What exactly do you mean by ‘unproductive’ work?

...you... — I like sushi

Me? Or Graeber?

...very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

Personally I think it would help to normalize part-time work. If a software developer can do their job in 4 hours each day, why the hell should they be at the office for 8?

Yeah. But such decisions are not made rationally.

The big hold-up is that the rich aren’t going to pay the workers the same money for “less work” = fewer hours, so if the work can get done in fewer hours, the workers have to convince the rich that they still need to put in as many hours in order to justify continuing to get the same pay (and therefore deserving the same access to the things they need to live).

The problem, as always, is capitalism.

But what happened was that, although the part of work that is actually productive has been reduced, the amount of unproductive work has increased to an extraordinary degree; to the point were many, many jobs do not produce anything. — Banno

Again, what do YOU mean by ‘unproductive’ here? I don’t know what distinction you’re referring to. I’m assumed you wasn’t making a value judgement at first then you said ‘bullshit,’ so I’m wondering if you look at ‘unproductive work’ - whatever it loosely means in this case - as of no serious value (hence the ‘bullshit’ remark).

Not trying to be finicky, just trying see if you’re talking about a general ‘gist’ or something more rigid.

Thanks

EDIT: Didn’t notice there was a link! Taking away the garbage is doing something others don’t want to do. Due to red-tape as a result of alterations to laws, ‘control’ of ‘freedoms’ and such, there are just more non-physically directed jobs that people would rather not do. Are these in excess? I personally think there is at least too much momentum in thus direction.

One thing that annoyed me when I read some of Marx’s Das Capital was his blatant disregard for the ‘human value’ - fair enough as the work was essentially about economics.

This bring up all manner of issues such as whether or not a ‘belief’ in personal industry trumps any practical value for society - as with everything it very much depends on each individual situation AND because of these various nuances in social life the becomes more, protection of ‘freedoms’ replace personal responsibilities and freedom, and people end up oiling a machine that gnaws secretly at their sense of self-worth.

With more ‘leisure time’ comes more potential for introspection. Being faced with yourself is rarely an easy experience to deal with - with age it comes though, and for some it comes more readily than others.

How much traction the idea of UBI gets over the coming decades will be interesting to see.

Replace "such" by "most."

The part that vexes me: is that a bad thing? I'm no Humean, but other thinkers (and feelers) cast their shadow...

But what happened was that, although the part of work that is actually productive has been reduced, the amount of unproductive work has increased to an extraordinary degree; to the point were many, many jobs do not produce anything. — Banno

One possibility: The 8 hour day, originally fought for as a ceiling, has become a floor. Full time work is not less than an 8 hour day, whether 8 hours is too much time, or not.

Another possibility: Workers, all levels from building cleaners to building designers, turn good jobs into bullshit jobs because they are what the bosses suspect that they are: lazy, sloppy, malingering, subversive, etc.

A third possibility: Many organizations have outlived their usefulness and have become bullshit operations. Everyone who works there is, ipso facto, doing a bullshit job, perhaps in an exemplary manner.

A fourth: Bullshit jobs are the fulfillment of Cyril Northcote Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." [A similar law: Paper expands to fill the available storage space.] Automation of many functions (like Xerox copiers which make excellent copies with little effort, as opposed to ink printing which requires preparing a master copy, dealing with messy ink, etc.) leaves more empty time during the day. The empty time is filled with what will inevitably be minimally productive activity.

And more!

I have occupied a few bullshit jobs. Usually the job could be done in less time than was available. But... 8 hours, and no less. I have sometimes fulfilled the boss's suspicion that workers are lazy, incompetent, sloppy, subversive, etc. And I certainly expected to be paid the same wage, on time, nonetheless.

I have worked for some organizations that had either outlived their usefulness or were never useful in the first place. Everyone working at these places (usually non-profits) was in earnest, hard working, devoted, and all that. Unfortunately, the work was futile--like shoveling wet bullshit with a pitchfork.

The 8 hour day exceeds the required time for many jobs. Because of the floor of 8 hours, one might have to fill 4-8 hours (or more) with activities that sort of resemble work-like activity--bullshit, in other words.

When workers are in jobs that are meaningful (where their executive agency actually has a positive effect on the world) they tend to work harder, more creatively, and more efficiently. A worker who was a total waste in one job might turn out to be a work-leader in a different job.

