Bullsh*t Jobs

[John Dule]

I recently finished reading David Graeber's "Bullsh*t Jobs," a book I'd been planning to read for some time, but which I finally got around to as a form of psychological protest against my current employment. I am now curious if anyone else is familiar with Graeber's argument, and whether Atlas agrees with it. I am not posting this on the book board because I would like to get more than one reply per year.

This article is a condensed version of Graeber's book. Essentially, Graeber is an anarcho-communist who theorizes that automation and increased industrial efficiency in the 1900s essentially eliminated most of the real need for humans in the first world to participate in work. However, this could not last, because in a capitalist system people need some source of income to consume products, and in order to earn income, a person must demonstrate that they are willing to sacrifice their time/effort.

Graeber believes that since the 1940s or so, this sacrifice has become largely performative. He asserts that roughly half of all jobs in the economy exist for "bullsh*t" reasons-- engaging in problem-solving that solves nothing, acting as a status symbol for a company or superior, being "on call" when one is not really needed most of the time. Graeber's theory is peppered with (to put it charitably) somewhat unscientific evidence, including anecdotes mailed to him by readers and polls in which ~40% of workers say their jobs "contribute nothing to society."

While this book was certainly not a serious sociological or anthropological study, I believe there is quite a lot of truth to it. First, Graeber is right that the technological innovations of the early 1900s essentially rendered many workers useless and redundant to the economy. I believe that this redundancy is to blame for stagnating American wages-- workers simply have no bargaining power anymore, because the amount of truly essential work continues to shrink while the labor pool continues to grow. This trend, accelerated by automation and globalization, was also identified by Andrew Yang (and in a much less intellectually rigorous way, by Donald Trump).

I also share Graeber's disdain for the deplorable boomer platitudes of people like Mike Rowe, "grindset" social media gurus, and anyone else who touts the value of a "hard day's work." These people are essentially masochists who believe that they are tempering themselves to become stoic, noble puritan laborers-- but what they do not realize is that the """work""" they idolize typically involves sitting on one's ass for eight hours a day writing emails, making PowerPoint presentations, looking through spreadsheets, and attending Zoom meetings. These experiences are utterly detached from reality and nobody has ever gained any insight or enlightenment by performing them. And more generally, worshipping "work" is something I generally associate with stupid and uncreative people. Only an utter moron can derive pleasure from performing a repetitious and pointless task without once considering ways to make it more efficient, streamlined, or practical. Laziness breeds innovation. "Work ethic" breeds nothing but stagnation and monotony. I can only conclude that these people are either stupid or just gluttons for debasement and self-flagellation. Probably some combination of the two.

However, I do think Graeber misdirects his attention at a system that he imagines to be some type of modern extension of feudal hierarchies and mense lords. As an anarchist, Graeber hates capitalism-- and this hatred blinds him to deeper analysis of why a system ostensibly built on competition and efficiency has become one of corruption and waste.

This is where I began thinking about my current job and how it fits into the capitalist system. Graeber says that most of these wasted "bullsh*t jobs" exist in the private sector rather than the public sector, and on the surface he's right. I work for a private firm. My firm's customers are private organizations, and our job is to find causes of action against other private organizations. And I can indeed attest that my job should not exist, contributes nothing to society, and is a monumental waste of time, money, and resources. Graeber would thus probably classify my job as a "private sector bullsh*t job." What this ignores, of course, is that my entire firm exists solely because of a particular cause of action authorized by a particular statute in a particular piece of federal legislation. Every minor act by Congress causes ripple effects through time and through our social hierarchies, until eventually entire companies exist solely to extract transaction costs from the private entities that are benefitted and burdened by the legislation.

Is it any surprise that the "bullsh*t jobs" Graeber hypothesizes emerged at around the same time as the modern regulatory state? And is it any surprise that an anarcho-communist would not have much interest in investigating the nuances of the interactions between the state and private enterprise-- two entities that he considers inseparably intertwined and equally evil? The way I see it, the state can create bullsh*t jobs in three different ways:

1) Direct Bullsh*t: Occurs when the government creates useless and wasteful positions and then populates them with useless and wasteful bureaucrats. This includes everything from welfare department administrators to the multiple redundant deans at public universities.

2) Second-Order Bullsh*t: Occurs when the government enacts some type of regulation requiring private enterprise to create particular positions (often in the form of "compliance officers"). Here the bullsh*t job in question is directly associated with a particular regulation or set of regulations. My job falls into this category.

3) Third-Order Bullsh*t: This type of bullsh*t job is the most detached from government action, and it is the type that Graeber ignores. What I call "third-order bullsh*t jobs" are jobs that arise out of the lack of competition between private entities. My logic is as follows: The more regulated an industry is, the higher the barriers are for new entrepreneurs to enter that industry. Since a market with high barriers to entry cannot be easily rejuvenated by new ideas and innovators, the industry naturally consolidates towards a small number of large, unwieldly firms with several layers of hierarchy and too many employees and departments to keep track of. These types of organizations (epitomized by the financial sector) have no incentive to cut costs and crack down on waste because they know they have no meaningful competition. They are economic apex predators, and without any superior predators to cull the herd every so often, they are allowed to become bloated, byzantine, Kafkaesque nightmares of inefficiency. I believe that this phenomenon, more than anything, contributes to Graeber's "Bullsh*t Jobs," especially seeing as there appears to be a direct correlation between how heavily regulated an industry is and how much it draws Graeber's ire.

