If Books Could Kill - Bullshit Jobs

00:00:00.000 uh let's go in let's go in let's go in and you have to cut all that because last time i

00:00:04.360 told the same story twice i noticed that i didn't even think about i was just telling my stories to

00:00:10.080 my friends you know like it looks like someone only had one funny anecdote last week yeah i saw 0.96

00:00:14.300 that yeah how many do you fucking have every week all right fucking kings of comedy over here they're 0.94

00:00:18.500 like oh you're using your bits everyone else just tells one story to one person and it's just done 0.99

00:00:22.640 nobody ever repeats anything that happened to them you know how good my stories are by the third time 0.90

00:00:26.840 i'm telling like i'm fucking crushing dude uh okay i actually this this one has like a really 0.58

00:00:32.800 obvious like little zinger to it yeah but i don't know how to word it but i don't know how to word 0.97

00:00:36.440 it michael peter what do you know about bullshit jobs all i know is that i'm excited to talk about 0.87

00:00:42.280 this book from the vantage point of my own 0.98

00:00:44.320 bullshit jobs written by david graber came out in 2018 graber is an anthropologist and he is a 0.88

00:01:07.240 hardcore lefty he considers himself an anarchist so finally we're doing we're doing a book by

00:01:14.460 someone who's not a reactionary centrist also my understanding is his work is like good it's a

00:01:18.640 pretty good book it makes some important points it prods at some good and correct ideas i think

00:01:24.800 like my big picture criticisms of it are one it's like really meandering in the way that a lot of

00:01:31.820 like lefty theory is yeah it's hard for him to land at a point he says a lot of things where

00:01:36.600 you're like, OK, I like this. And then he just sort of like meanders on until you're like, all

00:01:42.060 right, I no longer get it. This is like meeting anyone in Seattle, Washington. You're like at a

00:01:46.380 cocktail party. You're like, I think I agree. I don't know what you're saying, though. My other

00:01:50.320 big picture criticism is that the book really screams for data, but he doesn't give it. Oh,

00:01:55.700 really? That's surprising, actually. Sometimes he's doing it very knowingly being like,

00:02:00.360 look, I'm a I'm a theory guy, you know? So like if someone wants to look into this, they should.

00:02:04.880 but there are other times where it's like there is data here and i feel like he could have looked

00:02:09.280 for it that is reactionary centrist coded it is i'm not gonna look up the premise of my book and

00:02:14.360 whether it's true also wait wait wait with meta comment didn't he like die tragically he passed

00:02:20.340 away in 2020 quite young so yeah he we will we will speak of him respectfully yeah i mean he

00:02:26.500 seems like a nice guy with good ideas like i feel like it's not i this is gonna be a much less

00:02:30.540 donkey episode it sounds like yeah unfortunately there are no i'm just gonna send you various

00:02:36.140 excerpts and then we will think about them yeah rather than my usual mo of just finding the dumbest 0.55

00:02:43.360 shit in every book yeah and sending it to you but this was like a heavily requested book so it's 0.76

00:02:47.800 like it was inevitable that we would do this it just sounds like it has yielded a sort of like 0.88

00:02:51.220 a portrait of like a book that is kind of interesting but falls apart in some places 0.90

00:02:54.740 not yeah not like a fuck this book or fuck this guy kind of episode i'm gonna give the definition 0.99

00:02:58.920 of bullshit job right off the bat you talk into a microphone you post it on patreon yes i know a 1.00

00:03:05.040 bullshit job is quote a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless unnecessary or 1.00

00:03:11.340 pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though as part of the conditions 0.96

00:03:17.120 of employment the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case that sounds

00:03:22.120 quite extreme that sounds like it would be very few jobs in america actually it is very extreme

00:03:26.420 We'll get into like exactly what he means in more detail.

00:03:29.140 But for color, because he's on the left, this is mostly directed at like certain types of

00:03:34.240 white collar work that he thinks add no real value to society. 0.99

00:03:38.040 He distinguishes between bullshit jobs and what he calls shit jobs, which are just sort 0.99

00:03:43.340 of like the traditional bad job, like low pay, maybe degrading, right? 0.99

00:03:47.960 You're treated poorly by society.

00:03:50.100 Yeah, those are like very essential jobs. 0.99

00:03:51.440 They just suck. 0.99

00:03:52.060 Yeah. 1.00

00:03:52.180 That's what he says, that those jobs are, in fact, often not bullshit at all.

00:03:56.480 They're very important work. 0.76

00:03:57.620 Not to do like pot calling the kettle black or whatever, but like it is also funny to

00:04:01.240 write a whole book about this while being like a Marxist scholar at a liberal arts university.

00:04:06.500 You could also argue as we speak into microphones from our from our own homes.

00:04:14.000 If you ever try to describe what you do to someone who doesn't know about podcasts,

00:04:17.020 it's impossible to describe it in a non humiliating way.

00:04:20.180 It's so weird when you don't know someone because when they eventually ask enough questions to find the name of the podcast, it's like, yeah, here's here's a link to all of my opinions.

00:04:29.440 I have kind of started dating somebody recently and he didn't know about the show when he first met me.

00:04:34.120 But like when you're in this stage, like you've got on a couple of dates, you like each other, you're flirting, texting, whatever.

00:04:39.320 He's like, it's weird to have like 600 hours of your opinions on things that I can just like go listen to at any point.

00:04:46.460 Yeah.

00:04:46.880 Like this guy I'm seeing.

00:04:47.960 What does he think about Princess Diana?

00:04:49.340 I want one day for there to be someone who's like, oh, you're the girl on If Books Could Kill.

00:04:55.480 After meeting me on Grindr, yes.

00:04:58.540 So in 2013, Graeber publishes a short essay in Strike Magazine, which is a radical lefty outfit called On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, a work rant.

00:05:11.320 We've often had these situations where we're like, this should really just be an essay.

00:05:16.320 And sometimes it was.

00:05:17.520 Yes. And sometimes it was. You do get the sense that someone was like, David, can you turn this

00:05:22.420 into a book? And he was like, all right. Because honestly, at least what I understand to be the

00:05:26.600 premise sounds like a fine essay. Like some percentage of the American economy is just like

00:05:31.500 people kind of pretending to do stuff or like things that don't really need to exist. But also

00:05:35.000 if you extend that to 300 pages, you then do need to provide some data. You need to provide examples.

00:05:39.960 And then it also seems like it would kind of fall apart. The essay is super short. And so you

00:05:43.980 actually end up with a weird situation where like the essay could be longer, but the book

00:05:48.280 could be a lot shorter.

00:05:49.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:49.780 I'm going to send you some of the essay and we can talk about it.

00:05:51.880 I think he hits on like this general idea that's very true.

00:05:55.320 But then the more specific he tries to get, the more you're like, ah, I don't know.

