<story><title>On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs</title><url>https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hammerzeit</author><text>This reads like a classic Graeber piece, in that he&amp;#x27;s starts off by tackling some fascinating questions -- why are there 2x the administrative workers in the US as in Europe -- but then skips straight to the anarchist polemics.&lt;p&gt;Most of the jobs he categorizes as &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; all share an element of arms-race components to them. i.e. if my competitor has really good telemarketers&amp;#x2F;lobbyists&amp;#x2F;corporate lawyers, I&amp;#x27;d better have one too -- _or they&amp;#x27;ll beat me_. How is it that that reflects some sort of keep-the-masses-down 1% malfeasance?&lt;p&gt;To me, the tell that he defined &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;jobs I don&amp;#x27;t like or understand&amp;quot; is that he lumped in actuaries with telemarketers -- does he think providing insurance has no value?&lt;p&gt;Similarly he writes: &amp;quot;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?&amp;quot; There are more musicians employed in this country [1] than there are people in biglaw [2].&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it seems like Graeber wants to return to a butcher-and-baker economy, where all our jobs are focused on directly providing services to consumers. That sounds charming, but makes as much sense as a world with all consumer startups and no b2b&amp;#x2F;enterprise startups.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/musicians-and-singers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;ooh&amp;#x2F;entertainment-and-sports&amp;#x2F;musicians-an...&lt;/a&gt; -- 167,400 musicians&lt;p&gt;[2] see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp/pages/statistics.php#sotflf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;programs&amp;#x2F;plp&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;statistics.php...&lt;/a&gt; -- 70,000 lawyers in biglaw</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shanusmagnus</author><text>What always surprises me about articles like this, and the discussions they produce, is how so many engineers and builders-of-things discard the evidence of their years of experience and see the world through the eyes of people who&amp;#x27;ve never built a complex system.&lt;p&gt;For instance, a couple of years ago I inherited a convoluted, needlessly ornate and grotesque application that could clearly be rewritten and even extended in one-fifth the LOC it currently occupied.  When I finally got greenlit to perform the surgery the usual thing happened, which is that I realized, after much painful effort, that the system had become grotesque little by little, in much the same way that good people turn bad: by taking steps that seem appropriate at the time to what the situation demands.  My solution, in the end, was somewhat less grotesque than the original, and certainly more capable, and yet it was not the glittering jewel that I had imagined beforehand, and the path to it was littered with bodies.  I assume many people on this site have had a similar experience.&lt;p&gt;So with regard to repugnant systems (giant commerical banks) and jobs (middle management) or jobs and systems that are repugnant due to the types and numbers of people who seem to be filling them (lawyers, politicians) and wrt established habits and customs and traditions -- to all of it I now perceive that these jobs and systems are the survivors of a mighty selection pressure, and the whole creaky affair so vastly outperformed the alternatives that it has taken over the world to the extent that now it seems as if nothing else is possible.&lt;p&gt;Something else is possible, of course; but the costs of these theoretically more benign and humane alternatives are impossible to envision.  And I&amp;#x27;m positive that the whole thing could not be redone, elegantly, in one-fifth the code.</text></comment>
<story><title>On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs</title><url>https://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-graeber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hammerzeit</author><text>This reads like a classic Graeber piece, in that he&amp;#x27;s starts off by tackling some fascinating questions -- why are there 2x the administrative workers in the US as in Europe -- but then skips straight to the anarchist polemics.&lt;p&gt;Most of the jobs he categorizes as &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; all share an element of arms-race components to them. i.e. if my competitor has really good telemarketers&amp;#x2F;lobbyists&amp;#x2F;corporate lawyers, I&amp;#x27;d better have one too -- _or they&amp;#x27;ll beat me_. How is it that that reflects some sort of keep-the-masses-down 1% malfeasance?&lt;p&gt;To me, the tell that he defined &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;jobs I don&amp;#x27;t like or understand&amp;quot; is that he lumped in actuaries with telemarketers -- does he think providing insurance has no value?&lt;p&gt;Similarly he writes: &amp;quot;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?&amp;quot; There are more musicians employed in this country [1] than there are people in biglaw [2].&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it seems like Graeber wants to return to a butcher-and-baker economy, where all our jobs are focused on directly providing services to consumers. That sounds charming, but makes as much sense as a world with all consumer startups and no b2b&amp;#x2F;enterprise startups.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/musicians-and-singers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bls.gov&amp;#x2F;ooh&amp;#x2F;entertainment-and-sports&amp;#x2F;musicians-an...&lt;/a&gt; -- 167,400 musicians&lt;p&gt;[2] see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/plp/pages/statistics.php#sotflf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;programs&amp;#x2F;plp&amp;#x2F;pages&amp;#x2F;statistics.php...&lt;/a&gt; -- 70,000 lawyers in biglaw</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jseliger</author><text>&lt;i&gt;all share an element of arms-race components to them&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes arms races (in the figurative sense) can lead to better performance! This week&amp;#x27;s New Yorker has a splendid example of this in James Surowiecki&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Better All the Time
How the &amp;#x27;performance revolution&amp;#x27; came to athletics—and beyond&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/better-time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.newyorker.com&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;better-time&lt;/a&gt;). It&amp;#x27;s not easy to excerpt, but he points out that athletes used to barely train at all and now they do it all the time; musicians are better; elite students are &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; in many respects; manufacturing has improved. As he writes:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;as the sports columnist Mark Montieth wrote after reviewing a host of games from the nineteen-fifties and sixties, “The difference in skills and athleticism between eras is remarkable. Most players, even the stars, couldn’t dribble well with their off-hand. Compared to today’s athletes, they often appear to be enacting a slow-motion replay.”&lt;p&gt;What we’re seeing is, in part, the mainstreaming of excellent habits. In the late nineteen-fifties, Raymond Berry, the great wide receiver for the Baltimore Colts, was famous for his attention to detail and his obsessive approach to the game: he took copious notes, he ate well, he studied film of his opponents, he simulated entire games by himself, and so on. But, as the journalist Mark Bowden observed, Berry was considered an oddball.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The whole article is wroth reading.</text></comment>