R.I.P. David Graeber

[Canard DuJour]

David Graeber, distinguished Prof of Anthropology, best-selling author and prolific activist died on September 2nd, 2020, aged 59.

Anyone who wants to understand the world we live in should read


Debt:The First 5,000 Years

and

Bullshit Jobs


both of which reveal astonishing things about the real world which economists don't know.

R.I.P.

 

[Harry Bosch]

David Graeber, distinguished Prof of Anthropology, best-selling author and prolific activist died on September 2nd, 2020, aged 59.

Anyone who wants to understand the world we live in should read


Debt:The First 5,000 Years

and

Bullshit Jobs


both of which reveal astonishing things about the real world which economists don't know.

R.I.P.

Meh. I looked at bullshit jobs. I love it:
1. receptionists (yea, like it's not important that customers feel welcome); 2. corporate lawyers (yea, protecting a company from lawsuites isn't important); 3. telemarketers (yea, because customer acquisition is so easy); 4. public relations specialists (yea, again because customer acquisition is so easy; 5) airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive (yea, because it's easy to retain customers and there's no need to provide them with good service; 6) corporate compliance officers (yea because their are such few government regulations that it's extremely easy to track and comply; 7) middle management, leadership professionals (yea, it's extremely easy to get a very large group together and ask them to self motivate and self direct, science tells us that very large groups just automatically work together perfectly).

Yea, as you can probably tell, I 100% agree with the above. I'm going to e-mail these insights to all my competitors just hoping that they'll adopt these ideas!

 

[barbos]

We had a thread about his book some while ago.

 

[lpetrich]

Is this it? Are many jobs meaningless?

Here is its bloomberg.com article on getpocket.com - Too Many Jobs Feel Meaningless Because They Are

Perhaps even more surprising is the nature of these “bullshit” jobs, as Graeber calls them. They aren’t in teaching, cleaning, garbage collecting or firefighting, but seem mostly to be in the professional services sector. Since writing his essay, Graeber says he has been contacted by hundreds of people saying they agree — they work in pointless jobs which could be eliminated with absolutely no loss to society — and they’ve come mostly from human resources, public relations, lobbying or telemarketing, or in finance and banking, consulting, management and corporate law. Of course, neither Graeber nor anyone else can be a final judge which jobs are useful or not, but the people who offer this view of their own jobs come most frequently from the service sector.

This does not necessarily mean that *all* such jobs are socially superfluous, but that many of them likely are.

DG had some examples:

Consider the case of Eric, a history graduate hired to oversee a software project ostensibly intended to improve the coordination of different groups in a large firm. Eric only discovered after several years on the job that one of the firm’s partners had initiated the project, but that several others were against it and were acting to sabotage its success. His job — and that of a large staff hired beneath him — was a meaningless effort to put into place a change that most of the company didn’t want.

Another example Graeber provides in the books is of a senior manager for one of the big accounting firms hired by banks to oversee the disbursement of funds for claims against mis-sold insurance. The company, this manager claimed, purposefully mistrained accounting staff and saddled them with impossible tasks so the work could not be done in time and the contract would need to be extended. In other words, the job was intentionally structured so as to siphon off as much of the available funds into the accounting firm, which placed itself as a machine of extraction between the funds and their intended recipients.

 

[Canard DuJour]

David Graeber, distinguished Prof of Anthropology, best-selling author and prolific activist died on September 2nd, 2020, aged 59.

Anyone who wants to understand the world we live in should read


Debt:The First 5,000 Years

and

Bullshit Jobs


both of which reveal astonishing things about the real world which economists don't know.

R.I.P.

Meh. I looked at bullshit jobs. I love it:
1. receptionists (yea, like it's not important that customers feel welcome); 2. corporate lawyers (yea, protecting a company from lawsuites isn't important); 3. telemarketers (yea, because customer acquisition is so easy); 4. public relations specialists (yea, again because customer acquisition is so easy; 5) airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive (yea, because it's easy to retain customers and there's no need to provide them with good service; 6) corporate compliance officers (yea because their are such few government regulations that it's extremely easy to track and comply; 7) middle management, leadership professionals (yea, it's extremely easy to get a very large group together and ask them to self motivate and self direct, science tells us that very large groups just automatically work together perfectly).

Yea, as you can probably tell, I 100% agree with the above. I'm going to e-mail these insights to all my competitors just hoping that they'll adopt these ideas!

Pretty much what I thought before reading the book, and what Graeber thought before doing the research. He originally wrote an article speculating as to why the 15 hr week Keynes anticipated in 1930s hasn't happened. That elicited hundreds of replies from people who considered themselves to have bullshit jobs.

You inadvertently give examples. It isn't that firms don't need telemarketers, lobbyists, PR specialists etc, but that they only need them because other firms have them. They don't increase production or consumption, or inform consumers about innovative products. Rather, they're locked into zero-sum competition for market share - "customer acquisition" as you say - which escalates into a kind of arms race. Like nuclear weapons, you only need them because your adversaries have them, but they're of no net benefit.