But Graeber is correct about one big thing: Our politicians are completely complicit in the propagation of bullsh*t jobs. Far from seeing this as a problem, our leaders consider wastefulness a solution... to high unemployment. Never mind that every regulation they pass creates a ripple effect that generates mountains of pointless paperwork and positions that create literally no value. Their goal is to just keep adding teats to the fat pig that is American law, until all of us are reduced to suckling piglets-- parasites that only exist because of obscure statutes and incomprehensible codes of conduct. This is why certain people (even people on this site!) continue to push the insane idea of a "jobs guarantee"-- they want to create more bullsh*t for people to mooch off of. It is a disgusting state of affairs, and if nothing else, I appreciate this book for calling my attention to it.

[MiddleRoad]

All due respect but can you provide the cliff notes version of this post?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

All due respect but can you provide the cliff notes version of this post?

The government inventing useless jobs because automation reduces the need for necessary jobs (required to keep everything functioning) but that people still need to work in order to afford commodities.

[dead0man]

I've got a bull sh**t govt job, but it doesn't fit any of the 3 orders of bullsh**t and it's only bullsh**t in practice.  In theory it's a non-BS job, on paper it's a non-BS job, even historically (like a decade ago) it was a non-BS job.  But today, in reality, it's a total BS job.


Actually, I take that all back.  My job is a non-BS job, but my particular shift is a BS job.

[PSOL]

Outside of bloated middle management and secretarial positions that are getting phased out anyway, most bull•••• jobs aren’t bull•••• at all but feel it due to the theory of Alienation. It just feels more bs than it is due to low pay, bad hours, and workers getting pitted against one another.

[sting in the rafters]

True! My first job as an usher at Regal s___itmas had its normal cleaning/sanitization reponsibilities, which led to many a nights skipping stones and brandishing skunks away from the trash compactor with a broom+butler. Likewise you see this as a major cost driver/center in health insurance and hospitals w/r/t redundancies. However my brother in agency law, one does not use legal briefs as a template for formulating internet arguments. Our attention spans are too short!

[Del Tachi]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.   

[Хahar 🤔]

The one observation that really stuck out to me is that people who have intrinsically fulfilling jobs—teachers, for example—have to pay for it by taking low wages.

[John Dule]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.   

Sure, but those productive positions are increasingly narrow as fewer people are needed to manage these systems. Whatever inefficiencies we are creating are being offset by innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

[Del Tachi]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.   

Sure, but those productive positions are increasingly narrow as fewer people are needed to manage these systems. Whatever inefficiencies we are creating are being offset by innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

"Inefficiency" in this case mostly means people getting to work more flexible, less physically demanding jobs.  I don't see the problem.

Post-industrial economies are creating massive wealth through transactional and investment activity.  Only a fraction of that wealth is making it's way back to workers in the form of wages, but it can be paid to employees in the form of shorter workdays, more vacation time, and increased flexibility.

If there's one thing covid proved it's that the bullsh*t economy doesn't require everyone to be a 40 hour/wk desk jockey. 

[Tartarus Sauce]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.   

Sure, but those productive positions are increasingly narrow as fewer people are needed to manage these systems. Whatever inefficiencies we are creating are being offset by innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

"Inefficiency" in this case mostly means people getting to work more flexible, less physically demanding jobs.  I don't see the problem.

Post-industrial economies are creating massive wealth through transactional and investment activity.  Only a fraction of that wealth is making it's way back to workers in the form of wages, but it can be paid to employees in the form of shorter workdays, more vacation time, and increased flexibility.

If there's one thing covid proved it's that the bullsh*t economy doesn't require everyone to be a 40 hour/wk desk jockey. 

All things that are likely coming down the road. Lots of dissatisfaction amongst Millenials and Gen Z about the platitudes and rigidity of the standard American work ethic and lack of guaranteed benefits. If the private sector doesn't adjust on its own, laws will eventually get passed forcing their hands.

[Aurelius]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.    

The opposite, actually. It's Baumol's cost disease. Consider 100 years ago a violinist in an orchestra and a guy turning screws at a factory. Some other guy invents the power drill, allowing the factory guy to turn screws 4x as fast. If his wages increase 4x to match his productivity, then most of the violinists will quit their jobs to turn screws at a factory and quadruple their wages. So as a result, much of the productivity increase goes toward higher pay for workers in less productive sectors of the economy, so they don't all quit their jobs to chase higher wages in more productive sectors.

This is the core reason why everything involving actual humans is so damn expensive nowadays. It's why you can buy a giant wall-to-wall TV for a few hundred bucks, but daycare is so expensive that it's sometimes cheaper for one parent to just stay home. Today's violinist is a day care worker. The factory worker is a software engineer, or a coal miner in Wyoming (as opposed to WV).

