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Comment by jdmichal | Hacker News Reader

And yet GDP per person has trended upwards in a pretty global fashion. [0, 1] So either those providing "real" value are so productive that they support all that dead weight and yet still continue to grow, or those "bullshit" jobs are actually providing real value and increases in productivity.

[0] http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_gdp_capita_gdp_hour.htm#chart03

[1] http://www.bls.gov/ilc/intl_gdp_capita_gdp_hour.htm#table01

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GDP measures GDP, not 'real value' or 'productivity'. Also, just because the mean is increasing does not mean the median is, too.

GDP is a (attempted) measurement of economic value-add. I cannot think of a better definition of productivity in the context of this conversation. The value-add per person has been increasing despite the claimed existence of "bullshit" jobs, with that being roughly defined (by me) as a zero-value-add position. My proposal is simply that if they are zero-value-add, then the value-add demonstrated by the rest of the population must be enough to completely cover those losses and then some. I'll let the audience decide if they consider that viable.

Feel free to provide a better measurement if you have one.

What about "GDP is detached from the production of hard physical goods and services that satisfy human needs."???

I won't go as far as to claim that Economy is a pseudo science, but like many other disciplines it uses words that are already in use by the general population and redefines them to mean technical concepts. The end result is that economist can make statements that are technically true but that end up conveying a completely different message when listened by a lay person.

In this case, when an economist talks about "productivity", it has a very specific concept in mind. One that has more to do with ROI than with the manufacturing of any thing of value at all. Of course, both concepts are not completely detached from each other (it would be useless to grab a concept to mean something random instead), but they are not 100% aligned either, and this results in misunderstanding, if not actual misleading. By example, when some troubled company talks about "increasing employee productivity", naive employees expect some sort of training program to help them be more effective at their jobs. What they get is a pink slip instead; if productivity is ROI, you can lay off half of your people and use the company's momentum to keep turning 80% of the income, so on paper it will look like you are having better ROI (even if the cuts get too deep and are damaging the long term viability of the business).

We'd like GDP to track what we would consider value, but it need not. It's not hard to find people who will complain that some contribution to GDP is unhelpful, detrimental. It wouldn't be hard to find sour words speaking out against financialization, for example. Economic rents in general can contribute to GDP but intuitively are not 'real value' because otherwise we wouldn't call it rent. Governments can create a lot of worthless work that contributes GDP, but unsustainably. It would be debasing to the word 'value' or 'productivity' to ignore that.

We'd like at least for 'real value' or 'productivity' as intuitively understood to contribute to GDP. That is, from an increase in value one may infer an increase in GDP (usually). I can accept that. I take issue with an inference in the other direction. If I knew how much 'real value' contributed to GDP and how much was in excess of that contribution, I would be an incredibly accomplished economist.

I can buy both yours and TeMPOraL's [0] argument, which I think are roughly saying the same thing. Thanks for the well-reasoned response.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10000123

Maybe you and GP think about different concepts of "productivity". Economic value-add has only a loose correlation with work benefiting individuals and societies. That's the point of "bullshit jobs" concept - we're inventing occupations that feed on one another, wasting people's time and resources but making the numbers go up.

It's like in this story of soldiers who dig up latrines one day, and fill them up on another day. Yes, a lot of people were busy, but in the end, nothing useful got done and lots of man-hours were wasted.

>GDP is a (attempted) measurement of economic value-add. I cannot think of a better definition of productivity in the context of this conversation >Feel free to provide a better measurement if you have one.

HDI

"The ideal economic or GDP hero is a chain-smoking terminal cancer patient going through an expensive divorce whose car is totalled in a 20-car pileup, while munching on fast-take-out-food and chatting on a cell phone. All add to GDP growth. The GDP villain is non-smoking, eats home-cooked wholesome meals and cycles to work."

-- Mark Anielski

Something to remember when you next start going on about "real value".

There is another possibility: per capita GDP is an increasingly unrealistic measure for estimating "real" productivity.

None of the three possibilities preclude the others, so there could be combinations. It could be all three.

It could be that the best workers have a crazy productivity that accounts for the major part of the GDP while the rest has a low productivity.

Especially if you realize how quickly is the public sector growing in many (most) countries.

Not to mention centralized efforts, such as QE, which are literally aimed at jobs creation, regardless of their value.

Certainly you can't believe there's only two possibilities.

... The options presented are either "bullshit" jobs provide value or they don't. So yes, there actually are only two possibilities. Which other ones would you propose to exist?

There's a third one, in which I believe - that bullshit jobs provide negative value by using up natural resources and man hours that could be put to a better use.

A typical example would be political campaigns and/or advertising in highly competitive sectors - all work done there serves only to cancel out the work done by other people, thus creating a negative feedback loop that can consume infinite amount of resources for little marginal gain. Think about how much time, paper, paint and fuel is wasted printing leaflets and billboards and notice that if everyone collectively agreed not to do this, the results would be the same.

> bullshit jobs provide negative value by using up natural resources and man hours that could be put to a better use.

Touché. See, this is why we should all unit test with a fuzzer...

I suppose I would need to amend it to zero-or-less-value-add. This thought intertwines with the other line of discussion, in that these proposed "negative" items would likely be seen as GDP-positive. After all, someone needs to print all those pamphlets, and that's a value-add over paper and ink.

Interesting aside: São Paulo, Brasil has a ban on all outdoor advertising. Of course, that's only a limited subset of possible advertising, but it seems to have gone over well with the general populous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

I think that would still fit pretty well with "those providing 'real' value are so productive that they support all that dead weight and yet still continue to grow".

That they add some value, but considerably less than "real" jobs?

GDP is all inflated meaninglessly by central banks. Inflation rates aren't particularly accurate either so you can't count on real GDP as well.

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