Even if you don't agree with his conclusions, you still need to acknowledge that the raw data is there.
That is that many people consider their job useless. Draw your own conclusions from that.
That is that many people consider their job useless. Draw your own conclusions from that.
"Despite generating clear testable hypotheses, this [Graeber's] theory is not based on robust empirical research. We, therefore, use representative data from the EU to test five of its core hypotheses. Although we find that the perception of doing useless work is strongly associated with poor wellbeing, our findings contradict the main propositions of Graeber’s theory. The proportion of employees describing their jobs as useless is low and declining and bears little relationship to Graeber’s predictions."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170231175771
> Contrary to previous studies, it thus finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on bullshit jobs. At the same time, it also confirms existing evidence on the effects of various other factors, including alienation. Work perceived as socially useless is therefore a multifaceted issue that must be addressed from different angles.
1 many people don’t understand how their jobs fit into a larger system and claim it’s BS
2 People find jobs where they don’t directly benefit from the output as bullshit (I make Something I don’t use)
3 beaucratic jobs that prevent rather than create can feel like bullshit even though systematically are needed.
4 risk forward jobs can be seems as bullshit as they are part of a spread bet a company makes to survive while any individual can feel like they failed and aren’t contributing.
I can go on.
I’d also say, it is an important question to ask: do our economies deliver meaningful work? Does it matter? Is my job meaningful to me, and what does that mean?