00:05:59.960 Yeah.

00:06:00.160 All right.

00:06:00.580 I'm going to send you some of the opening bits here.

00:06:03.400 In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by centuries end, technology would have

00:06:08.480 advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have

00:06:12.220 achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms,

00:06:17.660 we are quite capable of this, and yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled,

00:06:22.460 if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have

00:06:26.740 had to be created that are effectively pointless. Huge swaths of people in Europe and North America

00:06:31.280 in particular spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not

00:06:35.920 really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation

00:06:39.600 is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul, yet virtually no one talks about it.

00:06:45.000 I already disagree with this. I have had jobs that are sort of on the bullshit spectrum. 0.98

00:06:49.840 I mean this like when I used to work in NGOs, but I don't think it's that the job was bullshit. I 0.99

00:06:54.600 think it just wasn't a 40-hour job. It was like 10 hours of kind of real stuff and then 30 hours

00:07:00.360 of bullshit. I know that you're going to keep jumping the gun on me. Okay, we're getting there. 0.99

00:07:04.020 I kind of agree with you. I think that one of the problems here is that he tries to drop

00:07:09.600 jobs into a category. It's a bullshit job or not. But the reality is that a large part of almost 0.99

00:07:16.540 any job has like a bullshit component. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I'm going to send 0.99

00:07:20.680 you more. He says, a recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000

00:07:25.680 gives us a clear picture. Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as

00:07:29.980 domestic servants in industry and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same

00:07:34.500 time, professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers tripled, growing from one

00:07:39.960 quarter to three quarters of total employment. In other words, productive jobs have, just as

00:07:44.860 predicted, been largely automated away. But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours

00:07:49.520 to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas,

00:07:53.580 we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the service sector as of the administrative

00:07:58.300 sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or

00:08:02.440 telemarketing, the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health

00:08:07.840 administration, human resources and public relations. I like strongly disagree with this.

00:08:12.080 Public relations is an important thing. Like I did public relations for NGOs. It's important to

00:08:15.540 get the word out about like fucking conflict minerals. I don't know. Like, so I mean, I agree. 0.98

00:08:19.840 There's there's an imprecision in his terms a lot. There's another problem here, which I feel

00:08:26.020 like is classic lefty stuff, which is like, sometimes you get the sense that he's never

00:08:29.700 really worked for a company right right he's just sort of eyeballing it he's also doing a weird

00:08:33.900 thing kind of from the left that you see from the right a lot where it's this idea that things like

00:08:38.960 farming and manufacturing are like real jobs like oh we used to make things in america and then all

00:08:44.060 these office jobs are like knowledge jobs are fake but i also just don't agree with the premise i

00:08:48.540 think there's lots of jobs where you sit at a desk that are totally worthwhile i wrote a note down

00:08:52.240 in some sections uh where i just said noble savage next to some of his discussion of like

00:08:58.600 manufacturing work, for example, because even in my like limited exposure to blue collar jobs,

00:09:04.100 when I was young, you see a lot of the same phenomenon that he's describing in white in

00:09:08.900 white collar work, right, where work is is redundant or whatever it might be. And we'll

00:09:13.260 get into it. Yeah. Now I'm going to send you one last bit of the essay. He says the ruling class

00:09:18.540 has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a

00:09:22.300 mortal danger. And on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself and that

00:09:26.940 anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their

00:09:30.520 waking hours deserves nothing is extraordinarily convenient for them. So I think he's basically

00:09:35.880 saying, look, the ruling class has opposed policies that would create more free time

00:09:40.340 and fostered policies that incentivize work. That's true. That's just like straightforwardly

00:09:44.820 true. I think if you're looking at it that simply, not hard to believe, right? But like, yeah,

00:09:49.040 the idea that like wealthy capitalists oppose things like working hours reductions or mandatory

00:09:54.700 free time. That's just obvious, empirically true. But also that feels distinct from the

00:09:59.180 phenomenon of bullshit jobs to me. Yeah. So I agree. So what he's basically saying, 0.98

00:10:05.280 although he doesn't quite, I'm not sure that he ever actually says this, but you can sort of

00:10:09.120 piece it together. What he's basically saying is like, we've had these big increases in productivity.

00:10:14.080 Has it brought us any more leisure time? No. And that's because there are these great

00:10:19.280 institutional forces that oppose that and want to redirect our productivity elsewhere.

00:10:23.460 That seems true. That seems fair.

00:10:24.920 There's a big response to this essay. A bunch of people write it up, a bunch of Marxists start arguing about it, and I won't get into it. I will tell you, my first run at this episode, I was like, maybe I'll cover these intra-Marxist debates. And then I read one essay and was like, no, no.

00:10:45.400 In 2015, someone took evocative quotes out of the essay and plastered them all over the London metro.

00:10:51.780 the london metro the tube you mean the tube sorry sorry folks metro sorry to our well-traveled

00:10:59.060 listeners uh no basic things you don't say the basic things that's like the london have you

00:11:04.880 ever heard anyone say the london metro in your life also it might have also been buses that's

00:11:10.360 also not the metro there's no but it's not the tube either so what is it whatever don't try to

00:11:15.000 fucking uno reverse just accept the l and move on i don't think it's an l i think i introduced a 0.78

00:11:20.560 nuance that you can't explain so yeah so they put up these quotes one of them says huge swaths of 0.99

00:11:26.720 people spend their days performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be

00:11:31.900 performed one says it's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs for the sake of

00:11:36.240 keeping us all working these are quotes from the essay and they sort of cause a little bit of stir

00:11:40.060 of a stir they get on the news i'm trying to decide whether i think this sort of thing is

00:11:44.340 cool or whether it would just piss me off if i'm like on my way to work and it's like great some 0.99

00:11:47.920 fucking communist. Yeah, it's telling me my job's useless. Also, I don't believe I don't agree with 0.99

00:11:53.600 the second one. Why would somebody make up a job so they can pay you to do nothing? He does have

00:11:58.140 a theory of this that we'll talk about. And it is a little bit abstract. And I don't quite buy it

00:12:03.140 either. Okay. He writes this book, bullshit jobs to flesh the theory out published in 2018. And a

00:12:09.700 lot of his research for the book is essentially just compiling anecdotes from people who reach 0.76

00:12:15.560 out to them about their bullshit jobs those actually sound fun to be honest i will say 0.58

00:12:19.600 as a data set it's pretty obviously terrible yeah yeah yeah you're people who reach out to 1.00

00:12:26.080 a leftist academic to complain about their bullshit jobs probably not the you know the best 0.56

00:12:31.380 the representativist of samples but he uses that to delineate what he believes are 0.99

00:12:35.940 the five approximate categories of bullshit job okay flunkies goons duct tapers box tickers 0.86

00:12:45.280 and taskmasters. Now, this is not meant to be exact or exhaustive, I don't think. It's just 0.95

00:12:50.460 useful groupings, right? So we'll start with flunkies. Flunkies are people whose jobs exist

00:12:56.760 entirely to make their bosses feel or seem important. I'm going to send you a little bit

00:13:02.700 here. He says, another term for this category might be feudal retainers. Throughout recorded

00:13:07.900 history, rich and powerful men and women have tended to surround themselves with servants,

00:13:11.180 clients, sycophants, and minions of one sort or another. Not all of these are actually employed

00:13:15.760 in the grandee's household, and many of those who are are expected to at least do some actual work.

