No shared notion of "bullshit" needs to exist between the two of us (or you and Graeber, me and Graeber, etc.). Assuming that we need to agree on what actually constitutes a "bullshit job" is making the same error that the GP points out.
Even in the example given by Graeber at the start could have variables that make the job of having an IT guy drive 6 hours to move a computer down the hallway make sense. Maybe soldiers moving computers has resulted in many computers becoming broken costing more in money and downtime than having a trained professional drive in and move the computer. Maybe having on-site IT staff is more expensive than having the off-site IT guy make a few visits a year.
Compare The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down[1]: tacking "self-proclaimed" on the front doesn't improve any understanding of the contents, and would only make the author come across as smarmy.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Catches_You_and_You...
> Everyone is familiar with those sort of jobs that don’t seem, to the outsider, to really do much of anything...
> This possibility that our society is riddled with useless jobs that no one wants to talk about did not seem inherently implausible.
> Clearly, then, we have an important social phenomenon that has received almost no systematic attention.
There's also a Chapter titled: "Why Do We as a Society Not Object to the Growth of Pointless Employment?"
It seems Graeber is making a much wider commentary, including society's perspective, which goes beyond the personal opinions of the people holding these jobs.
The qualification is that even the person doing the job thinks it's bullshit. That doesn't mean the definition relies solely on them thinking it's bullshit.
Frankly, reading through the article, it feels like the definition keeps shifting and much of it is his struggle to even define what it means. He then goes on to start giving his definitions of the what he thinks are types of bullshit jobs.
The article I don't think is all that consistent and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Exactly. Like many of us, Graeber writes to understand.
His stated purpose is abundantly clear. Many, many people were sharing with Graeber complaints of a similar theme. So he tried to name and describe it.
Rightly, wrongly, or otherwise, it's all in the book. For other people to pick apart and response to.
How else is scholarship supposed to function?
Would Graeber have been more effective as an op ed columnist, churning out saccharine blather which confirms everyone's priors? eg The World is Flat and Bobos in Paradise?
I think there are definitely jobs that a computer or robot should be doing, but a human is there instead because of what our economy and society currently values. However, until the computer or robot is actually doing the job, I don't think I'd call it a bullshit job. That's not to say society shouldn't consider the impacts of grinding people's lives away with rote repetitive tasks.
Certain critics have adopted a labored, willful misunderstanding. eg Brad DeLong.
Graeber became public enemy #1 with Debt: The first 5000 Years. Some economists just couldn't wrap their heads around the anthropological viewpoint. Graeber is talking about people and societies evolving relationship(s) to debt, not economies and finance.
Economists and anthropologists like to dunk on each other. It's now something like a blood feud.
How is this job that different from being on an assembly line and all you do is tighten the screws on something that passes by?
To me it seems clear that that is not what this book is about. It's about the purpose, not the contents.
A more informative title would really be "boring jobs whose purpose isn't understood by the people doing them"
Someone comes to you and says, "my job is pointless and should not exist."
The conclusion is drawn, "Actually their job is vital and their self-report is deluded."
The conclusion is drawn because presumably someone thinks they output enough value to continue paying them for their work. That person might be wrong, and maybe some PE firm or consultants will come through and cull the chaff to capture the lost expenses but the person themselves doing the work probably doesn't have the full perspective.
I take it as the software version of virtue signaling.
Further, how can we trust our perception is the better measure of the value of that job? If the person performing the role can't even assess the value properly, how are they providing that value?
go remove some guys that do legal compliance stuff and when the random inspection happen years later, you'll find out that maybe it would've cost you less to keep that employee.
Planes can keep flying without a pilot for quite awhile, until they run out of fuel or crash into a mountain.
Bad news: you have been rejected from consideration for any work related to realtime/life critical systems.
Good news: you may have a future in politics, at least in the county I live in.
"What will happen if this person stopped doing their job?"
"Oh the important monthly reports will stop going out."
"Oh, okay, we better not have them stop doing that then."
I submit that not only can we, but we must, admit that in some individual cases the person in the position knows best, and in others, they don't.
Or maybe, absent other evidence, it might make more sense to tentatively take people's self reports at face value. Or at least hold off backing some particular elaborate alternative which involves people being wrong about the things they have most information on.