People definitely love to do things, and some people are able to do those things for money. But in our current system, everyone has to find paying work - a job or a career. They have to get paid to work whether that work really contributes to our needs or not. And they probably need to do it for 40 hours a week to make enough money for housing and food, despite the fact that there isn’t enough useful work to keep everyone working that long. Wouldn’t it be better to work for ten hours a week on something really useful and then be free to spend the rest of your time doing what you love?
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Say we had Star Trek style replicators and the ability to power them easily. Now what?
The people who own them would still charge you $1,000 per use, while consuming 0.01 worth of power.
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I read a classic science fiction story like that - everything stopped. People could also create backup files and restore points for themselves, so if they felt bad they would jump into the machine and be destroyed and reborn to erase their latest bad memories. Many people wandered the now empty streets not knowing what year it was or that had been copied 10 time over, but everything was free so it hardly mattered.
I worked for many years at a job that I liked OK at first and then grew to loathe. But, during that time I went back to school for a new degree in a field that I enjoy and find continually stimulating. My old field was running an IT Help Desk. My new field is epidemiology and health services research. With some fits and starts, I eventually got a job in the new field… doing what I love.
Of course there are days and certain people that I do not love about my career. That isn’t ever going to change. But the long and short of it is that there is a difference of perspective: some people view life as the bifurcated making a living vs. doing enjoyable things. I used to, and then started pursuing my dream lifestyle, which is always a process of personal evolution, but I am doing it.
So I don’t wake up every day and go, “Crap, now I have to go to my JOB and WORK THERE and it SUCKS.” I wake up and putter around the house, thinking about what I’m going to try to bite off today, drive in to work, do it, chat with colleagues, then come home and do family stuff. To compare lifestyles, I feel much more integrated than I used to. I feel far less at-odds, like “WORK IS WASTING MY LIFE!!! YOU BASTARDS GIMME THE MONEY!!!”
I feel more like, wish I had more time, so I could do more stuff, break more new ground, discover new stuff. It’s a more positive footing, and much more emotionally stable and less prone to upset. I’m much happier, much more present now not living a life of working 10-40 hours at something I loathe and only having time after it to do what I want. Now, if I have stuff I gotta do in the middle of the day not related to work, I can just take off, then come back or work from home as needed, since I’m self-motivating and productivity levels are not an issue.
That is not to say that wage-earners are emotionally unstable or incapable of an integrated, positive life! I’m talking about MYSELF. I know lots of people who punch a clock and are happy doing it, and love the fact that they can leave work at work when they go home for the night. I almost never leave work at work, and I don’t have a problem with that; it’s not a source of distress. For lots of people, it would be. And people are adaptable to all kinds of situations. If I had to punch a clock again, knowing what I know now, I would make it fun. I would just MAKE my world. I’d shoot the shit with co-workers, play pranks, get my shit done, look for ways to be more efficient, and not take it too personally. But I had to go through hell with jobs to get here to where I am now with it all. Anyways, I am not saying I am right and you are wrong. I just think there is a totally different perspective that is worth considering: some people have careers and like their work.
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George Orwell on the importance of war to create poverty and class (1984)
The primary aim of modern warfare… is to use up the products of the
machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the
end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the
surplus of consumption goods…when the machine first made its
appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human
drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had
disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end,
hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated
within a few generations…But it was also clear that an all-round
increase in wealth threatened the destruction–indeed, in some sense
was the destruction–of a hierarchical society……wealth would confer
no distinction… the great mass of human beings who are normally
stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think
for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or
later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they
would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only
possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in
practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous
warfare…The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily
of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of
shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in
the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make
the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too
intelligent…War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary
destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way.
In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of
the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and
filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods
and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the
economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What
is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is
unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale
of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be
competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but
it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant
fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and
orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have
the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter
whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory
is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly.
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Wow, the economic ignorance and logical contradictions on display in this article are astounding. Consider this quote:
“According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.”
