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I find all this pretty stupid and childish.
Unless you are an unimaginative drone the point of a job is that you do something which enables someone else to do what they want.
When you dont think about jobs like this you get into stupid conversations about luddites etc.
You are missing the fucking point. Change happens, if you find yourself doing something that noone wants you to do for them you need to ask yourself why the fuck do people prefer dealing with some automaton than with you?
If you can't think of an answer you are probably not adding enough value, so go find something to do. It is a fact that not everyone automatically goes with the cheapest.
There is no 'system', there are just people who want stuff. You are wanting to get rid of the desire to own and want = presumably because you then see yourself at an advantage in this brave new world. But if you can't solve your crisis here you will be fucked in the one you want because if there is a change you can pretty much guess who gets to instigate it - whoever is in charge right now.
And quite frankly if you cant be arsed to get off your ass, add value to someones life and ask for an honest wage for it you deserve to be fucking skint. However i will happily pay your benefits because I would really rather not have to work with a bunch of people who are working because they fucking have to.
Which is the flip side. *If* you accept there is a system and *if* you accept its broken its because there are a ton of fucking lazy imbociles that are best classed as bovines just muching their way through the grass of work and farting out they negligent shoddily don work that everyone has to then live with.
So no jobs for people who don't figure out how to make themselves useful is a really fuckign good idea if you ask me.
You don't have to find anything to do. Thats why in socialist societies you have things called benefits. But you also have entitled greedy fucks who think 'why do i have to pay for your blah' which break everything.
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On September 29 2014 02:39 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 02:35 WhiteDog wrote:
Rich and old white people are pretty happy with black young dude in prisons, it's more "safe". Come on you can't be serious. You're purposely creating a tautology here. Show nested quote +But why do you absolutly want to force an economic view (offer and demand) on something that's not ? Those work that you point out (police, governmental bureaucraty) are not there for economical matters, even if they do have an economic role (if everybody was forced to look behind his back without the police and law, I'd bet the trading would be quite less dynamic). Because the original question was "does such a thing as a useless job exist?" and I think that's basically tied to the question "do people produce goods and services that no one would naturally/voluntarily buy if they were not forced to?". Obviously a police force can be useful, but only if people demand more safety. If it has become a system that gets bigger and bigger just because people are making money out of tax payers it's corruption and that's basically the opposite of "usefulness" by any sane definition of the word. You could argue that instead of people working all these security or bureaucratic jobs just hand them a check and send them to engineering or medical school where they will learn something for which actual real demand exists.
Any job that is surplus to requirements to such an extent is useless. This doesn't just go for a police officer in a perfectly safe world, but also for a dairy farmer in a world where there is so much milk we could never drink it all.
I don't think your average police officer or dairy farmer has the intellectual capabilities to become a competent doctor or engineer. Which is something of a concern in a world where jobs can increasingly be automated.The remaining jobs for humans increasingly require specialized knowledge and sophisticated skills, it is not unimaginable that in the future there will be little demand for low-skill human labor.
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On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person.  I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so.
All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work.
But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit".
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On September 29 2014 03:09 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 02:39 Nyxisto wrote:On September 29 2014 02:35 WhiteDog wrote:
Rich and old white people are pretty happy with black young dude in prisons, it's more "safe". Come on you can't be serious. You're purposely creating a tautology here. But why do you absolutly want to force an economic view (offer and demand) on something that's not ? Those work that you point out (police, governmental bureaucraty) are not there for economical matters, even if they do have an economic role (if everybody was forced to look behind his back without the police and law, I'd bet the trading would be quite less dynamic). Because the original question was "does such a thing as a useless job exist?" and I think that's basically tied to the question "do people produce goods and services that no one would naturally/voluntarily buy if they were not forced to?". Obviously a police force can be useful, but only if people demand more safety. If it has become a system that gets bigger and bigger just because people are making money out of tax payers it's corruption and that's basically the opposite of "usefulness" by any sane definition of the word. You could argue that instead of people working all these security or bureaucratic jobs just hand them a check and send them to engineering or medical school where they will learn something for which actual real demand exists. Any job that is surplus to requirements to such an extent is useless. This doesn't just go for a police officer in a perfectly safe world, but also for a dairy farmer in a world where there is so much milk we could never drink it all. I don't think your average police officer or dairy farmer has the intellectual capabilities to become a competent doctor or engineer. Which is something of a concern in a world where jobs can increasingly be automated.The remaining jobs for humans increasingly require specialized knowledge and sophisticated skills, it is not unimaginable that in the future there will be little demand for low-skill human labor.
