Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs

'Capitalism' doesn't create jobs. Companies create jobs. Many companies are badly managed, and employ staff they don't need. This is true. (And only has one solution - people not taking jobs they think are pointless, and companies not hiring for those positions).

However, the OP is calling jobs "pointless" based on reference to his ideal planned economy where everyone works on a factory or farm for 15 hours a week. In this imaginary utopia, jobs which grease the wheels of capitalism - sales, marketing, finance - are superfluous.

Thing is, planned economies fail disastorously badly in practice. I assume HN knows why. The deeper issue is that many capitalistic service businesses do serve a vital purpose - finance is a hyper-efficient resource allocation engine, for example, marketing ensures customers find the best products for their needs, and so on. The managers and administrators the OP reviles are highly paid precisely because making large organisations efficient (e.g., not hiring for unneccessary jobs) is hard.

Instead of asking why someone chooses to pay for jobs in these areas, the OP simply assumes that they need to be abolished, by fiat, and like every intellectual since Plato starts planning how everyone should live their lives in his ideal republic.

What nonsense.

Yes, compared to 1910 there are more people in administrative positions, and this has nothing to do with capitalism. It's government. It's because there are more rules, more laws, more restrictions. Rules, laws, and restrictions, by the way, that are very popular with voters.

You can do away with all these "bullshit jobs" if you're prepared to do without environmental restrictions, a nontrivial tax code, employment regulations, etc. Do we really want to live in the non-rose-tinted world of 1910, where you can legally pipe your toxic wasted into the nearest river, where you can fire your secretary if she won't sleep with you, where you can chop down the tree with the last spotted owl?

There's a cost to economic organization. One that you can't just wave away. The idea a job is a "bullshit job" if the person holding that job isn't swinging a hammer is just childish.

Enterprise organizations are like machines: They need to be serviced and maintained. That is what these "pointless jobs" are for, but they're not pointless. They're vital for the function of the organization and therefore essential to the economy. They just aren't fun or well paid, like factory jobs.

(2013). And blogspam. Original: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

A lot of programming jobs turn out to be pointless. Is that what this article is about? I didn't read it.

I liked the article better when it had the chimp in a suit for its lead illustration.