Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's absolutely true that many office jobs require few hours of actual work, and some may be entirely superfluous.
Has that number increased over the years? It's hard to say because BS jobs are hard to measure. Nearly everyone involved (workers wanting to keep their BS jobs, managers wanting to expand direct reports or not admit bad management, politicians wanting to maximize employment) is trying to hide that these jobs are BS.
I was working backward from the POV that BS jobs are everywhere, and trying to find a way to measure that when I came up with this thread.
You need to figure out a way to measure exactly how many clerical/paper pushing positions a company, dept within a company, or a specific task actually needs. I have doing paper pushing through temp agency before, but I was constantly shuffling papers for all the hours I worked. But then I think, how much of these tasks are really necessary, or are these paper trails just made necessary to to keep people busy.
Store clerks like at Home Depot, or supermarkets are also security guards in a way. By having bodies there, it helps deter theft. During off hours or when finished shelving, they largely just stand around. But having bodies in a store to watch things helps with peace of mind for the owners. And how many people do you need to shelve, maintain the store?
You would think though, that management will cut as many employees as it can to save itself money. For small businesses, the owners will try or should do as much of the work themselves as possible to save money. This way no BS jobs at all.
I have been itching to post that vid up and get your opinions on it. I dont know why I havent yet. But this seems like a good a thread to do so as any.
I'd encourage participants to read David Graeber's book, "Bull***t Jobs", and then we should discuss.
In brief, the further we evolve from fulfilling merely subsistence-needs, and the more complex a society becomes, the more of us become superfluous. Our jobs consist of useless and nugatory things, and the rest of our time is spent getting entertained by media-content that would otherwise (that is, had we been legitimately busy) also be unnecessary. We have all sorts of laws, to keep the system going... and people to interpret and to enforce those laws... and other people to oppose the former.
The diagnosis is easy, but the solution isn't. Graeber proposes UBI or other expansions of the welfare state. I could make a libertarian argument against that, but instead, let's consider two non-political and non-economic problems.
First, most people aren't very clever or creative. They need to fill the time somehow. If freed from the drudgery of labor, they won't exactly devote their time to literature, photography or learning a foreign language. They's stagnate, flounder, run amok. They need the BS jobs to avoid even worse consequences.
Second, humans are hierarchical creatures. We crave both the demands of a master, and the capacity to condescend and to boss-around others. We want to feel superior to the underclass, and to aspire to eventually reaching our betters. Any campaign to "level up" or to give dignity to the undignified, is going to fail, not because poor people are dumb and sinful and thus are inevitably poor, but because middle-class people need to have poor people around them, so that the middle class could feel better about itself.
BS jobs are inevitable, and are only going to get more prevalent. Far from worrying that we'll all be get rendered unemployed by automation, AI and so on, the more likely scenario is that we'll remain fully employed, but in increasingly useless, nonsensical busy-work.
BS jobs are inevitable, and are only going to get more prevalent. Far from worrying that we'll all be get rendered unemployed by automation, AI and so on, the more likely scenario is that we'll remain fully employed, but in increasingly useless, nonsensical busy-work.
In the future we can aspire to get our certifications in flex-duct installation and teardown a la the movie Brazil.
I agree there is no solution short of a really traumatic population crash, and that the leisure society envisioned in the early 20th century misses a lot about average human psychology. In fact, busywork might be the solution, not the problem, given that humans crave a purpose. Work from home removes a lot of the indignity of BS jobs like sitting at your desk and requiring face time, and I'm confident these jobs will get even easier.
I do think that the productivity slowdown since 1973 is mostly a symptom of too many hours being worked rather than too few innovations being dreamt up.
what were finding is so many of the jobs are just not necessary. Those that left the workforce will be in for a tough time when they decide to return to work.
I do think that the productivity slowdown since 1973 is mostly a symptom of too many hours being worked rather than too few innovations being dreamt up.
Likely it's a blend of multiple causes. One is the unproductive channeling of employees' efforts. Another, and related one, is more regulation (and hence cost of compliance). Yet another in the low-hanging-fruit conjecture, which posits that we invented/discovered/optimized the easiest and most obvious innovations in say 1870-1970.
I'm an aeronautical engineer, who has dabbled on occasion as adjunct-lecturer. Most of the material for my lectures was sourced from textbooks that were already well-known in the mid 20th century. Most of the fundamental results date from the 1930s. My entire career - and I'm no longer young - has been spent in wonder, over how lovely and frenetic and burgeoning things were, as aviation developed from biplanes to all-metal piston-engined fighters and bombers, to jets. All of that happened already before I was born. Innovations during my own lifetime have been incremental at best. We have sophisticated experimental or computational apparatus, to do more aeronautical research, to take the sort of data that was utterly impossible in 1970. But our return on investment is much smaller. In other words, given the computational power and the lasers and optics and whatnot, the data that we get - and the knowledge gleaned from the data - isn't much greater, and in cases is even less, than it was 50+ years ago.
