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Comment by sdenton4 | Hacker News Reader

This is a 2018 book review of David Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs.'

It seems like an exceedingly interesting time to revisit this book, though! Keynes in the 1930's predicted fewer of us would be working today, but we still struggle to maintain low unemployment rates, presumably with lots of Graeber's Bullshit Jobs filling the gaps in people's times, and producing a huge amount of collective grief along the way.

And now in the midst of a truly epic global slowdown, the food systems are still functioning, and people still have shelter, so long as we have laws to protect against evictions... Why not get rid of a lot of the bullshit: deploy Basic Income and live freer lives? What if we were working 10 hours a week to cover life's niceties, and had an extra 30 hours to write more music, invent more math, write our novels (and read the new deluge thereof), or truly master starcraft? Or pass on our skills to the next generation with a fraction of the class sizes?

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Another way to look at this is that maybe our current economic system is failing to find productive ways to put us to work, even though the world is unfinished. We have a world on a collision course with climate change and instead of bullshit, hundreds of millions of people could be diverted to geoengineering and green energy projects. We have housing crises in dozens of cities, but our economies are not putting enough people to work building housing. Children are being left under-educated, elderly under-cared for. Billions live in poverty, but our economies are not creating material comfort for them. And once we take care of all that, we have a system full of dead planets and moons that could be turned into gardens. There is plenty to do, but a failure of incentives to do it.

I have often thought we should have a military style group that teaches kids the discipline and self respect of the military but without the killing aspects and then out them to use rehabbing natural areas, cleaning up manufacturing sites, teaching kids, etc. It's sort of like the civilian conservation corps of the new deal but with a wider scope.

Curiously, a lot of the big problems you mention can be mitigated by slowing things down. We're seeing directly what happens to emissions when we reduce the number of people commuting and flying on a daily basis. And getting rid of bullshit jobs frees up a lot of people for child and elder care, for people they care about beyond their economic relationship.

All of these tasks seem like more useful than assigning jira tickets. How do we fix the incentive structure to incentivize all these tasks?

I'm genuinely interested in helping, but I'm not sure how except through some effective charity.

I feel like you've done a great job of summing up what a large percentage of white collar workers are thinking.

On a personal level I sacrifice income in order to work for an environmental nonprofit. I believe my work is important to my organization and that my organization truly provides value to the world. I also think that very few people have the luxury of making choices misaligned with economic incentives and that preaching personal responsibility is a ridiculous cop out that is often argued in bad faith by leaders that want to avoid addressing an issue. So I think the only way to change the incentives is to change the governance. Vote, protest, advocate, make campaign contributions, run for local political office. Political action may seem like an underwhelming answer, but it is how us humans organize our societies.

I'm one of the those people that have the luxury of making choices misaligned with their economic incentives. What you've mentioned is great, actionable advice.

I also agree that personal responsibility is a cop out, but at least for myself I can switch jobs to an organization that seems to be making the world a better place, beyond the kool aid.

I'll look into what political action I could take. I really appreciate the level headed advice.

I'll give it a stab:

> climate change

Implement a high carbon tax/fee, and companies are now willing to spend money to reduce their carbon footprint, as long as the cost to reduce is less than the tax (so the tax has to high enough).

For the geoengineering case, you can simply to the same thing, in reverse: offer money for carbon capture.

Both of these create an opportunity for new businesses and jobs, since companies usually don't have the climate related expertise in house.

> housing crisis

From what I see, the incentives are already there to build more housing, but the government (and those who already live there!) in many jurisdictions puts up as many barriers as possible to prevent people from actually acting on those incentives. The solution, then, is to convince the government and those who live there to allow people to build (there's already a long line of organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, who'd gladly start build tomorrow if they could).

As dougmwne mentioned, both of these ultimately require political action. I'm not aware of what organizations are advocating for a carbon tax, but in the case of housing, YIMBY does some good work.

to be more blunt, the bullshit jobs are those chasing returns for capital disconnected from commensurate return to the public good, leaving little to tackle meaningful issues.

corrupting forces work relentlessly against economic systems to break the tie between capital returns and returns to public good (a key tenet of capitalism, incidentally), to serve the former at the expense of the latter.

we keep failing to directly face this most critical distortion to incentives in economic systems. fixing that would lead to a better world for us all, not just the selfish and greedy.