[John Dule]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.   

Sure, but those productive positions are increasingly narrow as fewer people are needed to manage these systems. Whatever inefficiencies we are creating are being offset by innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

"Inefficiency" in this case mostly means people getting to work more flexible, less physically demanding jobs.  I don't see the problem.

Post-industrial economies are creating massive wealth through transactional and investment activity.  Only a fraction of that wealth is making it's way back to workers in the form of wages, but it can be paid to employees in the form of shorter workdays, more vacation time, and increased flexibility.

If there's one thing covid proved it's that the bullsh*t economy doesn't require everyone to be a 40 hour/wk desk jockey. 

I don't really disagree with any of this (though desk jobs are actually quite physically demanding and extremely unhealthy compared to many forms of manual labor). The problem is that the dividends of this efficiency aren't being paid to workers. To do that, we need to break away from the boomer mentality of "paying for your time," which is an absurd and inefficient method of organization that only incentivizes workers to use their time inefficiently. Fortunately we've begun to see some departure from this work culture lately, as you say, with working from home.

[Person Man]

I’ve been waiting for this post for a while. I think I am working in bullsh**t in the third degree. Right now, I am creating an API that is only ever going to be used by 20 people. Not 20 systems or groups. 20 people in a company that is the size of a large army.

[Person Man]

On the contrary, automation has redirected labor towards more productive sectors of the economy.  Real GDP has tripled since 1980, even though the population has only grown 50% in the same time period.

Unless you're a Marxist, there's no reason wage growth should mirror productivity growth.  Productivity gains are being realized in other forms of income/wealth.    

Sure, but those productive positions are increasingly narrow as fewer people are needed to manage these systems. Whatever inefficiencies we are creating are being offset by innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

So you go from 10 guys that can make 10 chairs to 15 guys that make 30 chairs when only 5 of them are working. Maybe the other 10 guys are bedazzling them or somesh**t.

[Person Man]

I've got a bull sh**t govt job, but it doesn't fit any of the 3 orders of bullsh**t and it's only bullsh**t in practice.  In theory it's a non-BS job, on paper it's a non-BS job, even historically (like a decade ago) it was a non-BS job.  But today, in reality, it's a total BS job.


Actually, I take that all back.  My job is a non-BS job, but my particular shift is a BS job.

I’m kind of in the same boat. I think.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I had a job in high school that was bulls--t.  My job was to manage a food stand at a movie theatre, but since I did night shifts, there were only a few films going.  So I only probably did about twenty minutes of actual work, at the start of those movies, and then basically nothing the rest of the night.  I was there just in case someone got hungry/thirsty in the middle of the movie, but that was it.  Of course I wasn't allowed to start cleaning everything or putting anything away until the movies were over, just in case someone wanted something.  So for the entire duration of the movies I would stand around wasting time.  The management just told me to dust or map or vacuum, but everything was already basically perfect because this was happening like every night, there's only so much dust that can accumulate in 24 hours, and vacuuming/mopping took all of five minutes.  What I really wanted to do was just chill out and watch the movies, but heaven forbid.

Dumbest job ever.  The worst nights were Bollywood Night, when all the Indian people would reserve the entire theatre at 11 PM for some reason and stay up watching Bollywood movies that were like 3-4 hours long.  So you'd be stuck there until 3 in the morning, doing absolutely nothing.  They didn't even want the concessions because they brought their own food.  It was completely pointless.  But there I was, just in case.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Great post/rant. One of my favorite hobbies during pandemic was smacking sense into snobbish people who think my peers need/deserve far more money based on our incredibly valuable contributions to the world, especially compared to those working in food service getting wage bumps:

You get paid six figures to arrange files, forward emails to people in India to do the lifting on, and do a little bit of thinking between lunch break and free alcohol, all with limited risk to our health. Some people aren't satisfied unless they can take a swim break every day as well. You can call this work. I call it borderline welfare for people who put in an ounce of effort in their teens or, for many, who have a parent in industry.

People seem to forget many people have actually difficult and risky jobs for half our pay or less. And they contribute quite a bit.


I used to think a monkey could do the work. Now, I'm not so certain most college grads have the skill set, but it shouldn't take more than 3 months of adequate training to be a monkey to fulfill the needs of our welfare roles. It's not that hard to make someone valuable.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I certainly posted an article about this book before (it was an interview with the author, given by... da da da da, Jacobin!) but there's no way I'm digging for it or fleshing out any type of effortpost on this phone.

What I will say is that this book is what turned me against the idea of a job guarantee in favor of something like Yang's UBI program or a negative income tax. Paying people to sit and paint rocks all day will only exacerbate the problem the author cites and what I fear proponents of a job guarantee program fail to consider.

As someone who's always had a job in transcription, I would say no, it is not a bullsh!t job. Just one that pays far less than what is demanded.

[Mr. Smith]

Yes, I did.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Employment is defined as a bullsh**t job your boss does not want to do.

[Dr. MB]

All jobs are bull$hit to an extent