My job wasn't work-from-home, but has become so. I'm new to the company (started in January) but I'm just doing customer service. We manage fuel cards. A fuel card's for when you have a trucking company and need a way for your long distance big rig truckers to fuel up on the company dime without too much hassle. Instead of a master card, you swipe a fuel card. Problems arise, so there's customer service. If it isn't working right, you call in to get it fixed.

I can tell you frankly I'm not proud of my job; Still, I don't think it's bullshit, yet. I don't think current AI could do it. But that's not my main thing I want to say, because I agree with the thrust of your post.

Our company cut a lot of people. It lost massive value, even more so than the general stock market plunge. A lot of mid-level jobs got cut. I think I kept mine, not because my job is high-caliber, but exactly because it's low caliber. The top and the bottom stayed, the middle got thinned.

(biographical aside: this work-from-home thing has led the company to expand work-from-home even post-all-of-this. I lucked out - I've been wanting to get out of this city for a while and move back to my pretty rural home town, but there's been nowhere to work - now I can, and am about to move back, to work and finish my degree remotely in peace)

I think - I hope - that what this whole thing is ultimately going to do is accelerate the disjunction between jobs and physical location + cut out the fat, the bullshit. I think this is a really potent and exciting mix of two things happening and its hard to say in advance what the ramifications might be. But it could be good.

Sweet. Hope it works out.

Parkinson's Law — Bitter Crank

I'd go with this.

But see Economics of a four-day working week: research shows it can save businesses money

I'm with you on this , there are many bullshit jobs. I've been on building sites where there are more project managers than workers. Also quite often on site work being carried out is totally pointless...architects design parts of a roof (I'm a roofer) that are difficult to build, look shit , create extra maintenance and problems (things like hidden gutter system s that easily get blocked up).

Pfhorrest
1.8k
The big hold-up is that the rich aren’t going to pay the workers the same money for “less work” = fewer hours, so if the work can get done in fewer hours, the workers have to convince the rich that they still need to put in as many hours in order to justify continuing to get the same pay (and therefore deserving the same access to the things they need to live).

The problem, as always, is capitalism. — Pfhorrest

The problem IS capitalism. At least "capitalism" as we have managed to mold it.

And make no mistake about it...the factor of production that will ALWAYS take the greatest hit in this kid of capitalistic society...WILL BE LABOR.

Entrepreneurship, under this system is obligated to MAXIMIZE profit...and the easiest way to do that is to minimize payment to labor.

MY OPINION: The solution will not be found in lowering the working hours from 8 to 4 or to 2 or to 1.

The solution will involve getting rid of the "Protestant work ethic"...getting rid of the notion that one must earn one's living. Then...ONLY the truly productive should be allowed to work. ONLY people who can be more productive than machines, robots and computers should be allowed to work for the MORE that working people will get as a reward.

All the other people should be encouraged to find other things to do...like spend more time with family, tend to the garden, tend to the lawn, clean the house, do art, write, read, invent, play more golf, watch more movies, do more exercise...or if needs be, do nothing more productive than bend two trees in toward each other by lying in a hammock all day.

FI you can work from home, theres a good chance yours is a bullshit job. — Banno

Most philosophers can work from home and teachers will later teach their ideas. So without some seemingly bullshit jobs, the non-bullshit jobs would have nothing to work with. There are many bullshit jobs that lead to great discoveries throughout history, sometimes seemingly outside their field. The one who decides which jobs are bullshit is the one to question which knowledge that definition is drawn from.

many jobs do not produce anything — Banno

I'm having trouble thinking of a job that doesn't produce something of some kind. I think you're exaggerating so I have to wonder why you're exaggerating.

I'm having trouble thinking of a job that doesn't produce something of some kind. I think you're exaggerating so I have to wonder why you're exaggerating. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I can think of a bullshit job that I am paid to do that doesn't produce any kind of a "thing" and that is mucking horseshit. Technically in 105*f heat all animal shit is bullshit. :fire:

Actually, according to physics, if you have a place to return to after "work", your net work, according to the formula Work = force × displacement (fancy name for distance), is a big fat ZERO. Why then go anywhere for anything at all?

All jobs = ZERO. Nonetheless, I wouldn't call such an important number bullshit.

that doesn't produce any kind of a "thing" — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I was thinking less in terms of "things" - and more in terms of things.