Consider that the Concorde flew supersonically from the early 1970s through the early 2000s. Today, commerical supersonic flight is no longer possible. No matter how much money you have, you can't get supersonically from NYC to London. Not even if you're Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson. It can't be done, at any price. In this regard, our productivity growth rate hasn't merely slowed down; the productivity growh itself, and not just its growth-rate, has actually gone negative!
Are BS jobs displacing productive jobs? Or are we just occupying people with BS jobs because we have a cult-worship of life-consuming jobs in Capitalism? Just having everyone do 4 hrs of actual productive work per day would undermine the control of Capital, and half the population doing important work while the other half is unemployed would trigger either massive welfare growth or a violent communist revolution.
Some say Keyne was a Socialist. I am an advocate of his economics (Keynesian) which in its simplicity is: The government should not control economics but should be ready to step in if the economy veers in any direction. Primarily inflation or depression, they should step in. Some say controlling the Prime Rate falls under this umbrella.
In 1930 Keynes wrote an essay called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren which includes a short explanation of technological unemployment as a cause of the Depression.
Keynes wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Yes, there was massive structural employment which led to the 1925, 1928 and 1930 recessions.
Yes, both technology and manufacturing methods were the cause of that structural unemployment.
No, it won't happen again.
What you and Keynes don't understand is scope and scale.
Yes, electrification resulted in the creation of new technology.
Yes, that technology spread across the US within 10-12 years.
Yes, it displaced 1,000s of workers permanently.
But, that will never happen again.
Yes, there was a little shop with 12 guys pumping the treadle as fast their little legs could go on their manual lathe, and yes, the plant manager bought two electric lathes and laid off 10 guys because 2 guys on an electric lathe could produce what 14 guys produce.
But you'll never see that again.
Yes, a robotic welder displaces a welder, but it also creates 3 jobs so you have a net gain of two jobs.
That's very different than the period 1915-1925.
And, robot welders are not going to sweep across the US in 10-12 years. 40-50 years, yes, but 10-12 years, no.
If you think self-driving tractor-trailers are going to sweep across the US in 10-12 years and displace 1,000s of truck drivers then no one can help you in your fantasy world.
And, it wouldn't even matter, because it creates 2 jobs, so you have a net gain of one job.
If I were you, I'd be more worried about not having enough workers rather than having too many.
Yes, there was massive structural employment which led to the 1925, 1928 and 1930 recessions.
Yes, both technology and manufacturing methods were the cause of that structural unemployment.
No, it won't happen again.
What you and Keynes don't understand is scope and scale.
Yes, electrification resulted in the creation of new technology.
Yes, that technology spread across the US within 10-12 years.
Yes, it displaced 1,000s of workers permanently.
But, that will never happen again.
Yes, there was a little shop with 12 guys pumping the treadle as fast their little legs could go on their manual lathe, and yes, the plant manager bought two electric lathes and laid off 10 guys because 2 guys on an electric lathe could produce what 14 guys produce.
But you'll never see that again.
Yes, a robotic welder displaces a welder, but it also creates 3 jobs so you have a net gain of two jobs.
That's very different than the period 1915-1925.
And, robot welders are not going to sweep across the US in 10-12 years. 40-50 years, yes, but 10-12 years, no.
If you think self-driving tractor-trailers are going to sweep across the US in 10-12 years and displace 1,000s of truck drivers then no one can help you in your fantasy world.
And, it wouldn't even matter, because it creates 2 jobs, so you have a net gain of one job.
If I were you, I'd be more worried about not having enough workers rather than having too many.
I get a chuckle from your posts but I'm thinking you read something other than Lord Keynes cited work or you skimmed the first page or two missing the meat and certainly the logic.
His thesis points were:
1. Heading into the TGD worldwide interest rates were way too high. Fact.
2. For 1,600 years post Christ little technological progress occurred. Fact.
3. Between ~1600 and the late 1920s technology exploded and the notion of capital formation took hold and was widely deployed. Fact.
4. Glitches in the technology, manufacturing and banking dance broke down contributing to TGD. Fact.
5. He then flatly predicts 100 on first world man will be 4 - 8 times better off than then. Fact.
6. More or less he predicted great riches, technological advancements and an exit from the day to day beat down of early depression life in England. Fact.
Bashing Keynes by misreading his work does not make him less than the sharpest tool in the shed now does it?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
