On July 01 2014 10:15 Xapti wrote: I didn't read any replies or everything in the spoilers so it's likely to have had some sort of answer/address already, but: Isn't the whole point of everyone having jobs so that everyone can actually earn money and remain at a reasonable level of living?
Unless people could somehow own/rent someone elses's robots/computers (which is problematic for various reasons), or be in some sort of communist utopia, I don't see how people could maintain their level of living without having a job.
On June 30 2014 22:26 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: This is just an amazing topic. It completely disregards some basic effects of competition in capitalism, doesn't provide any actual means for instituting change, and essentially passes off a moral view as objective fact. The author of the essay comes off as a whiner more than anything. Yes, a lot of jobs feel pointless. Yes, technology allows us to do more work with less effort. That does not mean that those jobs actually ARE pointless, though, or that technology should allow you to slack off instead of becoming even more productive than you were before.
Could you elaborate on some basic effects of competition in capitalism?
Why should you want to become even more productive than you were before? To what end?
The reality of life involves having to thrive in order to survive. It's an unfortunate reason why individual regions/countries wouldn't necessarily work out too well if they abandoned any sort of attempt at growing economically. An analogy would be similar to that of human reproduction. While one can live a great life without having kids —and frequently the most successful people have little to no offspring— it results in in an overall plateau or reduction in that person's population while others continue to grow and eventually push out their peers.
So you find it impossible to live without "growing?" You don't think a sustainable replacement rate of human reproduction is a possibility? It seems that the reality of life involves reproducing oneself, yes, but I don't see how it necessarily involves an endless pursuit of "growing" the economy.
Anyone who has worked in retail knows about bullshit jobs. You have tons of jobs that are labeled as "supervisor" or "assistant manager" But they don't actually perform any management functions. The world loves titles and compartmentalization. You have millions of people who work part-time jobs that serve no function. The "Greeter" at retail stores doesn't do anything. Most "sales associates" spend close to half their shift just standing around talking because you can't restock full shelves and help customers who aren't there. Lots of these jobs aren't "bullshit" by definition but they end up consisting of so many meaningless tasks that are just used to fill up hours on payroll.
On July 01 2014 10:15 Xapti wrote: I didn't read any replies or everything in the spoilers so it's likely to have had some sort of answer/address already, but: Isn't the whole point of everyone having jobs so that everyone can actually earn money and remain at a reasonable level of living?
Unless people could somehow own/rent someone elses's robots/computers (which is problematic for various reasons), or be in some sort of communist utopia, I don't see how people could maintain their level of living without having a job.
On July 01 2014 09:43 IgnE wrote:
On June 30 2014 22:26 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: This is just an amazing topic. It completely disregards some basic effects of competition in capitalism, doesn't provide any actual means for instituting change, and essentially passes off a moral view as objective fact. The author of the essay comes off as a whiner more than anything. Yes, a lot of jobs feel pointless. Yes, technology allows us to do more work with less effort. That does not mean that those jobs actually ARE pointless, though, or that technology should allow you to slack off instead of becoming even more productive than you were before.
Could you elaborate on some basic effects of competition in capitalism?
Why should you want to become even more productive than you were before? To what end?
The reality of life involves having to thrive in order to survive. It's an unfortunate reason why individual regions/countries wouldn't necessarily work out too well if they abandoned any sort of attempt at growing economically. An analogy would be similar to that of human reproduction. While one can live a great life without having kids —and frequently the most successful people have little to no offspring— it results in in an overall plateau or reduction in that person's population while others continue to grow and eventually push out their peers.
So you find it impossible to live without "growing?" You don't think a sustainable replacement rate of human reproduction is a possibility? It seems that the reality of life involves reproducing oneself, yes, but I don't see how it necessarily involves an endless pursuit of "growing" the economy.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
Here is an excerpt from The Economist that refutes Mr. David:
ANTHROPOLOGIST David Graeber has written an amusing essay on the nature of work in a modern economy, which seems to involve lots of people doing meaningless tasks they hate:
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
It is not the case, he writes, that people have to keep working to produce the consumer goods for which the rich world hungers. Outrageously, meaningless employment—in what he calls "bullshit jobs"—is concentrated in “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers”
In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector...
Why in the world would firms spend extraordinary amounts of money employing people to do worthless tasks (especially when they've shown themselves to be exceedingly good at not employing people to do worthless tasks)? Says Mr Graeber:
The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s).
I am immediately bursting with questions. Such as, should we conclude that protesters around the world—in Brazil, India, North Africa, Turkey—are in fact too happy? How does the ruling class co-ordinate all this hiring, and if much of the economy's employment is useless in the first place why not just keep them on during recessions?
BS jobs, like the ones in Oregon where someone (employed) has to fill a gas tank for you because they are being paid to do so? I never found it at all necessary to have someone else fill my gas tank, as I just sit around waiting regardless...
