Bullshit Jobs

David Graeber presents his theory - that an alarming number of jobs in western society (37-40% at least) are made up just to waste time or fill space, for various reasons. Each chapter digs a little deeper into these reasons, from the overcomplexity of western capitalist systems, to a puritanical attitude toward work (and suffering) being humanity's lot. Finally, he puts forward ideas on what can be done about this. This is all presented with Graeber's artistically analytical eye, his fierce political views, and his wry sense of humour.

Bullshit Jobs was Graeber's final book, which is a pity as it feels like it's building up to a crescendo. He observes western society as an anthropologist, unapologetically making sweeping statements, but using interview and survey as means to reinforce his theory. And it is very convincing. Few people who read this book would fail to identify with some of what Graeber writes, and his biting criticism of western politics (left and right) is pitch perfect.

I wish I could go back in time and give this book and Tom Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle" to my 27-year-old self. It would have opened my eyes to what was going on with me and my career at the time. I was pretty miserable after a few dead-end jobs, and starting to despair. Hodgkinson would've shown me I wasn't alone and I wasn't broken. This book would've shown me exactly where the working world WAS broken, and why I was having such a hard time with it. Sadly, neither book was available back then.

The main question of this book is "Why aren't we all working 15-hour weeks, as we were promised in the 1930s?" The answer Graeber finds is that we absolutely could be, but because of some unfortunate political and cultural choices made by society in the 20th century, 94% employment was taken as the greatest good and the goal of the economy. Thus, a number of meaningless jobs have been created, and even those jobs that aren't meaningless are increasingly buried in bullshit paperwork.

Graeber's mostly interested in exploring the nature of the problem, rather than solving it, but he does see some promise in the Universal Basic Income proposals of the late 20th century, although he acknowledges these can be hijacked by right-wing bad actors if we're not careful. Solutions aside, his history of how the problem arose is very compelling.

David Graeber’s adventure with Bullshit Jobs began when he was asked to write an essay for the radical magazine Strike. His essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, which was published in 2013, was read over a million times and translated into seventeen different languages. His book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, expands on this concept and outlines how meaningless work has become. Meaningless jobs were more associated with the Soviet system where they’re making up jobs to keep everybody looking like they’re working. Capitalism is supposed to be the opposite. Markets were supposed to fix the inefficiencies created by the socialist states. Still, somehow, it happens,all over the place.

So, what’s going on? Graeber argues that is has to do with the ideology of work. It is based in the puritan idea that work is valuable in itself; it doesn't have to produce anything. Work, even if it is totally pointless, became a virtue. If you are working in something that you don’t like, the problem is you, never the work. You are lazy or just a bad person.

Graeber thinks that is a strange thing that this very subject is not considered a social problem. He argues, that we need to reconsider what is valuable in labour. Most of the people that emailed him after the publication of his article or those he interviewed about their work, said that they want to do a job where they care of other people or benefit them in some way. He, therefore, suggests, that we need to think about a new theory of value at labour, a reformulation of what work is valuable, and he suggests that a good point to start is with women’s work,or what is called ‘caring work’. Also to think about production and what production even is.

What I admire in David Graeber is that he says things that,normally, people do not say, even if they think about them. I am totally convinced with his argument about this new theory of value of work, but I get behind about Basic Income. Although it might seem to many like it is another expansion of the state power, it is,in fact, exactly the reverse. Millions of governmental official and workers would be thrown out of their current jobs, but they will receive basic income and therefore many of them will come up with something genuinely important to do, something that they are good at and they are enjoying doing. By offering a reasonable standard of living to all, it’s up to each individual to decide what to do with their life, whether they want to pursue wealth, or devote themselves in studying ancient philosophers or do gardening. A Universal Basic Income program could provide a profound transformation to our societies.

Read the full review on Maquina Lectora

Sooooo disappointed in this book after Graeber's excellent Debt: The First 5000 Years.

While I do believe there are bullshit jobs, and those that harm or subtract value from society, I found his analysis fuzzy, arguable, and to be honest, sloppy and way too tied to Marxist and elitist arguments as to value, labour, and capitalism. I felt the subjective definition of a BS job to be way too fuzzy, though ultimately I think he's on to something about the fact we should all be working less, there are many roles that adds little value (if not harming society), and there needs to be recognition of this, I felt this was shoddy. His assertion that work of value in undervalued compared to work that he says provides none lacks deeper analysis (imho).

However, I do think he is onto something in our need to decouple livelihood from work. While he says he is avoiding making policy recommendations, I do think he makes very good points about first order reasoning on Universal Basic Income (though,I feel everyone really need to do more second order effects thinking on this or some really larger experiments to understand how it might work in practice (which I am very supportive of).