“[A] bullshit job,” according to Graeber’s working definition, “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.” Crucially, this does not cover situations in which the person doing the job believes it serves a purpose, but others do not.
What is the source of these bullshit jobs?
... one of the main culprits [Graeber] points to is the growth of what some have called the “FIRE” sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) and the attendant rise of what he christens “managerial feudalism.” As FIRE has come to account for a larger share of GDP in developed countries, the activity of the average corporation has become less and less about “making, building, fixing, or maintaining things, and more and more about political processes of appropriating, distributing, and allocating money and resources.”
Graeber sees the current rise in bullshit jobs as a disturbing trend, instigated by everything from Pope St. John Paul II's encyclical about work to politicians who promise jobs, jobs, jobs without thinking about the aridity of life and mental health problems that goes with bullshit work.
From Matt Mazewski's review, it's hard to see if Graeber has a solution to the problem of bullshit jobs; they seem pretty interwoven into the fabric of modern life, if you ask me, and getting rid of them would require a level of critical and moral thinking that no longer exists in our culture.
Moreover, I'm not sure how soul-killing these jobs might seem to a generation addicted to soul-killing virtual social interaction and preoccupied with what I would call bullshit spirituality that reinforces self-involvement rather than involvement with the larger world. Especially since this generation was raised in a culture that thinks the worth of a job (and thereby the worker) is measured in terms of salaries and perks without regard to the usefulness of the work.
I can only imagine the hip young mainstream looking at Graeber's ideas in total incomprehension.
Or am I too pessimistic?
I had read the article previously, and my thoughts were that Graeber was defining bullshit jobs awfully broadly. Bullshit jobs are "other people's jobs that he doesn't find meaningful". Unfortunately there is a subset of young people who think any job they're not in love with is a bullshit job. Sometimes the definition of a meaningful job is one that enables one to keep a roof over one's head and food on the table. I didn't really see from the review that Graeber had a grasp of that concept. Also one person's bullshit job is someone else's job in which he or she feels they are contributing to society.
ReplyDeleteI think musicians, ecologists, artists and park rangers are undercompensated. I think that instead of having people working at processing medical insurance claims,they should be providing actual medical care. Many jobs are only making the environment worse. Our priorities are inverted and it shows.
ReplyDeleteI hope Patrick, with his experience in the insurance sector, weighs in.
ReplyDeleteI confess I'm somewhat confused about what a bs job is. I worked as a project manager for many years. I delivered some successful projects. Is that a bs job?
Jim, you helped your company's bottom line. You did well at what they paid you to do. You supported your family. That isn't what I call a bs job. I didn't get that Graeber quite understands the real world that most of us have to make our way in.
DeleteI am also confused about what jobs Graeber is talking about. But I think a clue is when he brings up FIRE. The businesses he names don't produce anything you can put in your "extra closet" storage unit (security and air conditioning 24/7) or the Pod in your driveway. They move money around. And, of course, they get up to no good when boredom sets in, and when they cure boredom by inventing CDOs, which yield a lot more money for NINJA loans, they can cause a lot of harm. (See "The Big Short.") And, in the end, what did they produce?
ReplyDeleteI'd be more inclined to wonder about life trainers. But the people who pay them must be getting some psychic satisfaction, and that's what folks get from Bono and Glenn Close, who seem to me to be as useful as anyone else in society.
But you can say that about most services, although realtors have never produced a global meltdown, even if sometimes they fudge the total remodel that didn't quite happen or the nearby school your kid will never be able to get into.
Tom, "life trainers" and life coaches, that always makes me think of the Peanuts cartoons, and Lucy with her booth charging 5 cents for advice.
DeleteI agree that, as reviewed, Graeber's definition is hard to nail down. I kept picturing those personal assistants to movie stars. A friend's sister did that out in Californy to a now-dead star, and the star basically wanted someone to order around and blame if the lights were too bright in his trailer or his car wasn't the proper temperature when he got in it. I am not making up.
ReplyDeleteIs Graeber intentionally vague to make us ponder the nature of our own jobs?
Subjective as it is, I think the exercise of asking if our jobs are bullshit would be wholly foreign to the stereotypical GenXer and Millennial.
I suppose it depends on which Gen Xers and Millenials you're talking to. With the Millenials, it seem like some of them think they have to make $80K a year right out of college, or it's a bullshit job.
DeleteA bit more on the definition, from Mazewski's review:
ReplyDelete"Such jobs abound in areas like “corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations.” In contrast to “shit jobs”—his terms, not mine—which often involve performing necessary tasks like waiting tables or cleaning bedpans but which are badly remunerated and done under poor working conditions, “bullshit jobs” actually tend to pay well and offer significant social cachet despite their inanity."
The example that springs to mind for me is found in a well-known exchange of letters between the late, great film critic, Roger Ebert, and his employer at the time, the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, Conrad Black, who if I am not mistaken is, in the style of Fleet Street barons of yore, Lord Black. It's helpful to know that Black's wife's name was (and for all I know, still is) Barbara. The entire exchange of letters is well worth reading in order to view a snapshot of Catholic social teaching in action (on Ebert's part). Here is the money quote - this is from Ebert to Black:
"Since you have made my salary public, let me say that when I learned that Barbara received $300,000 a year from the paper for duties described as reading the paper and discussing it with you, I did not feel overpaid."
As described by Mazewski above, that seems to qualify as a bs job.
The exchange of missives between Ebert and Black is here:
https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/dear-john-dear-roger-dear-conrad-a-sun-times-correspondence
I wish I could locate one or two Mike Royko columns that riffed on this same idea. Royko's idea was that if you could explain what you did for a living such that everyone understood what you were talking about, it was a real job. Examples: "I clean the offices on the 5th floor of the Wrigley Building." "I drive a truck from Chicago to St. Louis and back, three times a week." If you had a job that involved words like "consulting", "creative", "conceptualizing" and so on, you had a bs job. Royko didn't use that term in print - I know longer remember what he called it.
If I'm on the right track here, I think what bs jobs are is some combination of cronyism and the Peters Principle. Cronyism says, "I'm going to hire my son-in-law, who is a moron, because I want my daughter to continue to enjoy the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. But I can't actually trust him with any real responsibility, so I'm going to 'create' a job for him." The Peter's Principle says, "I hired my college roommate to be the sales director. He was so incompetent that our sales plummeted by 70% and all of our salespeople quit. But I play golf with him every Saturday morning, and he married my wife's cousin so I have to see him at family functions, so I can't fire him. So I'm going to promote him to be Vice President of X, with no duties beyond playing golf."
Ah, Mike Royko. Just seeing his name makes this a better day.
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