Meaningless work

[Financial.Velociraptor]

Interesting article from Evonomics. 

http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/

[rob/d]

 Thanks for the read F.V.
 Made me laugh.
 I used to do all my work and drive home for 1 ish from an 8 a.m start  . We all did !
 By the time i left work i had a tracker on my van AND one on my P.C .
 All 800 of us simply stretched out the jobs , had " smokey treats ", took our time  and work output actually went down from 12 jobs a day to 6 or 7 .
 Ah progress .  The managers ,well my manager , used to work along side me so he knew exactly what the crack was.
 My job was a skilled trade/technical job so i never felt menial, just unappreciated .
 Happy days .

[A Definite Beta Guy]

Mmmmm, this more asserted than actually proven:

...we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

There's value to these jobs, even if the people performing them don't see it. It is hard to observe performance, true, but that doesn't mean the job itself is unimportant. It means you can't tell who is actually successful and how much is being contributed.


Also, people complaining about their jobs is not the same as their jobs being worthless. I'd whine about my job if I were a brick-layer, even if laying bricks is obviously important. I don't want to spend my whole life laying bricks.