An anecdote from F.Brook in "Myth of the man-month"

In the 70s IBM was developing an Operating System for their new line of mainframes.
Brooks estimated that a single, talented programmer could have done this in about 120 or so years of work. IBM, of course, did not want to wait that long: The schedule was 3 years start to finish.
Over the course of this 3 years IBM spent a total of 5000 work-years on this project with 1000 to 2000 people working on it at all time. All due to the overhead of orginization of coordination.
For example, for every 2 programmers working on the actual code, there was a technical assistant whose sole purpose was to translate the comments made by the programmers into an intermediate form that could then be written down cleanly by the secretary assigned to those 2 programmers. So for every two programmers there were about two other people just for telling others what those two were doing. In total this resulted in about 1-2 inches of bound book every day documenting the official communication/coordination between work teams.
But that was clearly not enough. Those two programmers needed more assistance - for example someone whose sole purpose was to get those two the things they needed for their work: Things like software tools, finding out if or who was tackling or solved which problem and how and such things.
...

Tiff, think! You have piles of horse shit, high heat, and dry air. Dry the horse shit out in the sun, put it bags, and sell it as raw compost to gardeners in Chicago or Minneapolis. $$$

It's the tension between being evolved with a (for all practical purposes) "boundless" set of thoughts, reactions, behaviors, etc. yet an institutionalized, historically-developed, bounded set of institutional structures. The boundless thoughts can never quite go beyond the bounded institutions.

In summary:

Unessential workers of the world, unite!

Yes. Humans have created bounded institutions to serve as rude speed bumps to reduce excessive boundless thinking, reacting, behaving, etc. One sees this in action all the time, where some spark plug in the organization keeps firing off one bright idea after another. Pretty soon the spark plug is managed, i.e., told to shut the fuck up. Or else!

It's a form of suffering imposed on spark plugs that had not consented to be born in the first place, and having been born, have to work to keep body and soul together--though why anyone does that since we didn't want the deal in the first place, is a mystery.

Or maybe they just don't like their job and bitch about bull shit rather than hitting the highway and finding something better/different.

Yes. Humans have created bounded institutions to serve as rude speed bumps to reduce excessive boundless thinking, reacting, behaving, etc. One sees this in action all the time, where some spark plug in the organization keeps firing off one bright idea after another. Pretty soon the spark plug is managed, i.e., told to shut the fuck up. Or else! — Bitter Crank

Yes indeed. It happens on that granular level and also as a wider phenomena. For example, revolutions work as a sort of way to "break out" of historically-developed institutional patterns. So what happens? It sounds good but then when asked to give up their property (like house, land, capital), that doesn't seem to go down well in practice. So now you have simply force. The people with the guns will make you do it. Well, that just threw out the boundlessness with more boundaries. Then the famines, and the shortages of goods. Then a charismatic leader takes the reigns of the guys with the guns and it is just more boundaries than the previous institutions.

The problem is the comforts of life itself will lead us to this problem that cannot be solved. So therefore...

It's a form of suffering imposed on spark plugs that had not consented to be born in the first place, and having been born, have to work to keep body and soul together--though why anyone does that since we didn't want the deal in the first place, is a mystery. — Bitter Crank

Exactly! Now you are speaking my language. The problem is intractable. It has to do with the human condition, not a specific socio-economic condition.

Worse than a bullshit job is no job. Worse than no job is no shoes. Worse than no shoes is no feet. Having no feet is just about the worst.

The solution will involve getting rid of the "Protestant work ethic"...getting rid of the notion that one must earn one's living. — Frank Apisa

One must earn one's living, but that isn't the Protestant Work Ethic. The PWE says that all work is sacred, dignified, good. At the time that Martin Luther pronounced all work good, the prevailing assumption was that the work of clerics (priests, nuns, monks) was good, at the top of the heap. Mere laborers were at the bottom. Luther declared that the work of a manure collector, foundry worker, miner, baker, etc. was as sacred as priesthood.

Granted: just because one's labor was sacred didn't mean that one was going to get paid well for doing it, but at least one could look on one's sweat as ultimately worthwhile. Elevating the moral import of human labor as a good thing, worthy of respect, was a good thing.

Capitalism has no interest in the PWE except that it gives it ripped off moral cover for exploiting labor, alienating the workers' product from the worker. Capitalism perfected the Capitalist Work Ethic, which is "work for the lowest possible wage and be grateful you have a job." Capitalism is a system of acquisition and accumulation through exploitation.

QUESTION: Are bullshit jobs inevitable? If so, why? If they are not inevitable, why do they exist?