That's one type of BS job, Graeber categorises others, but I see this has all been thrashed out in lpetrich's earlier thread. Thing is, it isn't just Graeber's opinion. His research prompted a (UK) YouGov poll with 37% respondents of the opinion that their jobs made no positive contribution to the world.

 

[Harry Bosch]

David Graeber, distinguished Prof of Anthropology, best-selling author and prolific activist died on September 2nd, 2020, aged 59.

Anyone who wants to understand the world we live in should read


Debt:The First 5,000 Years

and

Bullshit Jobs


both of which reveal astonishing things about the real world which economists don't know.

R.I.P.

Meh. I looked at bullshit jobs. I love it:
1. receptionists (yea, like it's not important that customers feel welcome); 2. corporate lawyers (yea, protecting a company from lawsuites isn't important); 3. telemarketers (yea, because customer acquisition is so easy); 4. public relations specialists (yea, again because customer acquisition is so easy; 5) airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive (yea, because it's easy to retain customers and there's no need to provide them with good service; 6) corporate compliance officers (yea because their are such few government regulations that it's extremely easy to track and comply; 7) middle management, leadership professionals (yea, it's extremely easy to get a very large group together and ask them to self motivate and self direct, science tells us that very large groups just automatically work together perfectly).

Yea, as you can probably tell, I 100% agree with the above. I'm going to e-mail these insights to all my competitors just hoping that they'll adopt these ideas!

Pretty much what I thought before reading the book, and what Graeber thought before doing the research. He originally wrote an article speculating as to why the 15 hr week Keynes anticipated in 1930s hasn't happened. That elicited hundreds of replies from people who considered themselves to have bullshit jobs.

You inadvertently give examples. It isn't that firms don't need telemarketers, lobbyists, PR specialists etc, but that they only need them because other firms have them. They don't increase production or consumption, or inform consumers about innovative products. Rather, they're locked into zero-sum competition for market share - "customer acquisition" as you say - which escalates into a kind of arms race. Like nuclear weapons, you only need them because your adversaries have them, but they're of no net benefit.

That's one type of BS job, Graeber categorises others, but I see this has all been thrashed out in lpetrich's earlier thread. Thing is, it isn't just Graeber's opinion. His research prompted a (UK) YouGov poll with 37% respondents of the opinion that their jobs made no positive contribution to the world.

To me there is no such thing as a bullshit job if someone is willing to pay for it (and someone is willing to work for it). With respect, you've never owned a company. Marketing and sales are how a company acquires and maintains it's customers. To me, it's about educating the customers. I have competitors. There product is cheaper. But my product is safer and generates better outcomes. But most of the potential patients aren't aware of the product. Word of mouth is too slow. So we need sales and marketing to educate the patients. It doesn't happen on it's own.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Pretty much what I thought before reading the book, and what Graeber thought before doing the research. He originally wrote an article speculating as to why the 15 hr week Keynes anticipated in 1930s hasn't happened. That elicited hundreds of replies from people who considered themselves to have bullshit jobs.

You inadvertently give examples. It isn't that firms don't need telemarketers, lobbyists, PR specialists etc, but that they only need them because other firms have them. They don't increase production or consumption, or inform consumers about innovative products. Rather, they're locked into zero-sum competition for market share - "customer acquisition" as you say - which escalates into a kind of arms race. Like nuclear weapons, you only need them because your adversaries have them, but they're of no net benefit.

That's one type of BS job, Graeber categorises others, but I see this has all been thrashed out in lpetrich's earlier thread. Thing is, it isn't just Graeber's opinion. His research prompted a (UK) YouGov poll with 37% respondents of the opinion that their jobs made no positive contribution to the world.

To me there is no such thing as a bullshit job if someone is willing to pay for it (and someone is willing to work for it).

Opinion noted, however, about 37% of people disagreed in respect of their own jobs.

With respect, you've never owned a company. Marketing and sales are how a company acquires and maintains it's customers. To me, it's about educating the customers. I have competitors. There product is cheaper. But my product is safer and generates better outcomes. But most of the potential patients aren't aware of the product. Word of mouth is too slow. So we need sales and marketing to educate the patients. It doesn't happen on it's own.

With respect, you've no idea what I've done. I certainly have experience of advertising and marketing, and very little of it sets out to inform. Misinformation would be nearer the mark in many cases.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Opinion noted, however, about 37% of people disagreed in respect of their own jobs.

With respect, you've never owned a company. Marketing and sales are how a company acquires and maintains it's customers. To me, it's about educating the customers. I have competitors. There product is cheaper. But my product is safer and generates better outcomes. But most of the potential patients aren't aware of the product. Word of mouth is too slow. So we need sales and marketing to educate the patients. It doesn't happen on it's own.

With respect, you've no idea what I've done. I certainly have experience of advertising and marketing, and very little of it sets out to inform. Misinformation would be nearer the mark in many cases.

Well, I'm not at all surprised that many people would consider their jobs to be unimportant and would rather watch spongebob all day.