00:13:20.920 But especially at the top of the pyramid, there is usually a certain portion whose job it is

00:13:24.900 to basically just stand around and look impressive. Some old-fashioned feudal retainer-style jobs

00:13:29.900 still do exist. Doormen are the most obvious example. They perform the same function in the

00:13:34.360 houses of the very rich that electronic intercoms have performed for everyone else since at least

00:13:38.580 the 1950s. This also is like, I don't think that's, Dorman often serve like a security function,

00:13:44.580 don't they? He gives some like outdated examples that I think are a little more accurate. One is

00:13:48.680 elevator operators, which I think might be like one of the better examples here.

00:13:52.980 But also do those even still exist? I mean, those-

00:13:54.960 Not really, no.

00:13:55.580 You used to need one.

00:13:56.820 Certain receptionists, you know, he believes are basically just there for aesthetics.

00:14:01.040 I guess.

00:14:01.260 Probably true.

00:14:01.860 I guess, but even a receptionist is like part of like marketing the company, right? You get to a

00:14:05.880 place and like a person says, hi there, welcome. What can I do for you? That's there's some value

00:14:10.020 in that. There are certain things like marketing and advertising that you get the sense that he

00:14:13.060 just doesn't really like respect as an endeavor. Right. And you can also see here he loves the

00:14:17.160 idea that corporations retain or like recreate certain like feudal dynamics. And like one of

00:14:24.920 his overall theories here, and we'll touch on this a bit later, too, is that like corporations are not

00:14:30.540 like hyper efficient, like the libertarians would have you believe. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But are

00:14:35.440 instead sort of like mechanisms for distributing wealth and power in a almost political sense.

00:14:41.740 That feels like totally legitimate.

00:14:42.840 Let's keep going. Let's keep going. Goons are people whose jobs have an aggressive element,

00:14:48.940 but crucially, who exist only because other people employ them. 0.98

00:14:53.800 Okay.

00:14:54.160 Here's what he means by that.

00:14:55.460 The most obvious example of this are national armed forces. Countries need armies only because

00:15:00.080 other countries have armies. If no one had an army, armies would not be needed. But the same

00:15:04.700 can be said of most lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers, and corporate lawyers. Also,

00:15:09.540 like literal goons, they have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would 1.00

00:15:14.120 concur that were all telemarketers to disappear, the world would be a better place. But I think

00:15:18.620 most would also agree that if all corporate lawyers, bank lobbyists, or marketing gurus

00:15:22.560 were to similarly vanish in a puff of smoke, the world would be at least a little more bearable.

00:15:27.980 This again is like a weird category error thing because like telemarketing, like it's obviously a 0.68

00:15:33.060 a bad job and I hate getting telemarketer calls, but I don't think it's bullshit in that way because

00:15:37.880 it does result in sales, right? Well, I think when he said telemarketer, it did kind of click 0.79

00:15:42.740 in my brain because there were definitely some jobs where the central purpose is essentially to

00:15:48.180 trick or bully someone into buying a product or a service that they do not need, right? And I think

00:15:53.280 that's what he's getting at. Dude, I sold frozen steaks over the phone for exactly one day when I

00:15:58.600 was in college and I couldn't fucking handle it. That was a bullshit job. I'm not sure I think it's 1.00

00:16:02.420 right that lobbyists and PR people and lawyers wouldn't exist if others didn't exist, right? 0.97

00:16:08.400 If you look at like some basic corporate lawyer bullshit, like they write contracts. Again, 0.98

00:16:13.340 I just, I'm not entirely sure that he understands these industries.

00:16:16.080 And marketing gurus, I mean, it kind of depends on what they're marketing. Like maybe they're

00:16:18.860 marketing garbage, but they might be marketing like a couch that you like to sit on. I mean, 0.99

00:16:23.220 like people buy objects that they need in their lives as well. I don't know.

00:16:26.460 All right. The next category, duct tapers. Okay.

00:16:29.020 Duck tapers are, quote, employees whose jobs exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization who are there to solve a problem that ought not to exist.

00:16:38.100 OK.

00:16:38.360 So, like, you know, there are a lot of people in software where it's like, yeah, there's like two pieces of software sort of butting together awkwardly.

00:16:44.280 And then someone's job is to smooth over the resulting issues.

00:16:46.880 Right.

00:16:47.220 But that, again, doesn't feel like bullshit because you're like making something work. 0.54

00:16:50.080 I think I agree.

00:16:51.020 But I think he's sort of saying, like, there's an ideal world where this doesn't this problem doesn't exist.

00:16:55.120 Right.

00:16:55.360 I guess.

00:16:55.980 But I don't know.

00:16:57.020 I think this is like the one that makes the least sense to me.

00:16:59.520 Because like there's a problem and then someone gets hired to fix it and the problem is fixed. 0.84

00:17:02.680 But then you're like, oh no, it's bullshit because the problem shouldn't have existed 0.98

00:17:04.960 in the first place. 0.98

00:17:05.800 Here's his attempt to draw a line between what he's saying and what we're saying.

00:17:11.140 There will always be a certain gap between blueprints, schemes, and plans and their real

00:17:15.020 world implementation.

00:17:16.420 Therefore, there will always be people charged with making the necessary adjustments.

00:17:19.920 What makes such a role bullshit is when the plan obviously can't work and any competent

00:17:24.000 architect should have known it. 0.99

00:17:25.100 When the system is so stupidly designed that it will fail in completely predictable ways, 0.94

00:17:29.000 but rather than fix the problem, the organization prefers to hire full-time employees whose main 0.96

00:17:33.560 or entire job is to deal with the damage. It's as if a homeowner, upon discovering a leak in the

00:17:37.800 roof, decided it was too much bother to hire a roofer to re-shingle it, and instead stuck a

00:17:42.340 bracket underneath it, and hired someone whose full-time job was to periodically dump the water.

00:17:47.000 I guess, but then it's like, this is a much smaller percentage of jobs then,

00:17:51.340 and it's very much in the eye of the beholder.

00:17:52.620 I do feel like it's telling that he had to make up a fake thing rather than just tell us about a job that he thinks fits this cleanly, right?