Then you are a buffoon, lots of police officers are perfectly capable of making the appropriate choices at the appropriate times int heir lives to of done whatever they liked. If you mean can a 40yo reatrain to be a doctor? why would anyone want to? it takes 10+ years to do that (at minimal pay) and then you'd only have 10 years or so working.
You greatly overvalue intellect to sitting down and doing the work. VERY few jobs require you to think because people fuck up when they think. If you need to think to do your job your probably pretty bad at what you are doing - and im a programmer. I rarely have to think to solve work problems - i have to think a ton outside to learn stuff and train myself but when it comes to work if its not automatic i probably dont know it well enough to be doing it unguided.
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On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit".
in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument
being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly
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On September 29 2014 03:13 MrTortoise wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:09 Crushinator wrote:On September 29 2014 02:39 Nyxisto wrote:On September 29 2014 02:35 WhiteDog wrote:
Rich and old white people are pretty happy with black young dude in prisons, it's more "safe". Come on you can't be serious. You're purposely creating a tautology here. But why do you absolutly want to force an economic view (offer and demand) on something that's not ? Those work that you point out (police, governmental bureaucraty) are not there for economical matters, even if they do have an economic role (if everybody was forced to look behind his back without the police and law, I'd bet the trading would be quite less dynamic). Because the original question was "does such a thing as a useless job exist?" and I think that's basically tied to the question "do people produce goods and services that no one would naturally/voluntarily buy if they were not forced to?". Obviously a police force can be useful, but only if people demand more safety. If it has become a system that gets bigger and bigger just because people are making money out of tax payers it's corruption and that's basically the opposite of "usefulness" by any sane definition of the word. You could argue that instead of people working all these security or bureaucratic jobs just hand them a check and send them to engineering or medical school where they will learn something for which actual real demand exists. Any job that is surplus to requirements to such an extent is useless. This doesn't just go for a police officer in a perfectly safe world, but also for a dairy farmer in a world where there is so much milk we could never drink it all. I don't think your average police officer or dairy farmer has the intellectual capabilities to become a competent doctor or engineer. Which is something of a concern in a world where jobs can increasingly be automated.The remaining jobs for humans increasingly require specialized knowledge and sophisticated skills, it is not unimaginable that in the future there will be little demand for low-skill human labor. Then you are a buffoon, lots of police officers are perfectly capable of making the appropriate choices at the appropriate times int heir lives to of done whatever they liked. If you mean can a 40yo reatrain to be a doctor? why would anyone want to? it takes 10+ years to do that (at minimal pay) and then you'd only have 10 years or so working. You greatly overvalue intellect to sitting down and doing the work. VERY few jobs require you to think because people fuck up when they think. If you need to think to do your job your probably pretty bad at what you are doing - and im a programmer. I rarely have to think to solve work problems - i have to think a ton outside to learn stuff and train myself but when it comes to work if its not automatic i probably dont know it well enough to be doing it unguided.
Sound like your job could be automated pretty easily, maybe consider retraining to be a doctor? Never too late to make appropriate life choices for the future buddy.
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On September 29 2014 03:17 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:13 MrTortoise wrote:On September 29 2014 03:09 Crushinator wrote:On September 29 2014 02:39 Nyxisto wrote:On September 29 2014 02:35 WhiteDog wrote:
Rich and old white people are pretty happy with black young dude in prisons, it's more "safe". Come on you can't be serious. You're purposely creating a tautology here. But why do you absolutly want to force an economic view (offer and demand) on something that's not ? Those work that you point out (police, governmental bureaucraty) are not there for economical matters, even if they do have an economic role (if everybody was forced to look behind his back without the police and law, I'd bet the trading would be quite less dynamic). Because the original question was "does such a thing as a useless job exist?" and I think that's basically tied to the question "do people produce goods and services that no one would naturally/voluntarily buy if they were not forced to?". Obviously a police force can be useful, but only if people demand more safety. If it has become a system that gets bigger and bigger just because people are making money out of tax payers it's corruption and that's basically the opposite of "usefulness" by any sane definition of the word. You could argue that instead of people working all these security or bureaucratic jobs just hand them a check and send them to engineering or medical school where they will learn something for which actual real demand exists. Any job that is surplus to requirements to such an extent is useless. This doesn't just go for a police officer in a perfectly safe world, but also for a dairy farmer in a world where there is so much milk we could never drink it all. I don't think your average police officer or dairy farmer has the intellectual capabilities to become a competent doctor or engineer. Which is something of a concern in a world where jobs can increasingly be automated.The remaining jobs for humans increasingly require specialized knowledge and sophisticated skills, it is not unimaginable that in the future there will be little demand for low-skill human labor. Then you are a buffoon, lots of police officers are perfectly capable of making the appropriate choices at the appropriate times int heir lives to of done whatever they liked. If you mean can a 40yo reatrain to be a doctor? why would anyone want to? it takes 10+ years to do that (at minimal pay) and then you'd only have 10 years or so working. You greatly overvalue intellect to sitting down and doing the work. VERY few jobs require you to think because people fuck up when they think. If you need to think to do your job your probably pretty bad at what you are doing - and im a programmer. I rarely have to think to solve work problems - i have to think a ton outside to learn stuff and train myself but when it comes to work if its not automatic i probably dont know it well enough to be doing it unguided. Sound like your job could be automated pretty easily, maybe consider retraining to be a doctor? Never too late to make appropriate life choices for the future buddy.
