Busy Work and Bullshit Jobs
viking_sec • 3 Mar 2022 •
As part of my goal to read 20 books this year, I read David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs and it’s changed a lot of the ways I view the current job economy and the state of work, both culturally and economically. I had already decided to work toward entrepreneurial goals with the eventual goal to work for myself or to “work” less in general in the formal sense of the word, but this book pushed me even closer to it by showing me just how silly a lot of the job force is. I really highly recommend it, Graeber is one of my favorite anarchist writers for his accessible and logical tone as well as his approach to the modern job force and our cultural philosophy toward work.
Graeber goes into how he can realistically posit that upwards of 50% of modern jobs are, in some way, bullshit. Bullshit, without trying to oversimplify or oversummarize such a great book, aptly summarizes jobs that don’t add any value to the world, and are really just there to facilitate more hiring and more work, or even in heaping more bullshit onto others. It was fascinating to hear him quote former President Barack Obama, who said that the reason he wanted to keep the private option healthcare in the US (which, notably, has been responsible for worse outcomes and exponentially higher healthcare costs for the average American) because in getting rid of the private option healthcare companies by edging them out of healthcare with a cheaper government sponsored option, he would be getting rid of millions of jobs that would no longer be needed.
Think about that for a second… The most powerful man in the world essentially admitted he was watering down life-saving and life-altering healthcare for the sake of preserving jobs that, by his own admission, aren’t necessary! This is just one of many points of proof that Graeber uses to exemplify the phenomena of bullshit jobs, but it was particularly powerful as I was paying off a $5,000+ medical bill for the birth of my son that was made up of just… obscene charges for the most menial things. This, mind you, was a $5,000 bill with phenomenal insurance. It was also shortly after the story leaked that hospitals were applying massive, obscene and entirely pointless markups to healthcare by default in California. So, the story hit home pretty hard.
That being said, I see it so much in my own industries of tech, software development and cyber security as well. Middle management whose jobs are functionally to browse Jira and make tickets for their own sake, PR folks whose purpose is to organize half-assed “charity” efforts to generate positive press, corporate lawyers who charge my monthly salary per hour just to dictate what one can and cannot do and how they should and should not do it, or, worse, to lobby our political body to further erode our freedoms and privacy… The list goes on and on. Bullshit jobs are everywhere, and they’re a large reason I’m trying to exit the formal private work force to work on my own or in a smaller, motivated and loosely organized team.
Top down leadership has failed, says the exhausted anarchist…
Comments
@therealbrandonwilson when I say “phenomenal insurance” I moreso mean “employer-paid insurance with all of the bells and whistles that sets it apart from the insurance usually heaped upon the economically disadvantaged.”
It’s still a massive PITA
@viking_sec share your (and the book’s) perspective about most jobs. Just added it to my to-read list, so thank you!
@viking_sec Bullshit Jobs is a lovely rest stop on the road to dismantling capitalism.
Yeeeup @Winkletter exactly! I don’t know if it’s quite a radicalizing book, but it’s a book that will push you along if you’re already anti-capitalist.
I am intimately familiar with the healthcare insurance industry, and I’m the last one to try to defend it. I was more surprised that mentioned “phenomenal insurance.” Does such a thing actually still exist? This book sounds interesting, and I just may have to add it to my ever-growing pile.