brennan
Argumentative Brit
Factory workers make things (you'd hope), burger flippers are part of a massive parasitic industry that exists solely to encourage large segments of the population to regularly spend money in an amazingly inefficient way.
Do You Have a BS Job?
- Thread starter Snerk
- Start date
Snerk
Smeghead
I've never seen it as a "let's define the BS jobs" issue. The stuff I've read about it never had that angle either. Why wouldn't learning or philosophising over possible systemic weaknesses in the processes of creating or maintaining employment in our societies be useful?
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Snerk
Smeghead
Timsup2nothin
Deity
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Because, as Commodore pointed out, ultimately "employment" is just the selling and buying of time, so the specifics of what is done in the sold time are not really important. What lies darkly at the root of this "philosophizing" is a structure of justifications for "better than." It allows Brennan to treat a guy who makes my dinner like a "parasitic leech," for example.
GoodEnoughForMe
n.m.s.s.
Yep complete and total bullfeathers:
1. Could do everything in half the time I'm assigned, maybe even less
2. Could do most of it from home
3. Everybody looks down on it
4. Mostly there to be a warm body in the office a lot of the time more than anything and because people don't want to do the bullfeathers I do
5. Taking this job has been the 2nd worst mistake of my life probably and continues to destroy my mental health
6. The pay was better than anywhere else I could go at first but has now stagnated and there is no upward trajectory, plus boss has cut vacation time from 3 to 1 week
I highly suggest people try to avoid bullfeathers jobs if at all possible.
1. Could do everything in half the time I'm assigned, maybe even less
2. Could do most of it from home
3. Everybody looks down on it
4. Mostly there to be a warm body in the office a lot of the time more than anything and because people don't want to do the bullfeathers I do
5. Taking this job has been the 2nd worst mistake of my life probably and continues to destroy my mental health
6. The pay was better than anywhere else I could go at first but has now stagnated and there is no upward trajectory, plus boss has cut vacation time from 3 to 1 week
I highly suggest people try to avoid bullfeathers jobs if at all possible.
Timsup2nothin
Deity
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Yes. And their "vast array of processes" is exemplified by a quality control bulletin that came out of a GM plant advising dealers that if they received a vehicle that had only three lug nuts on the wheels they needed to remove the gas tank and get the other lug nuts out as they could interfere with the sending unit for the fuel gauge. Apparently the "highly skilled process follower" who had the horrifically rote, mind numbingly repetitious task of impacting the lug nuts onto the wheels (which another worker had put into place) recognized that if he ended up with spare nuts he would have a problem, so when he took a quick smoke he made up the time by dropping 40% of his job into the gas tank.
As the populists, led by Trump, wail about the loss of these "good" jobs and crow about their possible return, someone should be reminding them that EVERY worker in those factories was routinely quoted as saying they did what they did so that their kids wouldn't have to.
Snerk
Smeghead
Complete nonsense man. It's certainly not what's at the root of my curiosity on the matter. I can really appreciate your noir-ish dystopian aspect, but it's just not straight up applicable like that.
Lexicus
Deity
It's not complete nonsense. In the US we have millions of people who are working and homeless. Three guesses as to what the ideological justification for this is. Don't worry, I'll save you the time. For those with some education in economics, the justification is 'marginal productivity theory,' ie the neoclassical dogma that people's wages reflect the worth of their contribution to a process of production. But the far more common - and electorally, politically relevant - argument is just that it's obvious that flipping a burger contributes less to society than working on a car assembly line. By contrast with the noble skilled industrial workers of yore, today's burger-flippers are just entitled millennials who want a handout and don't understand the value of hard work and blah blah blah.
Timsup2nothin
Deity
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I wasn't implying that it was at the root of your curiosity. Let me rephrase...the root of your interest is obviously curiosity. Your curiosity about things various and far ranging is one quality I admire about you. The guy who wrote the book was most likely prompted not by noirish dystopianism, but by the idea that in the current market this book would sell, and I don't actually have a problem with that either. Being a writer is a hard way to get by, not just a BS job. But what brought it to your attention as something to be curious about, and what created the current market in which such a book would sell, is the rising to the top of the cultural stew of a gas bubble stinking of "I work in a bomb factory so I'm a better citizen than that lowly burger flipper" (various substitutions available) sentiment in the US and many European countries. I personally find that more interesting than the various derived specifics.
So, take that as an apology for trying perhaps to hijack your thread onto a deeper but darker path, which I see was the only logical outcome so must have been my intention, as well as for any perceived slighting of your motives regarding your interests in the lighter hearted aspects of the subject. Carry on, my good Snerk!
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Now, now: I view the industry as parasitic (one of many), not the workers as vermin.
Lexicus
Deity
David Graeber is a committed anarchist who wrote the book to show that capitalism is ruining everything. He is actually not trying to portray the holders of "BS Jobs" as parasites, he's trying to portray them as victims. edit: though I guess he would probably think of most of the "taskmasters" as villains, not victims
His "real job", incidentally, is teaching Anthropology at the London School of Economics, unless he's moved somewhere else since the last time I checked his Wikipedia article. edit: nope
His "real job", incidentally, is teaching Anthropology at the London School of Economics, unless he's moved somewhere else since the last time I checked his Wikipedia article. edit: nope
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Absolutely, it is the fault of the continuation of the old capitalist dogma that people are worthless if they cannot get a job. We have economies far, far richer than the past and the ability to solve all social problems if we wanted to, but rather than provide proper social security, living wages or UBI the advanced economies are forcing people to set up these companies creating worthless jobs that contribute and produce virtually nothing.
Lexicus
Deity
I think it's somewhat more complicated than that. The "Protestant Work Ethic" is responsible to some degree, but IIRC an important part of Graeber's argument from his essay on BS jobs was that many jobs are made "necessary" by our crappy system of social organization. An example of that would be health insurance company people whose job is to find reasons to deny claims.