Doctor is also easy to automate. Probably less than a 10 year horizon until humans are worse at the job in specific roles. Don't think we will have automated emergency responses by that time but a normal diagnosis or operation.
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On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly
People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point.
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution. It's definitely stupid, but it does accomplish something. I'm willing to bet there are no jobs that are totally pointless. There are definitely jobs where the point is stupid though.
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On September 29 2014 03:22 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:17 Crushinator wrote:On September 29 2014 03:13 MrTortoise wrote:On September 29 2014 03:09 Crushinator wrote:On September 29 2014 02:39 Nyxisto wrote:On September 29 2014 02:35 WhiteDog wrote:
Rich and old white people are pretty happy with black young dude in prisons, it's more "safe". Come on you can't be serious. You're purposely creating a tautology here. But why do you absolutly want to force an economic view (offer and demand) on something that's not ? Those work that you point out (police, governmental bureaucraty) are not there for economical matters, even if they do have an economic role (if everybody was forced to look behind his back without the police and law, I'd bet the trading would be quite less dynamic). Because the original question was "does such a thing as a useless job exist?" and I think that's basically tied to the question "do people produce goods and services that no one would naturally/voluntarily buy if they were not forced to?". Obviously a police force can be useful, but only if people demand more safety. If it has become a system that gets bigger and bigger just because people are making money out of tax payers it's corruption and that's basically the opposite of "usefulness" by any sane definition of the word. You could argue that instead of people working all these security or bureaucratic jobs just hand them a check and send them to engineering or medical school where they will learn something for which actual real demand exists. Any job that is surplus to requirements to such an extent is useless. This doesn't just go for a police officer in a perfectly safe world, but also for a dairy farmer in a world where there is so much milk we could never drink it all. I don't think your average police officer or dairy farmer has the intellectual capabilities to become a competent doctor or engineer. Which is something of a concern in a world where jobs can increasingly be automated.The remaining jobs for humans increasingly require specialized knowledge and sophisticated skills, it is not unimaginable that in the future there will be little demand for low-skill human labor. Then you are a buffoon, lots of police officers are perfectly capable of making the appropriate choices at the appropriate times int heir lives to of done whatever they liked. If you mean can a 40yo reatrain to be a doctor? why would anyone want to? it takes 10+ years to do that (at minimal pay) and then you'd only have 10 years or so working. You greatly overvalue intellect to sitting down and doing the work. VERY few jobs require you to think because people fuck up when they think. If you need to think to do your job your probably pretty bad at what you are doing - and im a programmer. I rarely have to think to solve work problems - i have to think a ton outside to learn stuff and train myself but when it comes to work if its not automatic i probably dont know it well enough to be doing it unguided. Sound like your job could be automated pretty easily, maybe consider retraining to be a doctor? Never too late to make appropriate life choices for the future buddy. Doctor is also easy to automate. Probably less than a 10 year horizon until humans are worse at the job in specific roles. Don't think we will have automated emergency responses by that time but a normal diagnosis or operation.
Exactly, most jobs we know about now could very well be automated to a large extent within our lifetime. Which makes the point about appropriate choices at the appropriate time pretty absurd.
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On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point.
this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example
"supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you
On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution.
yeah. I'm terrified to pump gas here in california where we don't have them. can we also have some make-work jobs for people to wipe my ass so I don't have worry about contaminating my hands? sounds like some nice keynesian stimulus
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On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you
I'm pretty happy to be able to play games on my phone. Thank your friend for me.
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On September 29 2014 03:38 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you I'm pretty happy to be able to play games on my phone. Thank your friend for me.
if you play the kind of games he makes, you're a moron. we're talking sub-farmville stuff here
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On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution. yeah. I'm terrified to pump gas here in california where we don't have them. can we also have some make-work jobs for people to wipe my ass so I don't have worry about contaminating my hands? sounds like some nice keynesian stimulus
You're right about the gas station thing because virtually everybody would probably prefer to do that themselves, but if people demand shitty IPhone games I wouldn't put that into the "bullshit job" category, because there's actually real demand for it. It's not about the Politburo telling the people how they spend their free time.
