★★★★☆
Bokomtale Bullshit jobs av David Graeber
Interesting, sometimes sad, sometimes even hilarious diagnosis of silliness of the labour market! David Graeber classifies different reasons why maybe as much as 1/4 of all jobs in developed economies are actually not contributing to well being and welfare. Economists mostly evade any questions of the degree of usefulness of different occupations, because of the inherent subjectivity. As a social anthropologist, Graeber is not afraid of such a plain commonsensical question.
— “a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”
The book’s main strength is the collection of stories mailed to Greaber by people stuck in “bullshit jobs” after publishing an essay on this topic in 2013.
The author tries to explain the apparent paradox that as the economy as a whole become more efficient, more and more human labour is wasted on tasks that don’t contribute to anything useful. — “The results were not just some sort of recalibration or readjustment of existing forms of capitalism. In many ways, it marked a profound break with what had come before. If the existence of bullshit jobs seems to defy the logic of capitalism, one possible reason for their proliferation might be that the existing system isn’t capitalism— or at least, isn’t any sort of capitalism that would be recognizable from the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or, for that matter, Ludwig von Mises or Milton Friedman. It is increasingly a system of rent extraction where the internal logic— the system’s “laws of motion,” as the Marxists like to say— are profoundly different from capitalism, since economic and political imperatives have come to largely merge. In many ways, it resembles classic medieval feudalism, displaying the same tendency to create endless hierarchies of lords, vassals, and retainers. In other ways— notably in its managerialist ethos— it is profoundly different.”
The diagnosis is funny, but the authors solutions are actually ….. bullshit!!! Instead of proposing how to tax and regulate away pointless jobs (e.g. ban telemarketing, limit need for administration, remove unnecessary regulations) he propose a “Universal bullshit income”. He is also suspicious of the kind of “protestant work ethic” which made societies affluent.
bookshelves: economics, psychology, politics, education, e-books, management, job_related
Trygdekontorets episode om Bullshit Jobs
Thomas Seltzer debattprogram om temaet for denne boka i 2019.
