so I don't know how you prevent this but for wakey wakey wagey type poetry that mocks workers so much they'd prefer poverty over being a good worker.
I think workers unutilitzed by the valorized sectors of our capitalized experiment have to endure a special level of shame and status inspection at least in the eyes of the author, if not everyone else who also isn't cool enough to microdose and hoverboard from dispensary to "collab" facility to maker space shared tool library and so on.
That over half of the population is working a job that is either completely useless, detrimental to the rest of society, or a job which supports one of these (people cleaning offices for bullshit jobs, for instance)
It also talks very, very basically about the history of work and our attitudes about it and why we, as a society, de-facto believe that not working or wanting to work makes someone a filthy, lazy, no-good cunt.
I said it was “fun” and “light-hearted” when I probably should have just said it was an easy read but as you can see I’ve been corrected by several professors.
Anyway, pretty good book, would read again.
haven't read it, but seems like obvious information to anyone who has worked.
"unnecessary jobs" sounds like a very dangerous idea. a label that a marxist would invent. fact is these jobs are simply the product of a lack of vision, both by employers who don't want to devise and adopt new methods and employees who don't follow their dreams (or have no dreams). in any case there is nothing wrong with any of that. david graeber is doing a bullshit job of a being an author.
With automation there is less need for work to fulfill basic needs, assuming no unlimited immigration from less developed countries of course.
We could just work less and it would be fine. But the Normie has consumerist wishes and ideas; the Normie ruins all visions for the future for he will always want more and more, it is what ruined socialism: the Normie.
What i thought was interesting was How many examples he points to where business is as much or more bureaucratic than government.
I am not a communist or socialist and I work for a non-profit so i have firsthand experience dealing with bullshit paperwork and red tape; I was just a bit surprised at how many people he interviewed said it’s the same shit at big corporations where you would imagine profit is king—trim the fat.
Again, I’m not sucking this guys dick, but just like Marx, whether you agree with his “solution” the problem he posed was at least interesting and worth consideration.
Left and Right both want more jobs, but no one talks about whether those jobs will be useful.
Is the cover supposed to look like a calvary cross? Not getting the connection
>being this myopic
TL;DR: Commie scum: "Capitalism sucks."
Low IQ people should not be taught the written word.
We can only give people bs jobs if automation will truly do just about everything unless we actually find a way to make everyone an einstein or something (very unlikely)
Is this an opinion about the book (not OP)? Not asking as a rhetorical question, just asking whether or not he actually argues that.
As for the argument itself, I think even under brute postmodern capitalism there are other ways of having useless people around. Some of them are going to sound pretty bad like having millions of homeless savages roaming sanctuary cities but there might be ways of realistically implementing UBI (ironically we might even get back to some kind of feudal serfdom style with a monetary mask, who knows? I don't), as well as the possibility that we simply move beyond the financial model we have today, by for example accounting for 'personal productivity', e.g housekeeping, helping the neighborhood, cleaning after yourself, etc etc. as if this was a collectively beneficial activity and hence rewarding in a monetary sense.
Just like his Debt: 5000 years, the book is set largely in marxist dialectic. It observes and postulates, but doesn't provide actual deductive models, just prose.
As for how bullshit jobs arise, politics and customs introduce imperfect markets. Technology simplifies the actual jobs, but bureaucracy remains/expands. In terms of commodities, it's a bit like ebay resellers. Their job is technically bullshit, but the market is inefficient enough their arbitrage overhead is feasible.
One incorrect observation in the book is that there were always bullshit jobs. Like the black guy pushing buttons in elevator, entourage to nobility. It's just that "traditional" bullshit jobs shifted from fixed structures to neoliberal market, but reality remains that only 1 person out of 5 or so is productive. Anyone who's done a team assignment in college can tell you that.
Good book and Graeber is pretty based, desu.
love me some Graeber.
it's no DEBT: the first gazillion years but it gets right at the core of the problem of modern work and may well have codified the thinking that we live in a capital-feudalist clownscape.
Looks like a crossbow.
Of course there is something wrong with all that. Millions of people wasting their lives for paychecks is nothing to you?
Graeber is a complete hack. His completely arbitrary definition of which jobs are bullshit is driven by his narrow view of labour markets, appealing to the layman but failing to understand how modern markets are structured to rely heavily on specialisation.
He's hugely out of line with economic consensus and I don't know why people would give an anthropologist the time of day when he's writing on a field he doesn't have the analytical toolset to handle. Graeber doesn't really seem to understand things like marginal product of labour and the incentives of firms, or have a strong rebuttal to ask 'why would individuals create these jobs?' His response to the question is that "the ruling class" are conspiring to keep the population occupied. It's actually nuts, and only appeals to people who, like himself, need to reduce the world to a simplistic narrative where somebody is in control.
That said, what a fun and light-hearted read!
lmao
if it's nothing to them, why should i care? i have already dedicated my life to prayer and study and preaching the Gospel. i am only one person among billions, user.
Sometimes I'm sure Yea Forums is actually illiterate and just convinced themselves they've read books.
Jesus man. Obv a joke
spbp
You should care because quietism is cowardice.