00:17:59.880 But I think if you're trying to do a good faith thing here, he's saying there are people whose jobs are really the result of an inefficiency that could be addressed more directly.

00:18:09.360 It feels like a different category than like telemarketers, but okay.

00:18:11.860 I agree.

00:18:12.240 I do. I think he really kind of hits his stride when he's talking about industries or work that

00:18:17.320 are like scammy. Yeah. Yeah. Like really are like an obvious drain on society. Yeah. Which feels

00:18:23.400 like like the the amount of the American economy that is now dedicated to fucking scams is like 0.95

00:18:27.700 absolutely should be and I'm sure is the subject of like many books. It's like an actual huge 0.94

00:18:32.240 problem. But that feels like different than just like people who do PR are bullshit. I love I love 0.99

00:18:37.400 watching you have to go through the same process that I did. Yeah. With every single one of these

00:18:42.740 where you're like, yeah, kind of, but not really. Right. Because this does feel like the phenomenon

00:18:46.920 that we're talking about, where it's like you read the essay and you're like, yeah, man, some 0.99

00:18:49.540 jobs are bullshit. Here's some fun examples. It's like you get in, you get out in a couple 0.99

00:18:52.240 thousand words. Yeah. But it's like as soon as now you're trying to specify, aha, there's actually

00:18:55.660 different categories of bullshit jobs. It's like, are they though? I think this should be familiar 0.98

00:19:00.100 to anyone who does like work like ours or rights, right? Where you're like, oh, I have this idea and

00:19:04.660 I'm going to flush it out. 1.00

00:19:05.420 And then you try to flush it out and you're like, actually, I'm stupid. 1.00

00:19:07.940 This is a dumb idea. 1.00

00:19:09.080 Yeah, totally. 0.99

00:19:09.760 All right.

00:19:10.200 Next, box tickers.

00:19:12.260 Box tickers are, quote, employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization

00:19:17.320 to be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing.

00:19:22.000 Okay.

00:19:22.400 Sending you a bit. 0.99

00:19:23.500 The following testimony is from a woman hired to coordinate leisure activities in a care home.

00:19:27.860 Most of my job was to interview residents and fill out a recreation form that listed

00:19:31.660 their preferences.

00:19:32.820 That form was then logged on a computer and then promptly forgotten about forever.

00:19:36.860 The paper form was also kept in a binder for some reason.

00:19:39.780 Completion of the forms was by far the most important part of my job in the eyes of my boss,

00:19:43.900 and I would catch hell if I got behind on them.

00:19:46.240 A lot of the time, I would complete a form for a short-term resident,

00:19:48.980 and they would check out the next day I threw away mountains of paper.

00:19:52.400 We found one. That's like a straightforwardly bullshit job. 0.99

00:19:54.860 A friend of mine is applying for citizenship in Germany. 1.00

00:19:58.680 Germany is famously, they still use fax machines for shit in Germany. 0.99

00:20:02.300 it's like super paper and pencil. There's an online form where you fill it out. You go to 0.99

00:20:07.560 the office. A woman at the office then prints it out and types it into the computer for you

00:20:13.060 like while you stand there. Oh my God. He's like standing there watching someone type into a

00:20:18.240 computer, a thing that he already typed into a computer. This is like the fact that you submit

00:20:24.000 a PDF resume and then also have to type it all into a fucking form. Yeah. So here's a little 0.99

00:20:29.580 more about box ticking. And I thought this is interesting. It's less obviously bullshit than

00:20:34.880 the care home example, but I think he's getting at something here. He says, we're all familiar 0.97

00:20:40.520 with box ticking as a form of government. If a government's employees are caught doing something

00:20:44.240 very bad, taking bribes, for instance, or regularly shooting citizens at traffic stops,

00:20:48.800 the first reaction is invariably to create a fact-finding commission to get to the bottom

00:20:52.660 of things. This serves two functions. First of all, it's a way of insisting that, aside from a

00:20:56.840 small group of miscreants, no one had any idea that any of this was happening. This is, of course,

00:21:01.220 rarely true. Second of all, it's a way of implying that once all the facts are in, someone will

00:21:05.380 definitely do something about it. This is usually not true either. A fact-finding commission is a

00:21:09.440 way of telling the public that the government is doing something it is not. But large corporations

00:21:13.140 will behave in exactly the same way if, say, they are revealed to be employing slaves or child

00:21:17.460 laborers in their garment factories or dumping toxic waste. This is, again, really cynical. I

00:21:22.060 think sometimes it is like seattle seattle's in the middle of this fucking cycle where we do like 0.94

00:21:26.400 fact-finding on homelessness yeah and then all of the fact-finding commissions are like we need to 0.72

00:21:30.000 be spending like 10 times more on this and then we just don't do anything because nobody wants to

00:21:33.600 spend any fucking money and then like five years later they're like oh we got to get data oh let's 0.96

00:21:37.380 do a fact-finding commission and the fact-finding commission finds the same fucking thing so like 0.99

00:21:40.700 that partly rings true but there's also fact-finding commissions that are like right and 0.91

00:21:46.620 then you move forward with the policy and you do something about it in my world joe biden put

00:21:50.720 together a commission on supreme court reform oh right and like as soon as they announce the

00:21:56.700 commission you're sort of like all right well yeah yeah yeah so i i don't know there's something

00:22:02.360 here and certainly i believe that there are major corporations where this exists entirely as like

00:22:08.960 a pr exercise that everyone knows is fraudulent top to bottom but also they're pretty good i mean

00:22:13.460 a lot of my work in human rights is about corporate human rights violations and if you look at labor

00:22:17.380 standards in apparel in like you know indonesia and places that had these big scandals at like

00:22:21.680 nike in the early 90s they actually have much better working conditions than they did back then

00:22:25.540 and some of the best working conditions in the developing world are in like

00:22:28.480 brand name factories for like companies you've heard of because they've improved so 0.96

00:22:32.760 sometimes it's bullshit it's very often bullshit but sometimes it's not obviously you're more 0.93

00:22:36.740 pro-corporation than i am and like that's what that's one of the big disagreements we have on 0.99

00:22:40.480 this podcast but no i i tend to agree with you i the human rights space is not my space but like

00:22:45.660 If people ask me from like an employment law perspective, better to work for a big company

00:22:50.840 or a small one, big one almost every time.

00:22:53.860 They're a little more on it.

00:22:54.980 And I do believe that he has like a deep and partially justified, but not entirely skepticism

00:23:01.980 or cynicism about big corporations that he should really direct more generally, right?

00:23:07.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:08.020 Well, he also says this.

00:23:09.020 I want to know what you think about this.

