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Comment by Klinky | Hacker News Reader

Then shouldn't the title be something like "Self-proclaimed Bullshit Jobs".

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.

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I agree with the driving IT guy example. I used to be a technician who would travel via plane to another state to fix "broken" production lines for pharma companies. After I made the fix, they would have me sit in the cafeteria for two days doing nothing but drinking coffee and reading the paper (pre-smartphone era). When I told the plant manager I felt guilty about sitting around doing nothing, he said that the profits from 5 minutes of the production line running paid for my two days of doing nothing. So it was worth it for them to pay me to hang around just in case there was another problem.

THIS, and it applies to far lower tech than modern pharma. A century ago, one of my grandfathers was a blacksmith in a little farming town, which had a little canning factory. During harvest season, when that factory was running 24-hour days, grandpa was paid to sleep there every night. Canning food is a complex, time-sensitive, and safety-critical activity. If production is halted even "briefly" - you may have to start throwing out large quantities of spoiled food, waste more time re-sanitizing things, etc.

It's an anthropological book; you, as a reader, are expected to understand that the framing is subjective.

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...

In the Preface, the earlier inspiration for what's a "Bullshit Job":

> 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.

One of the first things he does in the book is define the term "bullshit jobs", and refine that definition to specifically include that the workers feel it is bullshit. I think it's fair to make a larger statement of social phenomenon using that definition, the same way many people can make statements of depression or poor mental health without everyone expressing those feelings being clinically diagnosed.

> Provisional Definition: a bullshit job is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence.

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.

> ...much of it is his struggle to even define what it means

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 don't have a problem with Graeber writing about bullshit jobs, and think it's a worthwhile topic to discuss. My issue was with people narrowly defining the qualification of a bullshit job as being solely based on the perspective of the person doing the job, without looking at the bigger picture.

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.

Its his opinion about society. Not something like scientific/statistical facts that can be improved by having precise definition approved by IBRAA (International Bullshit Recognition and Accreditation Agency).

He's welcome to his opinion, and I am not necessarily disagreeing with the concept. I am stating that his definition is broader in scope than only considering the employee's perspective.

> ...understand that the framing is subjective

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.

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