Do You Have a BS Job?

[Snerk]

Not particularly what I want; I want to get examples of the "some jobs" referred to in "Graeber contends that more than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and, as he describes, five types of entirely pointless jobs".

Yeah I probably rushed that reply a bit. I see what your mean now, my bad.

 

[aelf]

The assumption you are basing this result on is dubious at best. There are few, if any, businesses that can't be improved. So the two pronged assumption that one; the guy is competent and two; he can't find anything to improve, is contradictory. If he is really competent he finds things to improve.

The root problem is that if he is incompetent he makes up things to improve, and there is nothing in place to determine whether he is finding things or making things up, but he was hired anyway. In the real world, unfortunately, that happens all the time. Enamored with the idea of improvement, and unwilling to take any particular responsibility in the matter, some level of management takes a random dive into the barrel hoping to come up with a hire that will do it for them.

I don't think it's simply down to whether the consultant is competent or not. Sometimes, the value of a job is vastly overstated - not that it's not useful; it's just not as useful as claimed. Same thing as what makes me feel like what I do is pretty BS.

Maybe a lot of the time a competent consultant can make enough improvement in a business to justify his salary. But there's a good chance he can't make enough improvement to justify the million dollars or even 100k that the business paid his firm for his services. Sometimes that's just not going to happen. But the consulting firm wants to make a nice profit, so the consultant gets sent there to try and make it seem like the service was worth however much it was sold for. And that's where the BS comes from.

 

[Hygro]

That is probably a valid point but taken to a rather extreme conclusion, no? Isn't there plenty of room for questioning and theorising over the net contribution of various jobs or job types in today's world without having to compare it to an imagined population of pure homo economicus as you say?

I'm saying that for Graeber to argue that categorically that jobs that correct for people's lack of perfect behavior are pointless, he's arguing for the existence of homo economicus. AFAICT he's not even arguing that these are suboptimal jobs for maximal potential human output, but that they even in our current system have a negative ROI.

 

[civvver]

There aren’t bs jobs just people who do jobs poorly. For example a great project manager streamlines things and takes care of organization so workers are more efficient and effective. I’ve had bad ones who literally schedule meetings, take minutes and ask me to give them info to put in spreadsheets which they email out as project plans. That’s why you think their job is bs cus you could eliminate that person from your project and not miss a beat. But usually it’s due to the person not the nature of the job.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

II have this terrible suspicion that Graeber categorically decided certain things "don't count" just because he's constructed a model in his head... a model leading him back to 19th century realizations of "productivity", pre price theory.

Yeah, I'm still waiting for a justification of his model. Given how nobody has addressed it this far into the thread, I'm going with "political position masquerading as socioeconomic theory".

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think it's simply down to whether the consultant is competent or not. Sometimes, the value of a job is vastly overstated - not that it's not useful; it's just not as useful as claimed. Same thing as what makes me feel like what I do is pretty BS.

Maybe a lot of the time a competent consultant can make enough improvement in a business to justify his salary. But there's a good chance he can't make enough improvement to justify the million dollars or even 100k that the business paid his firm for his services. Sometimes that's just not going to happen. But the consulting firm wants to make a nice profit, so the consultant gets sent there to try and make it seem like the service was worth however much it was sold for. And that's where the BS comes from.

I can see that. I suddenly notice that we both seem to be taking a binary view on competence though. Competence being a scale the question really is whether he is competent enough, and like many things in running a business that is going to be a gamble.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I don't think it's simply down to whether the consultant is competent or not. Sometimes, the value of a job is vastly overstated - not that it's not useful; it's just not as useful as claimed. Same thing as what makes me feel like what I do is pretty BS.

Maybe a lot of the time a competent consultant can make enough improvement in a business to justify his salary. But there's a good chance he can't make enough improvement to justify the million dollars or even 100k that the business paid his firm for his services. Sometimes that's just not going to happen. But the consulting firm wants to make a nice profit, so the consultant gets sent there to try and make it seem like the service was worth however much it was sold for. And that's where the BS comes from.

The BS you are talking about is that those hiring consultants are often people who haven't a clue. About what they actually want or about what they will actually get for their dollars. Poor managers and crafty consultants are a bad business combination. But it is an industry that supports many families.

 

[mitsho]

There seem to be two ecosystems in which those BS jobs exist: capitalism and democracy. I can see the want or need for f.e. aggressive corporate lawyers and public relations officers when it's about survival of one's own firm. Similarly, office clerks for politicians and even think-tanks in general are an investment we are willing to take in order to improve the quality of our democracy.

However, everything can be taken too far, and it seems to me that the jobs Graeber is aiming at are usually the ones where the bs has been taken too far. Even the secretary/management levels = display of power can serve a function, theoretically.

But I haven't read the book yet. (which is also true for his earlier work on debt which has been on my pile of shame for a few years now..., so I'm not sure whether I'll ever read it)

 

[Traitorfish]

I agree with most of what Graeber says, but I to have to concede that a lot of the jobs identified as "BS" are productive when considered within the logic of market capitalism, but only because capitalism has thrown up the need for those jobs to exist. They're "useful" because they ease the wheels of profit-making, rather than because they contribute to any general standard of living. I think that part of the problem everyone's having with this is that, while the argument is clearly premised on the assumption that market capitalism is a non-permanent state of affairs, it's not clearly presented as such, and most of his proposed reforms ultimately serve to correct the excesses of the market, rather than anticipate a post-capitalist form of society. It's consequently easy to challenge the argument from within the logic of capitalism: "Obviously we need copyright lawyers, or people would have to fight copyright suits by themselves!"

Also, for the record, I currently work for a privatised energy supplier, which is a fairly naked exercise in rent-seeking. "BS" is not a strong enough word for what I do.

Moderator Action: Changed two instances of a not allowed term to "BS", which is the more forum acceptable term. As per Arakhor's note, please use that term in future. --LM

 

[tjs282]

Hmmm. Well, basically, I spend all day listening to people's tales of woe. Does that mean I have a BS job?

You tell me.

You make other people's lives better. Or at least more bearable. So you increase the sum total of human happiness.

So no.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I feel like the precedent set by the "author" is incredibly stupid. Furthermore, even if it wasn't complete bunk, who wants to live in a society where everything is deemed useful, everything has its place? This is some 1984 ****, truly. This is the kind of "bs" that really grinds my gears.

Being a functioning cog in an organism that is profoundly sick is not something to take pride in. And I don't even have, nor have I ever had, a "bs" job.

You make other people's lives better. Or at least more bearable. So you increase the sum total of human happiness.

So no.

Utlilitarianism is a deeply anti-humanist ideology. Not trying to pick a fight or anything, just throwing it out there.

 

[Lexicus]

I feel like the precedent set by the "author" is incredibly stupid. Furthermore, even if it wasn't complete bunk, who wants to live in a society where everything is deemed useful, everything has its place? This is some 1984 ****, truly. This is the kind of "bs" that really grinds my gears.

The society that resembles 1984 is in fact our own, with the accumulation of bureaucracy driven by the market-state complex: the profusion of people watching over other people's shoulders to make sure of what they are doing.

In essence Graeber is declaring that the many jobs that exist today which are primarily about "deeming things useful", to use your terminology, are the BS jobs.

 

[GenMarshall]

Do dead end retail jobs count?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Do dead end retail jobs count?

You are a "retail transaction facilitator", so such a job is valuable.