My early realization of bullshit jobs was later reinforced when I took a job writing resumes. I worked with people in every kind of job and industry, and over time a pattern began to emerge. People who were in real jobs—mechanics, plumbers, laborers, social workers—spoke in real terms. People who were in bullshit jobs—corporate ‘strategy’, marketing, HR—spoke in bullshit terms.
>One incorrect observation in the book is that there were always bullshit jobs. Like the black guy pushing buttons in elevator, entourage to nobility.
Visiting China you notice this inefficiency of labour relative to developed economies. Five people employed to waitserve or clean where one person would be employed to do the same job in the West, but the five Chinese probably get paid less total wages. There has been a radical increase in worker efficiency which the author of OP book may have missed.
Speaking for others is totalitarian.
i wish anti capitalists were just more honest about capitalism being a liberating and non reactionary force. start from there.
I always wondered what kind of person it takes to thrive in Marketing. Like, your job is literally to artificially instill desires into people for things they might not actually need or even want. You’re literally manufacturing demand, and the only way to do it is social manipulation.
i work in marketing
i actually love it
demand or desire in the social reality we live isn't "created", it's always there. marketing and advertisement just harnesses that desire towards different identities people can consume and take pleasure in
people dont actually "need" anything more than water shelter and food, but no one would argue that anything other than that should be produced or consumed.
well, you might argue that but that simply isnt the capitalist reality we live in.
marketing and advertisement are actually degenerated forms of philosophy. you are not really selling a physical commodity. you are selling an idea and set of values. It's actually religious in a sense, again in a "degenerated" sense. People buy their own identities and religion.
Have you ever seen that Nike ad?
youtube.com
These are beautiful and the most genuine art in our current system. Fuck basquiat or whatever. These ads are beautiful. Nowhere in them is there a message to buy nike shoes. Its not about shoes. Its about ideas.
You would be surprised how actually non-stupid and not "evil" the ideas you have about commerce and capitalism are.
That being said, I'm not an apologist for capitalism. I am actually an anti capitalist, broadly. And the funny thing is, so are many of my colleagues and their bosses. All very well read people, but as it often is the most efficient managers of capital are the anti-capitalists.
Given a fool who equates profit with exploitation, he wont be able to call capitalism liberating at the same time.
You're under the impression there is no exploitation in capitalist profits?
But what's beautiful about this? The bottom line is people spend their money (which they might use in better ways) on fetishized objects which give them a momentary illusion of happiness.
They 'buy' their identities like you say, but this isn't in any way a healthy attitude or good for long term happiness.
Things like a personal identity should have some kind of substance, not be something which come with a pair of shoes (but then quickly dissolves afterwards because you instinctively feel you never really 'own' the identity).
>Things like a personal identity should have some kind of substance, not be something which come with a pair of shoes (but then quickly dissolves afterwards because you instinctively feel you never really 'own' the identity).
Yeah, that would be great, but the world can't stick to a universal narrative for more than half a second. Permanence is so last year.
Capitalism is indeed a liberating force, but to call it non-reactionary is a stretch. It's simultaneously constantly adapting and re-enforcing. It's, for lack of a better word, insidious. It sticks around and takes hold of whatever it can to better further its own ends. More than any other ideology, it's devoted to efficiency in an almost contradictory way.
It constantly puts to use anything it can find for a better profit margin- as long as it thinks the new method of doing things is a good investment given the transition cost. It doesn't care about happiness so much as it cares about the bottom line, because the bottom line *is* happiness. Capitalism (distinct from capitalists) thinks about everything in terms of money: I'd go so far to say that it HAS TO. How else do you explain the tendency for corporations to attempt to sell lifestyles?
If you think that's absurd, then simply think about the situation with regards to wedding rings. The value of the ring is measured in dollars, and you're expected to spend a particular amount for the ring. Supposing you got a brilliant ring for fifty dollars: The subjective value of the ring is undercut in capitalist cultures by the fact that it *only* cost fifty dollars, so it MUST somehow lack value. Considered objectively, this is totally ass-backwards: any good capitalist wants to get the best deal he can, especially for a high value item: Bought from someone else, the ring might be sold for 5k, meaning you got it for 1% of what someone else might have charged. But it makes sense in its own twisted way: Since the ring was bought for fifty dollars, it must be WORTH fifty dollars because of how markets work. Someone was willing to part with it easily, so it must be bad.
So something is valued in dollars because it's valued in dollars because it's valued in dollars. Somehow the value that the dollars were supposed to correspond to has totally vanished. Pic related.
"But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed
in developing strong artificial intelligence, so that human work remains
necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler
tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at
the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many
people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual
or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary
to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are
employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed: They will need more
and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more
reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like
cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so
that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being
concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any
means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people
to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to “sublimate”
their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement
that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification.
The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways
are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs
of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless
competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very
few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end
of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy
his need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of
the way and depriving them of their opportunity for power."
t-the market can't possibly be wrong, i-if you don't see the value in go-through-the-motions make-work you're a commiefascist who lacks work ethic
Good bants
t. Most intelligent user of all time