We will never eliminate human greed or selfishness. It is a common thread throughout all societies and historical eras. Our challenge is to build a political and economic system that will produce optimal outcomes no matter the "moral fortitude" of the agents working within the system. At its most basic, it probably requires a re-work of currency, though I think we need innovations throughout our economy and government. It's clear to me that this "ism" has't been invented yet, because once it is, it will quickly dominate the world economy as it organizes our labor more efficiently.

yes, the ingenuity of capitalism is redirecting selfishness and greed toward societally productive uses, rather than attempting to eliminate them. but that mechanism has largely been subverted from a relentless onslaught over the last many decades (cartels, regulatory capture, etc.).

but i'm not sure why currency needs reworking? unless you mean the central banking system and where and how money gets injected into the economy?

(having just watched hamilton, the interesting bit to me how instrumental he was in the creation of our financial system as much as anything else--something that didn't stick from high school history apparently)

I mean money is a synthetic concept and can function however we define and people will continue to chase large amounts of it. Bitcoin was an interesting thought experiment but seemed on a trajectory to convert the planet's crust into mining hardware. Money should probably have some kind of variable decay factor similar to inflation or maybe some kind of antipolarity to prevent it from clumping into large, passive collections. Maybe it should decay faster in large accounts than small accounts or decay faster if it hasn't passed through a tax system recently. Maybe small amounts should automatically earn interest to encourage individuals to save emergency funds and very small amounts could grow rapidly to provide basic income. I see no reason that the rich should be able have generational wealth without much incentive to take risks.

ah, interesting to ponder.

but why not also question the role of inflation as (economic) motivator? this tenet forces us to consider monetary factors more than we might otherwise, given the limitations of money to represent everything we value (an idealized premise of economic system as efficient allocator).

the regulatory route is certainly fraught, but a steeply progressive tax on wealth (along with eliminating all the loopholes, like the lower capital gains tax) could drastically reduce money clumping. done well, it could encourage wealth building to a comfortable threshold, say $1MM, and then start to discourage greater wealth hoarding (without discouraging it completely or setting a max).

I think this will lead to inflation. Why should essential workers keep working if everyone else can stay home and do poetry? The natural response is to raise prices for their labor. Obviously if the same amount of money is obtainable with 1/4th the work (by "non-essential" people), the money is worth 1/4 of its former value.

Was watching the first few sessions of Great Courses The Black Death. The Black Death essentially led to the end of Feudalism, the rise of the merchant class and the rise of cities. Since there were a lot less serfs (in some hard hit areas 50% less) to do the farming Feudal lords raised wages to attract serfs from neighboring serfdoms.

UBI will never be successful because it short-circuits the innate need to survive. Many people are not self-leaders and some will turn to drugs when they have no purpose to live. In this case, you've taken away their ladder to climb which is used to measure self-worth. Think about how many people struggle to find the discipline to exercise. People need structure, it's a fundamental part of being a pact mammal.

Surely there are nicer ways for people to find structure in their lives than the threat of utter ruin if they don’t perform the mandatory sacrifice?

That^ system-structure is what also rewards[1] people for their efforts for their work and suffering, etc. With UBI, you'd need to replace that system-structure to reproduce those rewards[1]. This is not possible (or rather, the implications are disturbing).

The inability for many people to put the work ethic effort into building their own rewards is evident by the present time. People will take the easiest path possible to soften the realities of surviving[2]. This is also evident from the design choices behind successful, addicting platforms and video games.

[1] (ownership growth, material gains, physical gains (or rather, losses, since we are talking about fat/cholesterol, et. al), emotional growth, social network growth, personal network growth (trust))

[2] (economically, emotionally; all people, not just the poor)

UBI is also dangerous because it cannot be removed without wrecking havoc on society. It must remain successful, especially once the next generation is born into it.

> That^ system-structure is what also rewards[1] people for their efforts for their work and suffering, etc.

No, especially jobs at the low end are not rewarding people for their hard work. At best most of these jobs just allow people to subsist.

And even at higher levels of income there is lots of work that's just meaningless. Yeah, they might be getting some financial rewards, but it might not be far off from just giving people financial rewards for playing some video game - I'm not necessarily saying we should do that, but that it would essentially have the same societal effect.