00:23:10.320 Many large corporations maintain their own in-house magazines or even television channels

00:23:15.220 The ostensible purpose of which is to keep employees up to date on interesting news and developments, but which in fact exist for almost no reason other than to allow executives to experience that warm and pleasant feeling that comes when you see a favorable story about you in the media.

00:23:29.720 Well, then it's got value, baby. 0.91

00:23:31.340 Then it's not bullshit. 0.99

00:23:32.340 This is one where like when I was in employment law, you're sort of adjacent to HR and you see a lot of the internal marketing shit. 0.96

00:23:40.700 yeah i do think internal marketing at large corporations it's tough i don't know that this 0.73

00:23:46.480 is valueless it's it's obviously designed for employee morale but you'll literally be watching

00:23:53.880 a video where they they like hired actors to just play happy employees like that's something that 0.81

00:24:02.700 exists yeah like if bullshit jobs exist yeah surely in-house magazines and and and in-house 0.79

00:24:09.500 television channels fall into that category. Wait, do you want to hear my best example of 0.94

00:24:13.180 this, Peter? You know, I just got back from LA and I heard from someone who's like sort of adjacent

00:24:17.840 to Hollywood there that, you know, there's like, for your consideration, it'll be like,

00:24:21.100 Timothee Chalamet in Dune or whatever. Apparently, this is the conspiracy theory for which I have no

00:24:26.040 evidence, but I'd like this story. Apparently, they put those billboards up near the actor's

00:24:31.640 houses so that when like Timothee Chalamet is driving around, he sees the billboard saying

00:24:36.320 like, for your consideration, Timothee Chalamet, so that he thinks like, oh, the studio is really

00:24:40.580 supporting me in this. But it's not actually for the Oscar voters. It's just so that the actors

00:24:44.940 think that the studio is behind them so they can like sign them for another role.

00:24:47.740 Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I believe because it's the kind of thing that I would do.

00:24:52.100 I have what I think is a good example of box ticking. Sometimes if you work at a company,

00:24:58.240 you will need to hire an outside law firm and you will hire a very fancy law firm that costs more.

00:25:05.460 not because they're better, but because if something goes sideways and one of your higher

00:25:10.860 ups comes looking for you, you can say, look, I hired the fancy law firm, right? Now, does that

00:25:17.380 mean that fancy law firms are bullshit jobs? No, not necessarily. But how many people's jobs within 0.98

00:25:23.820 those firms rest on that principle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Finally, the last category of

00:25:29.440 bullshit job taskmasters taskmasters are employees quote whose role consists entirely of assigning 0.98

00:25:37.240 work to others or quote those who make up bullshit for others to do i also think that every bad boss 0.99

00:25:43.800 i've ever had is doing a bullshit job yeah i mean i i think at a glance i was really skeptical of 0.97

00:25:48.280 this one because assigning work is sort of obviously not pointless yeah that's just called 0.97

00:25:53.080 management yeah but when he goes through examples it's obvious he's talking about like middle

00:25:58.420 managers who are supervising people who don't really need supervision oh yeah and i think that

00:26:03.640 guy exists right totally yeah i feel like i have two criticisms of like his whole category idea

00:26:09.580 one is the one we've touched on which is like not a lot of jobs fall into these categories but like

00:26:13.660 a little bit of a lot of jobs is bullshit yeah by these definitions but then also he's thinking

00:26:20.280 in terms of like jobs within organizations but it makes a little more sense to me to think about it

00:26:26.120 in terms of like industries, like does the good or service you provide have any social value,

00:26:31.580 right? Because you could have two guys that have the same job, but toward completely different

00:26:36.580 ends. So like one guy builds apartment buildings and the other builds private prisons, right?

00:26:41.060 Right. But one of them is less socially valuable and perhaps pernicious.

00:26:44.420 Dude, a couple of years ago, I was dating a guy who was an event planner for like,

00:26:50.280 I don't know, Goldman Sachs or one of these like New York financial firms. And he was making like

00:26:54.980 four hundred thousand dollars a year yeah and i also know people who are event planners for

00:26:59.480 ngos who make like 36 000 a year and it's like it's the same job no no it's not ladders no

00:27:07.140 because a uh an event planner an ngo is just uh putting together uh like a holiday party 0.96

00:27:13.380 at goldman sachs they need fucking fireworks they have like back playing or something yeah 0.93

00:27:18.820 no joke though that that goldman sachs i'm not i you're making i understand your point 1.00

00:27:24.860 I'm not trying to argue with it, but no joke, that Goldman Sachs job probably fucking sucks. 0.99

00:27:29.180 Dude, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:27:30.020 The fucking CEO of Goldman Sachs is up your ass because fucking Ty Dolla $ign is 20 minutes late for your corporate gig. 1.00

00:27:41.120 The way that he described it was not – it sounded very similar to the people that I know in NGOs. 1.00

00:27:45.000 Because NGOs also have like large events.

00:27:46.580 You know, they have like these like fundraising dinners and stuff, which are genuinely very difficult to plan.

00:27:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:27:50.420 Basically a bunch of rich people get together in a room and like you serve them dinner.

00:27:52.840 that's like essentially what he was doing for like whatever city bank or whatever the fuck it was

00:27:57.000 and it's like it was remarkably similar i do think that like graber is not trying to talk about like 0.77

00:28:03.780 who bill like who's doing good for society with with their career and shit like that

00:28:08.740 he's really making this narrower point about how big corporations have become these like 0.84

00:28:14.140 sprawling monstrosities that are no longer geared toward efficiency but have developed these like

00:28:19.220 self-contained patronage operations i guess again it's like you need data on that it's

00:28:25.160 gonna be so different industry to industry ngos are not like that at all all right let's let's

00:28:28.820 talk data this has all been very subjective so far which is why neither of us have any idea what

00:28:33.240 the fuck is going on yeah when graber wrote the original essay he did not put data in it really 0.70

00:28:37.840 and that wasn't really the purpose of it i guess yeah the subtitle of it was a work rant right so 0.98

00:28:42.600 he's not trying to like put a coherent thesis this is the kind of thing your friend would tell

00:28:47.360 you at a bar and you're like fire yeah absolutely yeah you're like right dude yeah you're so right

00:28:52.540 yeah you should write about that and if you're on the left your friend does have a magazine that no

00:28:58.180 one reads yeah exactly he's like you should write for my magazine when the essay gains traction

00:29:03.300 you gov runs a poll in the uk and graber puts the results in his book as sort of like a proof

00:29:10.320 of concept the you gov headline reads 37 of british workers think their jobs are meaningless

00:29:16.060 which is pretty dramatic yeah that's really high actually graver cites the poll in his opening

00:29:20.900 chapter basically being like look i was right but it's also totally subjective yeah but here's but

00:29:27.060 here's what the poll asks okay the poll asks is your job making a meaningful contribution to the

00:29:33.260 world oh well that's like completely different yeah it really it really is right so 50 said yes

00:29:41.340 37% said no, and 13% said they didn't know. 0.98

00:29:45.140 If you look back to his definition of a bullshit job, it's like a job that is entirely pointless. 0.99

00:29:50.360 Right. 0.99

00:29:50.480 If someone says, are you making a meaningful contribution to the world?