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On September 29 2014 03:39 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:38 Crushinator wrote:On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you I'm pretty happy to be able to play games on my phone. Thank your friend for me. if you play the kind of games he makes, you're a moron. we're talking sub-farmville stuff here
An anarchist advocating for a centrally planned economy (we must throw away all the jobs YOU consider bullshit) and yet you call other people morons.
Fascinating.
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On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution. yeah. I'm terrified to pump gas here in california where we don't have them. can we also have some make-work jobs for people to wipe my ass so I don't have worry about contaminating my hands? sounds like some nice keynesian stimulus
The gas station needs the attendant because the state demands they have one or they'll be fined or shut down. As long as its illegal to pump your own gas, gas station attendant is a meaningful job.
I agree its a totally stupid law. But don't blame the gas station, blame the state.
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Pretty sure this guy did not coin the term "bullshit job."
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On September 29 2014 03:44 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution. yeah. I'm terrified to pump gas here in california where we don't have them. can we also have some make-work jobs for people to wipe my ass so I don't have worry about contaminating my hands? sounds like some nice keynesian stimulus The gas station needs the attendant because the state demands they have one or they'll be fined or shut down. As long as its illegal to pump your own gas, gas station attendant is a meaningful job. I agree its a totally stupid law. But don't blame the gas station, blame the state.
I would say that if the only reason is legislation, like you said, then the attendant's job is completely meaningless. The demand for their job is completely artificial. Doesn't really get more meaningless than that.
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On September 29 2014 03:51 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:44 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:35 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly People buy those iphone games. There must be a demand for them. If nobody was buying them, you'd have a point. this is the sort of tautological argument i was talking about, thanks for providing an example "supply and demand" is not an excuse for abdicating all responsibility for thinking critically about the world around you On September 29 2014 03:24 Millitron wrote:
Gas station attendant is a safety precaution. yeah. I'm terrified to pump gas here in california where we don't have them. can we also have some make-work jobs for people to wipe my ass so I don't have worry about contaminating my hands? sounds like some nice keynesian stimulus The gas station needs the attendant because the state demands they have one or they'll be fined or shut down. As long as its illegal to pump your own gas, gas station attendant is a meaningful job. I agree its a totally stupid law. But don't blame the gas station, blame the state. I would say that if the only reason is legislation, like you said, then the attendant's job is completely meaningless. The demand for their job is completely artificial. Doesn't really get more meaningless than that.
I would say its not artificial. That gas station cannot safely (safe from fines anyways) do business without the attendant. It's a very necessary job as long as that law is in place. The necessity of the law though, is questionable at best.
Basically, there's demand, but the reason there is demand is stupid.
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On September 29 2014 03:17 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2014 03:10 WhiteDog wrote:On September 29 2014 03:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:I kinda think it's like, it's not that suddenly due to automation there are so many bullshit jobs now. But the idea that we need to be at the workplace from 8 to 4 or whatever, cuz 8 hours per day is defined as the amount of time you should be expected to work before you eat, that idea is becoming increasingly more and more dated the more time that passes. Also seems like quite some successful workplaces have abandoned that model, but those are normally companies with highly motivated and educated employees in the first place. From various articles I don't feel like digging up now, I also recall reading how workplaces that have experimented with 6 hour work days have in fact ended up with more productive workers during those 6 hour shifts than they earlier had from 8 hours shifts. Anyway though, this is just me brainstorming but, it would seem to me like the problem is that some jobs actually genuinely require 8 hour work days for a job to be well done, and then we are as a collective kinda just.. too politically petty and stupid to agree with some workers being paid full salaries for 3-4 hour working days even if that would be sufficient for them to do their job, so we add a couple hours of uselessness. Then sometimes you just gotta be "on call" and then you might just need to be on call at your work place if whatever is problematic requires you to be there in person. I mean say you're working as a mathematician in a bank and you can actually do your job in 1 hour and then you spend the next 6 hours browsing youtube videos because you need to actually clock in 7 hours even if you've done everything you need to do after 1 to get a good paycheck, how could you solve this dilemma otherwise? Give the guy a hourly salary 7x that of the rest of the staff that actually need to be there? People would be upset! I think the best we can do is prolly just gradually reducing the "societally expected amount of work hours" and allowing for more flexibility in terms of being allowed to be "on call" at home if it's possible, but people want stuff to be fair, sometimes detrimentally so. All that is perfectly true, and the proof is we did it in France with the 35 hour a week work. But saying that some work, because of technical progress, doesn't need more than two or three hour per day, is completly different from saying that some work are "bullshit". in oregon it's illegal to pump your own gas. being a gas station attendant is a bullshit job, there's no way to relativize this under some tautological "if it exists, it must be useful, because economics" type argument being a coder working on iphone games is also a bullshit job, if y'all want something that hits a little closer to home. My friend who is a coder working on iphone games agrees wholeheartedly
Handicaped people or old people can see value in having a gas attendant. I heard in Japan there are gas attendant everywhere because it's a custom. Again that's a question of offer and demand, maybe some people see value in having someone putting gas in their car for them.
