Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

The standard of living we all enjoy today is due to billions of people doing things they consider work and not "antiwork".

If we can live in a world like ours where everyone is doing "antiwork" instead of work, that would certainly be better. But it's not at all clear from this article how such a world would function.

Many of the actions necessary for clean water, plentiful food, good shelter, etc. (as they are provided today) are actions that no one would do "out of love, fun, interest, talent, enthusiasm, inspiration".

View on HN

Those infrastructure level things are supplied by less than 5% of the workforce. So yes, 95% of the rest, when just considering basic needs, are superfluous. I would be stoked to analyze, maintain and create clean water systems used by the rest of humanity. How many Roman Aqueducts are still functioning? Capitalism and bullshit jobs are not the only way to sustain a virbrant human race.

How many people are actually working on distributing clean water, growing food for nourishment and making shelters, relative to the size of the workforce?

The point of the article isn't that we could never work ("work will doubtless always be necessary"), but against the glorification of work and the condemnation of those who choose to do only the necessary.

Not to mention how much of the standard of living we enjoy today is based on enslaved people doing work they are not paid for (and if you think I'm just talking about centuries ago, think about Dubai and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery).

You are correct in so far as you are correct ;) The flip side however is the large quantity of jobs that are not really useful but are simply created for a variety of ignoble reasons. Worst among them is the creation of jobs for the purpose of improving "employment rates". Nearly as bad is the proliferation of bureaucracies --typically the creation of paper trails and overseers to monitor other paper trials and overseers. The "work ethic" can lead to perverse incentives, to "make work" where none is really necessary.

Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

I would venture that many of the jobs in any large (where large means > 10,000 people) corporation are bullshit jobs. For example, take Human Resources. Yes, you need a certain amount of HR to make sure that labor laws are being followed and that hiring/firing paperwork gets processed. But at most large corporations, the vast majority of HR's output appears to have no justification save to justify spending more on HR. Employee "engagement" surveys come to mind as the prime example of this.

I would be willing to bet that you could halve the HR workforce at many corporations (especially with some effort invested into automating HR functions) and not notice any drops in productivity.

More generally, a lot of "middle management" falls into this category. From what I see, it really looks like a lot of management work is really just make-work created by... other middle managers. Yes, some level of management is necessary to coordinate teams, but from where I sit, I see my manager spending literally 8 hours a day creating PowerPoint presentations that have no meaningful content whatsoever. And the funny thing is, he hates it more than I do! He's a (ex)programmer. He'd rather be writing code! But somehow the organization has decided (as a consequence of some managerial fiat, far above my pay grade) that it is more "productive" for my manager to be making PowerPoint presentations than writing code.

Yes, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is far worse in government than in the private sector. But it's still here in industry, and the larger and older the industry, the more prevalent it is. Software companies haven't accumulated as much cruft, but that's largely because companies in software tend to die before they have a chance to accumulate the cruft that's present in industries with higher barriers to entry.

EDIT: Tyler Cowen [1] has an excellent term for this phenomenon: "zero marginal product" work.

[1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zer...

HR is an industry that could definitely be completely replaced by an algorithm + remote people + software. Anyone want to help me build this or does it already exist?

"Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?"

Plenty of "useless jobs" exist. It comes back to the classic agency problem. What is best for the market/company/shareholders is often not what is best for the employees working at the companies.

I don't understand your point. Can you give a specific example of where you think the "classic agency problem" results in useless jobs?

Marketing, litigation, interviews, credentialing, auditing, sales...all of these are useful for the company, but don't help society at all. "But society can't benefit from a company that goes under from ignorant customers/lawsuits/incompetent employees/fraud." Then perhaps society should stop doing those things to companies. These jobs are necessary because, of course, it won't. That's the agency problem.

The IRS and the TSA come to mind.

>Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

The guy standing in front of Little Caesars with a Hot N Ready sign, dancing.

All HR jobs

All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing

>All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing

Wow. I don't think you've ever worked for any business of any size. Sales jobs are usually very well compensated and make the difference between businesses that fail and those that succeed. Hell, Salesforce is a company originally built just to manage salespeople and their process. If you know a way to make them irrelevant you could probably write your own ticket.

We've heard this form of thinking before.

The standard of living we all enjoy is due to the slave labor of the negro. Without blacks, how would we cultivate our land? How would the economy of the South function?

It wasn't a good argument then and it is not a good argument now. People shouldn't have to work to make your shitty society work.

But the types of work people do these days are increasingly unconnected to the production of goods and services. In fact, you could argue that a lot that work is in fact anti-productive because it introduces unnecessary extra steps and crippling bureaucratic overhead to production.

If you can see unproductive work, then you should start competition and win the market. (Or realize, that it wasn't that unproductive).

Market creates a lot of unproductive jobs by itself. Take sales and marketing. Most of it nowadays is zero-sum - you work to undo the work of your competitors. That's why there is so many jobs of this kind - being a zero-sum game, you can throw ever increasing amount of work and resources at such job for zero marginal value, because everyone of your competitors does the same.

That only works in situations with a competitive free market without any barriers to entry. So pretty much never

> Antiwork is also a rejection of what we regard as pointless or immoral work. This might include any form of forced or subtly coerced labour, work that serves no positive purpose (in the opinion of those doing the work), work that has harmful consequences (physical, psychological, environmental), etc.

Work for clean water, plentiful food etc is not pointless, so I think it doesn't qualify.

But there are parts of that work, and parts of other work, that seem pointless on the surface, but in fact have a very specific and necessary part of the system ensuring the end goal.

Someone might just be a paper pusher, literally organizing papers, something that seems entirely pointless busy work—but someone needs to do that organization, within the context of the system, to ensure its function.

People should know their function and how it impacts the end result that their organization achieves, but it is not guaranteed to be full of meaning and glory.

There is something noble, and virtuous about it, still. It is a contribution to a system which enables the function of society, which by all measures improves as a result, on average. Why not call it virtue?

I think if you just went and explained to people the very reason why their jobs are actually important, many would find virtue in them. Being a part of a chain required for something you think is important also feels important.

Exactly

As much as I'd like to work in a antiwork position, it's very complicated society-wise (especially due to the fact that there aren't that many jobs)

Relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc

Reply on news.ycombinator.com