00:29:54.020 That reads to me like a significant contribution to the world.

00:29:57.400 Yeah.

00:29:57.420 Like morally valenced in some way.

00:29:59.860 Yeah.

00:30:00.060 Right.

00:30:00.420 Like either it's a large contribution or it has a sort of moral quality to it.

00:30:06.320 Yeah.

00:30:06.660 And so, yeah, I think a lot of people are just sort of like, oh, I don't know.

00:30:09.980 Yeah.

00:30:10.240 No.

00:30:10.440 Because like as a teenager, I worked for years in video stores and like that was not a bullshit job, but that was not meaningfully contributing to the world either.

00:30:18.120 It wasn't like a charity or something.

00:30:19.700 It's like I sat at the counter and people rented videos, whatever. 0.97

00:30:22.200 But yeah, I would have answered no to that question, but I don't think that was a bullshit job.

00:30:25.060 He also cites a poll of Dutch workers from 2016 where according to him, 40% of respondents said that their jobs had no reason to exist.

00:30:33.460 But very similarly, if you look at the poll, the actual question was about like whether they experienced their job as meaningful.

00:30:38.780 So like it's very similar, right?

00:30:39.880 He does make a big case for self-reporting about this. 0.98

00:30:44.160 He basically says, like, look, there's no way to, like, come up with an objective metric for what a bullshit job is. 0.88

00:30:50.220 And, like, the best we have is self-reporting because people have a decent sense of this stuff. 0.81

00:30:55.240 And, like, they might not always be correct in our opinion, but basically this is the best way to go. 0.95

00:31:00.860 And I kind of – I agree there is no way to do an objective determination of whether a job is bullshit. 0.98

00:31:07.280 bullshit and maybe self-reporting is best. But the other side of that is self-reporting is still 0.97

00:31:12.460 very bad. Yeah, exactly. And also it's like the reason why the only thing that works is self-reporting

00:31:17.860 is partly because of the muddiness of the concept. Yeah. Because you're asking like,

00:31:21.260 is your job bullshit? But like the term job kind of implies something you don't want to be doing. 0.99

00:31:25.820 You're doing it because you get paid. So most people are going to say like, yeah, my job's

00:31:28.560 bullshit. There were a couple of years ago, some researchers at Cambridge wanted to see whether 0.98

00:31:32.300 there was empirical support for this. And they pulled together a bunch of data and they tried

00:31:36.720 to compare it to his affirmative hypotheses throughout the book. How many people are gooning?

00:31:41.560 How many people are duct taping? Yes. They looked at the European Working Conditions Survey that 0.59

00:31:47.320 filed data from 2005 to 2015. So the survey asks workers to rank whether they, quote,

00:31:55.000 have the feeling of doing useful work on a five point scale. I think that that much more closely

00:32:01.400 tracks the bullshit jobs definition. Right. And when you phrase it that way, only 4.8% of 0.99

00:32:07.880 respondents said that they did not feel like they were doing useful work at all. That's actually

00:32:11.760 lower than I thought it would be. That climbs to 5.6 in the UK, but like nowhere near. Oh,

00:32:17.260 I know, Peter, you look at the UK, not a lot of people are doing useful work here. 0.73

00:32:20.860 Just professional transphobes. So if you say, do you think that your job makes a meaningful 0.99

00:32:26.660 contribution to the world? 40% of people say no. But if you're just like, well, is it useful

00:32:30.860 at all than only 5%.

00:32:33.040 I will note there is some

00:32:34.940 data that shows

00:32:36.940 that in the United States, this number goes

00:32:38.880 up pretty dramatically. One piece of

00:32:40.820 research said it's at 19% in

00:32:42.860 the United States. Whoa, okay.

00:32:44.640 There's another part of Graeber's thesis that he

00:32:46.840 lays out in the book that is a

00:32:48.860 little bit testable, which is that

00:32:50.640 this problem is worsening. There is every reason

00:32:52.800 to believe that the overall number of bullshit 0.98

00:32:54.680 jobs and even more the overall percentage 0.99

00:32:56.700 of jobs considered bullshit by those who hold

00:32:58.840 them have been increasing rapidly

00:33:00.820 in recent years alongside the ever-increasing bullshitization of useful forms of employment. 0.90

00:33:06.740 So he says like there's every reason to believe that the number of bullshit jobs is going 0.54

00:33:10.180 up, but then the only actual evidence he provides is that the service sector is replacing agriculture 0.93

00:33:16.020 and industry as like a percentage of the economy.

00:33:18.620 That's just like a completely different thing.

00:33:20.080 That's the thing is like if the claim of the book is like the service sector is a larger

00:33:23.520 part of the economy than it used to be, then like you wouldn't have a book, right?

00:33:26.780 Like that's not interesting.

00:33:28.160 It's not really debatable.

00:33:29.040 He's doing the thing that you find a lot in the ultra processed foods discourse where when people describe it in the abstract, they'll say like, oh, they're addictive food like substances like the super artificial junk.

00:33:38.920 Right. And then you get into the actual categories and it's like all tortillas and like all bread because he's basically saying he's he's he's identified this thing of like everyone's doing bullshit jobs. 0.97

00:33:50.260 Then he just says like the service sector is increasing, like knowledge jobs are increasing, which is a yeah. 0.53

00:33:53.900 Right. But that's not the same thing.

00:33:55.180 So he's basically arguing that service jobs are frequently bullshit, whereas, like, agriculture and industry are generally not. 0.98

00:34:01.260 And so the rise of the service sector indicates a rise in bullshit jobs. 0.99

00:34:04.940 A lot of these kinds of manufacturing jobs are also bullshit, too. 0.99

00:34:07.840 You're doing something super redundant. 0.97

00:34:09.500 That's the thing is there's tons of redundancy in, like, manufacturing.

00:34:13.440 Yeah. 0.95

00:34:13.720 But his point broadly is that like technology and automation has taken all of these jobs and that it's sort of like left a void that we filled with this bullshit, right? 0.97

00:34:25.840 That like because we all feel the need to work and corporations want people employed because they're like little feudal societies in his mind, that we sort of filled the void created by technology with bullshit jobs. 0.80

00:34:40.780 I don't know that I agree with this because, again, companies wouldn't be spending money on work just for, like, ideological reasons. 0.99

00:34:47.360 He thinks that you're a capitalist sucker, that that argument is sort of like, oh, you think markets are efficient, dipshit. 0.77

00:34:54.280 Well, I don't think markets are efficient, but I also think these are, like, profit-oriented industries. 0.99

00:34:57.880 The whole problem with the way that we've structured capitalism is that they put profit above everything else.