I'm sure in big bus station there are some guys that are paid just to put gas in the tank of all the bus because it's more efficient to have someone doing that rather than all the bus driver doing it individually. It's division of labor again !
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On September 29 2014 02:20 WhiteDog wrote:
I said more than that : value and wealth are created through the division of labor, and jobs that he consider useless play a part in this division, thus enabling other more "productive" or "valuable" work.
That he knows about alienation doesn't mean much : it's a completly different perspective from his moral judgement that some jobs are "bullshit".
I don't want to put words in your mouth but fo clarities sake I will condense your argument as I understand it so that you can point out any misunderstandings:
There is no objective measure of usefulness of a job. Thus we cannot know how much a job really adds to the benefits (wealth/security/etc.) we get from the whole system. Thus we should consider every part as equal in this whole process (or at the very least, the difference should be considered indeterminable).
The last conclusion is what I reject. There is no objective way to gauge how important a particular task is but surely the people doing it together with the people they are doing it for can make an informed guess. This may entail some form of dialog with even further removed people, weighting benefits and costs, etc. but it's not impossible. Actually, I'm sure that this very process happens all the time and I would guess that the (felt) bullshit part of a job enters especially when there is no dialog between those demanding the task and those having to do it (in a situation where it is not clear why it must be done).
He point out, in the papers, jobs such as "when you walk into a hospital, how half the employees never seem to do anything for sick people, but are just filling out insurance forms and sending information to each other."
To me it's obvious filing out insurance forms and sending information are important part of the production, mainly because we have a socialized healthcare system in most occidentals countries, and also because knowing the history of a patient is half the work needed to take care of him. That sending information is less fulfilling than directly treating the patient is a given, but that does not make it less productive nor useful. To me, he is just giving his "judgement", or moral point of view, on the usefulness of the people that are filling insurence forms rather than giving me a good insight on the structure of the labor market today.
Maybe we need to change our society for the better, most specifically work, but his arguments are not the good ones for that from my point of view.
About bureaucraty, less bureaucraty would maybe increase the "standard of living", but it is for a completly different reason : the goal of many bureaucraties is not to increase or facilitate production / living condition, but rather to control the population, affirm the power of the state on the population. It's a social matter, much like the role of the police, and it's role is perfectly played - it is not "bullshit", but it's just not responding to economic matter for the most part.
And about administrative task giving stronger feeling of uselessness, it is absolutly right, but if you've observed any administrative firm or governmental bureaucraty, you'd know that the people that work in there have no freedom whatsoever in their job, every action they can make are officially coded and legalized : it's a perfect exemple of alienation, where the individual completly disappear.
edit : sorry I can't prevent myself from writing "bureaucraty" because in french it's bureaucratie...
Don't you find the contrast between those two paragraphs strange? I would guess that the amount of paperwork in hospitals is directly related to bureaucratization and growing administrative bodies within and without.
This is only anecdotal but my father is a doctor at a hospital and according to him the administrative work has grown considerably over the years. One of the most annoying new things in his mind is getting certification. Until very recently this process of auditing by private firms was unheard of in Germany (I can only speak for hospitals and universities), now basically all hospitals and universities have to undergo it for rather nebulous reasons. The benefit on the ground, so to speak, seems marginal compared to the amount of work that needs to be put into it. This work entails producing swathes of documents that are literally made up and will never be used for anything else than auditing.
Now, I don't critisize the process of auditing on principle and maybe the above has a hidden benefit that doctors and nurses at the hospital cannot see but I can at least imagine the possibility that somehow actively detrimental processes can be institutionalized and that in this situation the people who carry it out might actually know that it is detrimental/useless.
Finally, I do agree that the essay is not a particular great analysis of the labour situation but since I never felt that it was intended as one I am not too angry about that. For me it doesn't fail as a polemic but it's alright if you disagree for the reasons above.
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