Does he consider that the firm might employ those people because those people make them money by providing services that the firm’s customers are willing to pay for? Can he stop for a second, adopt a little humility, and realize that just because he doesn’t see value in a particular job, someone else might? Or that the company leadership might have made a mistake in thinking that an employee was valuable? Or that a particular job might be required to meet a regulatory requirement? Or that maybe no one can actually tell, at least at the moment? I guess not. What arrogance to assume that he is the final arbiter of “social value”, let alone dismissing the complexities of our modern economy as mere trifles!
I quite my nursing job in favor of being an accountant. Why? While I loved the people, the patients, and the actual act of caring for folks, the rest of it was shit. I did office nursing for a bit, but mostly I did geriatric psych, which has a big helping of hospice care involved due to the age group. I loved it.
What I did not love was never once in ten years of nursing not being able to afford health care, if it was offered. Often they would “McDonalds” the job, and hire you at the definition of part time. I had one job that would then call you in over an over, but because you were designated part time, you got no benefits at all. You usually got an extra 50 cents an hour for that, but real benefited positions were getting rare towards the end of my career.
Then there was the shortages. There is a real honest to god shortage of nurses, but here is also greed mechanics. Why run a full shift of nurses for your facility when you discover you can load over patients between less of them? Facilities are all profit driven, so cutting your staff is great for them.
I gave up. Instead I’m going to become an accountant like my partner. If I avoid CPA firms, I can work a 40 hour week with benefits. Vacation, insurance, all of it. Annnnnnnd, for the same pay bracket I got for nursing. Even better, I don’t have to show up to work, be told my 20 patient medicare post surgical unit was changed to 40, and they reduced my CNA’s to half.
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See my reply here (http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/#comment-482).
Basically the article takes a very narrow view of how labor markets work, and provides no real solutions to given ‘problems’. Just a puff piece, nothing to see here, move along citizen.
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Now I’m destined to spend the rest of my day pondering the effects of The 1% going on strike.
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There’s bullshit jobs, and there’s bullshit jobs.
I currently spend half my working time keeping some radio telescopes running. This provides my family with health insurance, and is interesting. It’s not necessary to keep the world running. It does work on The Big Questions, which is something that mankind seems to want.
My other job (that pays) is making exotic wristwatches. Not necessary either, but also fun, if a bit repetitive. And the product makes people happy.
My previous job was designing computers for the military industrial complex. This was such a BS job that I got a great uplift from leaving it. So we can call it the pure BS job. Machines to help support the US military hegemony? Not the least bit necessary.
Then there’s the nonprofit volunteer work, which is the truly important stuff.
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Graeber isn’t really talking about rent seekers directly, and he certainly didn’t even imply that rent seeking is an element of bullshit jobs. Rent seekers can exploit in any field, productive or useless.
He makes a very fair and simple point: that most jobs in the contemporary economy, and especially the highest paid jobs, don’t have any real benefit to society (and many have extreme negative consequences) and if they disappeared tomorrow no one who isn’t directly benefiting economically from those jobs would miss them.
As someone who has had useful and useless jobs I have to agree with him. Its a sickness that forces people to work at soulless, useless work when we could all have everything we need and most of the things we really want working 4 hours per day. And Graeber is correct that the world we find ourselves living and working in is not the one we would’ve designed: this economy, such as it is, has been coerced and designed for the benefit of a very few at the top of the economic structure, period. From the theft of the commons that forced and forces peasants into the factories, to the theft of profit from workers whose productivity creates that profit, our economy exists to syphon money to an ever-shrinking population of plutocrats. And those plutocrats, once they controlled the profit from useful labor, went on to create useless labor in order to ever expand their sources of profit. And who does it benefit to force people into offices for 50 hours per week when they could easily get the “work” done in less than half the time? It benefits the capitalist class that can then sell services and products to those who have no time for normal life activities. Its a sick system and the protestant work ethic is the grease that keeps the wheels turning.
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Isn’t it obvious? When the financial collapse happened it was as if all the 1%ers went on strike (Banks stopped lending, money froze up, value disappeared overnight even though regular people kept working). Would it have gotten better (for the 99%) if they hadn’t gotten a bailout? Who knows, it would just be speculation.