00:35:02.840 Right.

00:35:03.060 I don't think companies are like, ha, ha, ha, we must keep employing people to do nothing.

00:35:06.500 But yeah, like, why do in-house television channels exist at corporations? 0.99

00:35:11.780 Because someone's stupid, right? 0.99

00:35:13.620 Yeah, exactly, completely, yes. 1.00

00:35:14.180 Because, like, a bunch of dumb people thought it was a good idea. 0.84

00:35:16.980 Or there may actually be, again, you need to look at the data, there may be indicators 0.94

00:35:21.820 that this does affect retention. 0.83

00:35:23.340 We probably are being unfair to in-house television channels or whatever the fuck, because if 0.97

00:35:30.260 that shit's working to boost morale for, like, 15% of people, it's probably worth the investment. 0.98

00:35:35.800 The fact that it makes us want to kill ourselves, it might be irrelevant here, right? 0.99

00:35:40.380 Let's dig into this a bit because I think there is this question of like, 0.98

00:35:43.400 what industries house the bullshit jobs that Graeber is constantly sort of touching on? 0.88

00:35:49.540 I'll send you this. 0.99

00:35:50.360 He says, 0.99

00:35:50.960 Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics.

00:35:53.820 It's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. 0.94

00:35:58.800 A world without teachers or dock workers would soon be in trouble. 1.00

00:36:01.560 and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place.

00:36:06.560 It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer if all private equity CEOs,

00:36:10.500 lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal consultants

00:36:15.000 were to similarly vanish. I mean, there's lobbyists for like animal rights and stuff.

00:36:21.120 Right, right, right. The entire category of lobbyists is just weird to do this.

00:36:25.600 Private equity CEOs, he's fucking correct about. But that's also, that's not because the job is

00:36:28.780 bullshit it's because the sector is harmful that's just like a different concept i and that's what i 0.87

00:36:33.400 think he misses with like where he has this like perspective on certain industries right and he's 1.00

00:36:40.020 constantly bouncing back and forth between like between being like this role is bullshit which 0.99

00:36:46.340 can be defensible in certain respects the the lady with the fake paperwork bullshit job yeah and then 0.99

00:36:51.640 being like yeah and like lobbying is also bullshit and it's sort of like yeah no like i have a ton of 0.96

00:36:56.920 objections with how this industry operates but it doesn't feel like it's the same thing where it's 0.68

00:37:01.840 just completely pointless yeah the fact that he says private equity ceo is really weird right 0.97

00:37:06.820 because in most of his categories what makes a bullshit job a bullshit job is like you're doing 0.97

00:37:11.120 stuff your boss wants you to do that makes no sense but if you're the ceo of a company you're 0.97

00:37:16.720 the one making people do stuff it's also hilarious to include ska musicians in this this is such a

00:37:21.320 fucking leftist academic thing to do this is he's writing this in 2018 and like yeah he's like 0.84

00:37:26.360 squirrel nut zippers are the real essential workers. Let's talk about the people that we 0.98

00:37:30.500 all know are essential, less than Jake. But I think he's getting at something here. If you

00:37:35.460 just try to imagine a good faith version of this, there are some jobs where the utility of that job

00:37:41.300 is just readily apparent. If you are sweeping the floor, the benefit that you provide is a lot more

00:37:46.820 immediate and clear than someone who is putting together decks on a marketing team somewhere.

00:37:52.000 right totally yeah i was a teenager like i said i swept floors and if i slacked off for a day

00:37:56.420 someone would notice yeah you had this very clear and discreet objective right this would never

00:38:01.000 happen but if we were to not release an episode every single week nothing would happen the fans

00:38:05.920 would get angrier you have you started getting i'm starting to get the mentions when i tweet

00:38:10.280 something like oh so you have time to post but you don't have time to make an episode well when

00:38:13.300 it comes to the amount that you post they have a point they have a point michael um he says one

00:38:18.820 One must assume that the percentage of nurses, bus drivers, dentists, street cleaners, farmers, music teachers, repairmen, gardeners, firefighters, set designers, plumbers, journalists, safety inspectors, musicians, tailors, and school crossing guards who checked no to the question, does your job make any meaningful difference in the world, was approximately zero. 0.97

00:38:40.080 But also, dude, don't get me started on a fucking school crossing guard. 0.99

00:38:43.100 That's totally a bullshit job. 1.00

00:38:44.160 The only reason they exist is because the streets in America are so unsafe. 1.00

00:38:46.600 life that's like one of those kludge jobs that he was talking about like a duct tape job i thought 0.97

00:38:51.020 you were going to be like survival of the fittest kids who gives a shit so there's also data in 0.91

00:38:55.580 those european worker surveys on how people in those different industries view the usefulness 0.97

00:39:01.960 of their jobs some of it aligns with what he's saying here like the percentage of teachers and

00:39:06.240 nurses who think their jobs are useless is very low in these surveys below two percent but some

00:39:12.180 of the jobs that graber categorizes as clearly useful have higher rates of workers who say it's

00:39:19.820 useless 9.7 of garbage collectors said they don't feel the job is useful really okay on the other

00:39:26.040 hand the percentage of people in like financial services who said their job is useless is about

00:39:30.100 average it's not below average like you think he'd predict okay it does feel like maybe he's wish

00:39:34.980 casting a little bit here like yeah he thinks that certain jobs are lecherous and useless and

00:39:39.840 don't add value right so he thinks oh people will agree with me yeah i think that you probably have

00:39:46.080 a lot of people who have tedious jobs if you're a garbage collector and you go from house to house

00:39:51.660 grabbing trash and then dumping it into the truck and then a couple days later you come back and

00:39:57.320 there's more trash yeah i can see some part of your brain even if it's irrational yeah yeah like 0.99

00:40:02.860 what the fuck is this and i you know i swept floors and there is like there is a part of your 1.00

00:40:07.720 brain that loses it a little bit right where you're just like yeah yeah it's dirty again but 0.99

00:40:11.960 it's also funny because he's kind of locked himself into this self-report thing because a 0.98

00:40:16.220 lot of people in the financial sector think that they're doing useful stuff and they fucking aren't

00:40:19.600 right if you're like chopping up mortgages and reselling them back to people you might think 0.94

00:40:23.140 that's useful but it's fucking not i think you're right this the self-reporting here the self-reporting 0.96

00:40:28.060 thing has blind spots because yeah garbage men are obviously doing useful work those things do not 0.95

00:40:33.020 make people feel useful right right and then yeah there are people who are like just rent seeking

00:40:38.200 who contribute nothing but make a fortune and like couldn't possibly be convinced that their

00:40:43.580 jobs are useless because their entire sense of themselves relies on the belief that they are

00:40:47.040 valuable yeah i'm drop shipping vitamin supplements but i have to believe it's essential because i

00:40:51.200 paid 300 bucks for the seminar there is research showing that like the more attenuated the impact

00:40:56.620 of your job is the lower your job satisfaction is likely to be so like if you're not seeing

00:41:01.980 the positive impact that you cause, even if you cause it, that might make you think that

00:41:07.360 your job is useless, right?