But jobs usually exist because they make someone else more money. Artificial ones can be bullshit, like the gas guy job. (By artificial, I mean jobs created by the state government or whatever to keep people employed.) But, even artificial ones can be totally beneficial. It just requires people to pay higher taxes (OH NO). I'd say there were many jobs formed during the New Deal that were in fact good contributions to society.
I think the problem with the OP is that it makes it seem like some mysterious force is allowing these BS jobs to be made, when it is in fact just other people and businesses. There is a demand for a role, and there are people to fill that role.
I'm a bit biased, as my father worked for GSA as a COBOL programmer, giving me a very comfortable childhood and one where I got to actually see and know the ol' man. Big difference from the blue collar jobs I worked where getting time off was like pulling teeth, if you were lucky enough to have a job to come back to- and that was time off that was earned.
GSA government jobs are like the anti-Christ for the political right, and are probably few and far between these days, but as jobs they were awesomesauce. A lot of goofing around, playing cards at the office etc, but not everyone knew how to program in COBOL back then when it came time to do actual work. Socially, it gave me, and certainly a large number of other families, a good life. I owe my childhood to it.
Mostly agree with points in the OP, but things will not change short of a mass overhaul of public opinion. Ironically, it is right wing policies that could make this happen- at least more likely than a left wing socialist utopia. Sort of why I think of politics as more circular rather than linear. "Imperialism, the Eve of the Socialist Revolution of the Proletariat" and all that. As I've stated before, no matter how useless you, I, or anyone else deems a job to be, it still serves a purpose. Even if sometimes only political. Certainly the status quo or current political power in office doesn't want to deal with staggering unemployment numbers, not even the Tea Party.
On July 01 2014 12:15 screamingpalm wrote: I'm a bit biased, as my father worked for GSA as a COBOL programmer, giving me a very comfortable childhood and one where I got to actually see and know the ol' man. Big difference from the blue collar jobs I worked where getting time off was like pulling teeth, if you were lucky enough to have a job to come back to- and that was time off that was earned.
GSA government jobs are like the anti-Christ for the political right, and are probably few and far between these days, but as jobs they were awesomesauce. A lot of goofing around, playing cards at the office etc, but not everyone knew how to program in COBOL back then when it came time to do actual work. Socially, it gave me, and certainly a large number of other families, a good life. I owe my childhood to it.
Mostly agree with points in the OP, but things will not change short of a mass overhaul of public opinion. Ironically, it is right wing policies that could make this happen- at least more likely than a left wing socialist utopia. Sort of why I think of politics as more circular rather than linear. "Imperialism, the Eve of the Socialist Revolution of the Proletariat" and all that. As I've stated before, no matter how useless you, I, or anyone else deems a job to be, it still serves a purpose. Even if sometimes only political. Certainly the status quo or current political power in office doesn't want to deal with staggering unemployment numbers, not even the Tea Party.
Well, in the US, I think things always end up needing to get much worse before ever improving (Great Depression -> New Deal, etc). With more and more cutbacks to decent jobs (or bullshit jobs) the worse shit is going to get overall. As unemployment goes through the roof (assuming the right wing continues slashing "useless" jobs) I feel like that is where you start to get popular opinion and grassroots counter-efforts. Being sensible and realizing the bubble isn't sustainable and going with some form of evil socialism isn't going to happen lol.
On July 01 2014 10:50 LongShot27 wrote: Anyone who has worked in retail knows about bullshit jobs. You have tons of jobs that are labeled as "supervisor" or "assistant manager" But they don't actually perform any management functions. The world loves titles and compartmentalization. You have millions of people who work part-time jobs that serve no function. The "Greeter" at retail stores doesn't do anything. Most "sales associates" spend close to half their shift just standing around talking because you can't restock full shelves and help customers who aren't there. Lots of these jobs aren't "bullshit" by definition but they end up consisting of so many meaningless tasks that are just used to fill up hours on payroll.
i think a lot of things you touched upon here are not necessarily meaningless. take your greeter position, for example, you might look at it and say wow a greeter, i dont give a fuck about that. but the thing is, there are people who will look at that and say wow i feel welcome here at this store, and that provides value for the company since the customer will have a better image of the store itself, and more likely to come back. im sure there are even studies that back this up.
sale associates are almost the same way. you could say oh this company has all these sales associates but the store is dead why do they have all these people working and wasting payroll hours. again, its probably more image than anything else, management dont want people to come in and think there's no help or see an empty store with no employees. management will always rather overstaff than understaff.
in a way, its sad that corporate image is so important, probably even more important than what service/good you actually do provide.
While one can live a great life without having kids —and frequently the most successful people have little to no offspring— it results in in an overall plateau or reduction in that person's population while others continue to grow and eventually push out their peers.