Yes. Let the banks collapse. The parts of the banking system that are necessary, like the payments systems, could’ve been salvaged without bailing out the criminals. If that had been done, the massive overhang of debt had been canceled, and new banks had been created that didn’t employ the criminals, our economy would be back on its feet now (for what that’s worth). Instead we limp along with zombie, criminal banks that include debts that can’t and won’t be paid as “assets” on their balance sheets, essentially leaving them insolvent by any real world accounting method, with tens of trillions of dollars pumped into a broken and corrupt financial system, while the real economy continues to weaken and hollow out.
The system itself is collapsing in on itself. We need to move beyond this broken paradigm of money and profit but the moneyed interests refuse to give up their power and leverage. One way or the other they will eventually have to. The longer it takes the more destructive it will be.
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I don’t think we’re really disagreeing so much as we’re saying different things. You’re saying you found a way to make the current system work for you. I’m saying that a different system, where we simply didn’t do work that wasn’t important, could work better for everyone.
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Not everyone can or should have a career. In fact, the type of career worker you refer to is a tiny minority. And one can have a career or pursuit that one loves without being forced to work at it 40+ hours per week. Some chose to work that many hours at one task. The vast majority do not. Most of us are not built that way, but are contorted and forced into it. Is it any wonder that most of those who make the loudest noise about how hard they work can barely hide their resentment for those they deem are not working hard enough? If they were so happy with their situation would they be filled with such resentment?
I’m in no way trying to denigrate those who work lots of hours at something they love. As Chris Rock said – for those who love what they do there are never enough hours in a day. Its just that most of us haven’t been blessed with that, perhaps dubious, gift. And likely that’s a good thing. After all we will always need garbage collectors and sewer workers, no? And many of those with careers have little to no time for their children or their loved ones. The world doesn’t run on careers, it runs on jobs.
And forget about careers for a second and think of the jobs that people really respect – e.g., investors like Warren Buffet. Everyone loves that guy, I guess. And yet how could human society exist if we all lived to exploit the labor of others for profit? That’s why the zero sum game the neoliberal mindset has fostered is so destructive. We cannot all be capitalists. Yet many claim that a non-capitalist deserves only what the capitalist deigns to give them and no more, regardless of whether they can survive on it. That is one reason it behoves civilized societies to ensure a living wage for all members of that society. There are many other practical reasons as well, but the ethical obligation is paramount: my right to a healthy, informed and educated life must not be left to the whim of some plutocrat. If there wasn’t enough to provide us all with the basic needs of humanity then the question would be different. But there is, and so we must provide it to all, regardless of how “deserving” someone or other thinks we are. They don’t have the ethical right to judge. We are all deserving of basic sustenance, shelter, education and healthcare. Even the worst and lowliest among us.
Sorry for straying from your comment. I seem to feel strongly about this subject :).
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He certainly could. I know this because he discusses that about a dozen paragraphs in, about how he isn’t the arbiter of social value, but how common it is for people to feel their own jobs are meaningless. That the market is willing to give money for something doesn’t make it valuable in any but the narrowest economic sense.
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It sounds like we completely agree. I think your comments about careers apply mostly to awjt’s replies to my post.
I think if we got rid of the unnecessary work in our society and shared the work necessary to maintain our current standard of living, we could all work an average of ten (or less) hours a week. We could all have housing and food and health coverage and transportation and mobile phones and boing boing and so on. And we could have a lot of time left to do the things we love that might not currently fit into paying jobs.
To do that, we just have to share more than we do now. And we have to give up that notion you mention: that some people deserve more or less than others. I would like to think that the reward of a ten hour work week and no retirement concerns would be enough incentive to convince people that this is a worthy trade off.
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I was interviewed recently for a role: Corporate Commercial Legal PA, and asked the question: “So, what do you enjoy about admin?” I answered: “I enjoy gardening, cooking, art and nature - I do admin because it needs to be done”. Needless to say, the role has not yet been filled.
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So your are assuming that if they get a raise they will just bury it or eat it or sacrifice them to Khorne or what?
Even if they hoard all that money what is wrong with it? It is called SAVINGS. And they are very important, specially in the USA with it´s magnificent healthcare system.
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