I just finished Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber, a highly thought-provoking read. It discusses how “We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself.”
In simple words, the author claims that a big chunk of jobs today is unnecessary, pointless, or at least extremely inefficient.
I’ll be the first to admit there’s a lot of truth in this. But you know what? That’s pretty privileged thinking. Many, perhaps most people I know wouldn’t mind working some silly job as long as it pays well, is fairly non-stressful, and leaves them a reasonable amount of free time.
I’ve worked on quite a few bullshit projects myself. One was writing copy for a major U.S. solar panel installer. This company decided it needed hyper-focused local SEO, with separate service pages not just for each state, but for every major town or city in each state. This translated to hundreds of pages that all followed the same template, except for a location-specific paragraph that usually included a couple of phrases on the city’s climate and topography.
Each page had to be different to avoid duplicate content on the top-level domain, so I had to reword what was essentially the same content in hundreds of variations. There are only so many times you can do this without feeling like you’re stuck in some Groundhog Day remake.
I highly doubt all that micro-localization was necessary. For most people, state-specific information is quite enough to decide whether installing a solar panel is a good idea.
And guess what? I was supremely grateful for that job. It was steady, predictable, fairly easy, and it paid decently. Those hours I spent writing about installing solar panels in Boulder, CO, or Flagstaff, AZ, translated into groceries for my family, paid utility bills, and clothes and shoes for the kids.
If someone offered me a well-paid, secure, flexible job that consisted of copying license plate numbers into Excel sheets or something like that, I’d take it in a heartbeat. For most people, a paid job is a means to an end: feeding their families. A meaningful job is a bonus.
Yes, I do agree that “Young people in Europe and North America in particular, but increasingly throughout the world, are being psychologically prepared for useless jobs, trained in how to pretend to work, and then by various means shepherded into jobs that almost nobody really believes serve any meaningful purpose.” But what’s the solution?
David Graeber doesn’t elaborate on what the alternative to BS jobs would be. He does suggest Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a possibility. For someone like me, it would admittedly be amazing. I’d never lift a finger for any sort of paid work again. I’d continue writing, of course, but would probably pivot into less commercial-minded projects.
However, while UBI sounds good in theory, it comes with a plethora of problems, not the least of which is that it would be 100% government-issued and -controlled. Thus, almost the whole population would be entirely dependent on the government’s goodwill. If those up above decided to withhold UBI for some transgression (like, say, exceeding the allowed travel limits during a pandemic), who’d stop them?
I was curious about what the author thinks of AI. When I looked it up, I was sad to discover David Graeber had passed away in 2020.
Domestic Felicity 