I suspect having even 40% of the world population on 15 hour work weeks would be more catastrophic than any amount of psychological damage the current system is inflicting. Your average person isn't motivated enough to really produce anything amazing (not that they can't, or don't have the talent), just look at how we spend a freetime now. I could be building something, or painting, or finishing that Python project I started 3 months back, but instead I'm discussing jobs that shouldn't exist with people I haven't met.
Case and point, retired people. Especially the ones that sit around watching tv all day. They have literally all the free time, and they often spend it unproductively. They stop moving, and die. I've yet to see someone live long after retirement if they couldn't motivate themselves to actually do something at least vaguely useful.
On July 01 2014 12:53 Artisian wrote: I suspect having even 40% of the world population on 15 hour work weeks would be more catastrophic than any amount of psychological damage the current system is inflicting. Your average person isn't motivated enough to really produce anything amazing (not that they can't, or don't have the talent), just look at how we spend a freetime now. I could be building something, or painting, or finishing that Python project I started 3 months back, but instead I'm discussing jobs that shouldn't exist with people I haven't met.
Case and point, retired people. Especially the ones that sit around watching tv all day. They have literally all the free time, and they often spend it unproductively. They stop moving, and die. I've yet to see someone live long after retirement if they couldn't motivate themselves to actually do something at least vaguely useful.
Your average person has been born and raised to be a cog in the system. Take him out of the system and he might surprise you.
On July 01 2014 12:53 Artisian wrote: I suspect having even 40% of the world population on 15 hour work weeks would be more catastrophic than any amount of psychological damage the current system is inflicting. Your average person isn't motivated enough to really produce anything amazing (not that they can't, or don't have the talent), just look at how we spend a freetime now. I could be building something, or painting, or finishing that Python project I started 3 months back, but instead I'm discussing jobs that shouldn't exist with people I haven't met.
Case and point, retired people. Especially the ones that sit around watching tv all day. They have literally all the free time, and they often spend it unproductively. They stop moving, and die. I've yet to see someone live long after retirement if they couldn't motivate themselves to actually do something at least vaguely useful.
Reminds me of when I was in the Navy, and seemed every time a Senior Chief retired, we'd hear a short time later that he died.
I think we're already are heading towards shorter work weeks, but maybe not for palatable reasons. If the number of hours for employees ends up = 15 to make the most profit, it will happen alright.
On July 01 2014 11:21 Blargh wrote: BS jobs, like the ones in Oregon where someone (employed) has to fill a gas tank for you because they are being paid to do so? I never found it at all necessary to have someone else fill my gas tank, as I just sit around waiting regardless...
But jobs usually exist because they make someone else more money. Artificial ones can be bullshit, like the gas guy job. (By artificial, I mean jobs created by the state government or whatever to keep people employed.) But, even artificial ones can be totally beneficial. It just requires people to pay higher taxes (OH NO). I'd say there were many jobs formed during the New Deal that were in fact good contributions to society.
I think the problem with the OP is that it makes it seem like some mysterious force is allowing these BS jobs to be made, when it is in fact just other people and businesses. There is a demand for a role, and there are people to fill that role.
A little bit off-topic but in Thailand every gas station must have a gas-guy to fill in a tank for you since we are not the most honest people and could just "fill and dash" or not paying a full price. So gas-guy is one of the security system that we required to make sure drivers pay up for their gas. So you can say in Thailand, gas-guy is not a bs job since it serves a strong purpose.
For me, there are not bs jobs since every job serves a purpose. However, the purpose of a job might be less meaningful than others or provide less benefits to society. It depends on what society needs at the current situation.
On July 01 2014 10:27 IgnE wrote: So you find it impossible to live without "growing?" You don't think a sustainable replacement rate of human reproduction is a possibility? It seems that the reality of life involves reproducing oneself, yes, but I don't see how it necessarily involves an endless pursuit of "growing" the economy.
No, I believe you misunderstand me. I certainly think that a population could maintain it's level of population with no issue (and in fact a benefit), but the problem is that generally/naturally people want their offspring and ideas to prevail over others', so especially when not everyone is in agreement that the population should not be growing, individuals will continually produce more offspring in order to proliferate their lifestyle/offspring. The people who either reproduce enough to be steady, or who don't reproduce at all, end up getting lost. The people who attempt/believe for a plateaued population end up being drowned out by those who don't.
I was going to mention Idocracy's intro, but felt it wasn't necessarily the best representation of the concept I was mentioning. Regardless, GreenHorizons posted it, and it is a simple explanation that conveys the message.
To me, the scenario is similar —but not necessarily quite the same— with regards to businesses'/cities'/countries' economies. When you have "responsible", sustainable, no-growth businesses or commercial foreign policy, chances are (or perhaps it's guaranteed) that they will eventually putter out and get swallowed —at least unless there was a sweeping comprehensive change that occurs across most/all organizations/groups around the same time.
EPT