I have so much stuff I'm working on/want to work on but I have no time due to my 9-5. We don't need 100k/yr UBI, we need barely enough to cover basic rent and food so that people can survive working part time while starting businesses or furthering the arts and sciences.

Yea, a lot of people who aren't into that stuff would languish but it's not like they AREN'T languishing right now. How much value does making someone else rich bring to your life if you're pissing it away behind a KFC register?

People are forced into needing external management. The innate nature of life is to self-lead, but 15 years of being told to sit in a chair and listen to someone else blah-blah-ing will kill that idea.

We do want to be valuable to one another. Right now, we are valued by how much money we have. The dream of a UBI is to move beyond such a silly measurement of human worth and let the measure of value be based on actual deeds. We don't need a boss to tell us what to do. We just need to be a part of a community. Stuff happens, we respond.

With the lockdown, many were given permission to do nothing. And many, many people found ways to do something nonetheless. We seek to give, to participate, to find our own way.

> What if we were working 10 hours a week

Funny but this is the exact number of hours I am working per week at the moment.

How do you do that? Are you able to pay all your bills?

The majority of people have so little imagination, they would have no idea what to do with their time.

An extra 30 hours to teach our children ourselves. The nuclear family is the last bastion of independent thought.

The number one way to prevent people from seeking the truth is to saddle them with financial stress.

> The nuclear family is the last bastion of independent thought.

What does this even mean?

A generous interpretation: The "nuclear family" allows children to spend more time receiving personalized education from adult family members. Single parents working 3 jobs don't really have time to help with homework.

An alternate interpretation: It makes it so that the school board doesn't get to decide what "true" is.

Because slavery is immoral. And that's what you essentially need to do this. Even with extra steps, it's slavery.

That's the big question about automation that I always ask that just gets handwaved away with "We'll pay a lot" or "People will want to".

There's going to be a job gap, if there's not one now, where we have far more people than jobs that are needed.

So the answer for the unemployment situation is basically accepting the post-scarcity nature of the world and just kind of let people live. No means-testing, no qualifications, just people getting X because it's the right thing to do.

So how do you get people to do anything they don't want to? How do you get people doing the jobs no one may want to do but will need to be done?

Right now the system is rolling due to inertia and the promise that this is temporary. Just because something can be tolerated temporarily, it doesn't mean we can sustain it indefinitely.

And I'm not saying things should stay the same. I'm saying that we are not prepared for the changes that are coming. We do not know the answers to the questions we're about to face. It's going to get difficult.

I would argue that for the workers lowest on the totem pole, we're already in a situation not far from what you're calling slavery: people stuck in jobs they hate, with no flexibility, and the threats of crushing debt and eviction to keep them in place. Treatment of low-skill labor is already immoral under our pseudo-capitalist system; can we do better?

More on this idea here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

One quibble though: I would extend this to basically everybody who wasn't born wealthy.

We can probably do a lot better, but we are on the road to making it worse.

And I know people like to talk about "wage slavery" and to a large degree, they have a point. However, we didn't call what our ancestors did "subsistence slavery". They had to work to subsist. They had to grow or forage their own food, build their own shelter, etc.

So the concept of "working to survive" is pretty much the norm and not the exception already.

And as hard as that can be, we are approaching the time when we will be past that. Where the vast majority of people won't have to work to survive. And, hooray for them, but I'm still concerned for the minority.

> So how do you get people to do anything they don't want to? How do you get people doing the jobs no one may want to do but will need to be done?

Don't pay them enough to have everything they want. Everyone deserves food, water, healthcare, and shelter. Basic income covers those things (I'd go so far as to just have those things be the "basic income" instead of money).

For anything like Netflix, Rock Climbing gym membership, plane tickets, or video games, you could need a job to pay for them.

I think many of the 'nice to haves' would eventually become basically free under UBI. As people are freed to engage in low-capital creative work, we'll see a lot more of everything, driving down the prices. Similar to Bandcamp, or indie games on Steam: a massive pool of highly-skilled amateurs which eventually drives down prices.

A job doing what?

Imagine automation doing all of the basic things. And most of the others.

Imagine you can only have 2% of the population employed doing the remaining jobs.

Are you saying only 2% of the population deserves Netflix? Or air travel?

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