00:41:08.460 Which sort of makes sense. 1.00

00:41:09.200 It might make you think that your job sucks. 1.00

00:41:11.500 Yeah. 0.98

00:41:11.640 This was my human rights career in a nutshell. 0.97

00:41:13.400 We're like going to fucking UN conferences and giving speeches and stuff and like no 0.98

00:41:16.440 tangible impact. 0.98

00:41:17.440 And like everybody would sit around at night just being like, what are we doing here?

00:41:20.940 It's cool that you were like, this is useless work.

00:41:23.560 I'm going to go become a good podcaster.

00:41:25.340 It's time to really reach people. 0.80

00:41:26.960 Every extra hour of the Olivia Nuzzi episode makes the world such a better place.

00:41:31.060 I want to draw a distinction because this came into my head a couple of times when he was talking about, like, the internal marketing stuff, like, you know, the fucking in-house television channels and all that.

00:41:42.040 That grinds at you when you – if you're, I think, like us, right? 0.98

00:41:45.960 Like, when I worked at a large corporation or two and I saw shit like that, I'd be like, ugh. 0.97

00:41:50.860 But the other end of that is the way that Elon Musk runs companies. 0.99

00:41:55.500 Exactly, yeah.

00:41:56.240 Where everything is stripped down to the bone and there's none of that.

00:41:59.220 Yeah.

00:41:59.400 And that does, I have to say, feel worse.

00:42:02.380 So much worse.

00:42:03.100 It feels like it's got to be worse, right?

00:42:04.800 It's like the old saying is that half of all advertising spending is wasted.

00:42:09.560 It's just hard to identify which half. 0.98

00:42:11.540 I feel like a lot of this cultural stuff within corporations, a lot of it is bullshit, but 0.99

00:42:16.880 it's difficult to find exactly where the bullshit is and where the non-bullshit is. 0.99

00:42:21.620 Yeah, it's a balancing act and on either side is an abyss. 0.99

00:42:24.580 Yeah, I feel like both of us are just not joiners in that way.

00:42:27.120 Like, I've never gotten invested in, like, the corporation I work for or the school I go to.

00:42:32.220 I mean, I do participate in sports fandom, so I do understand this.

00:42:35.540 Would you have an emotional response if Kansas City won the Super Bowl?

00:42:38.700 Because I had no response whatsoever to Seattle winning. 0.96

00:42:40.800 Not only that, when I watch a team I like in a high-stakes game in, like, the playoffs or whatever, my anxiety levels are through the fucking roof. 0.98

00:42:49.660 Oh, you're, like, clenched?

00:42:50.180 yeah like real physical anxiety that would be almost impossible for me to replicate outside

00:42:57.340 of like super high stakes work situations and stuff this does make no sense to me but also i

00:43:01.500 watch elden ring no hit randomizer runs and i'm like clenched the entire time so like i do get

00:43:06.180 it on some level yeah i mean that's so much worse uh no it's all fake no i love it when sports 0.93

00:43:12.880 people are like oh this is fake like oh yeah like putting a ball in the hoop isn't fucking fake i

00:43:16.960 know i know that you think that it's all fake but i do feel like there's a spectrum where like uh no 0.99

00:43:22.440 yeah yeah yeah yeah sports is dumb makeup tutorials are dumb twitch streamers are dumb 1.00

00:43:28.240 it's all dumb it's all bullshit jobs no it's a spectrum it's a spectrum and sports are just a 1.00

00:43:33.480 little bit farther along than no hit elden ring speed runs yeah false you're watching you're 1.00

00:43:38.780 watching a 13 year old like it's like sitting on a a gamer chair slash toilet play and you're like

00:43:45.440 this is like sports whatever both of us are watching someone else do something that we are

00:43:49.880 incapable of doing and getting invested in it it's precisely the same that's not the definition of 0.99

00:43:54.700 sports the quarterback fucking like dan marino or whatever is the same level of bullshit as like 0.99

00:44:00.120 the 19 year old twitch stream that i'm watching brett farve who's a fucking who's a who's a 0.99

00:44:04.760 quarterback dude these these are who's a quarterback these are all athletes from the 80s and 90s at 0.92

00:44:09.640 least they're football though i know some football people they are quarterbacks you're right you know

00:44:13.920 credit where it's due thank you now what's the name of a no hit eldon run i'm not gonna say

00:44:18.720 because that it's too embarrassing yeah exactly there's a kernel of truth there there's a kernel

00:44:28.640 of truth i'm not giving it to you what makes sports a little more real is that i am engaged 0.87

00:44:33.940 because it is popular whatever then what's the fucking difference then it's just like a question 0.82

00:44:37.600 of scale well i do think there's a slight difference in that i feel like any 13 year 0.78

00:44:41.880 old who tried really hard could do what the Elden Ring streamers are doing.

00:44:45.880 That's not true because they can't do it.

00:44:47.560 There's only like only a few people have done it.

00:44:49.620 I'm not going to name names, but I know the names.

00:44:51.420 There's only a few people who have tried, Michael, because other people, other people 0.99

00:44:55.400 are out there getting their dicks sucked. 0.99

00:45:00.320 It's crazy how far off topic we are right now. 1.00

00:45:02.500 We're like, you're just trying to say the word bullshit sometimes so we can tie this 0.97

00:45:06.740 back in. 0.98

00:45:07.100 Exactly.

00:45:07.600 That's exactly what I'm doing.

00:45:08.620 All right. There is another, if you sort of take a step back and look at his big picture thesis, there's a testable claim that he makes, which is that technology has resulted in us working more, not less. Right. Remember he said that Keynes predicted that technology would lead us to, wait, Keynes? Fuck. What is it?

00:45:25.600 Yeah, whatever.

00:45:26.080 Okay. Well, don't say whatever because I'm going to get strung up for this.

00:45:30.180 I'm going to keep the one where you're wrong. I'm going to look it up and then keep the take where you're incorrect. So don't worry about it. That's why I'm saying this.

00:45:35.780 But he basically, you know, he basically says, look, technology has gotten to a point where

00:45:40.440 it could lead us to lives of leisure, but instead, quote, it has been marshaled, if

00:45:44.960 anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more.

00:45:48.700 This gets at something that feels instinctively kind of true, which is that technological

00:45:53.580 advances result in more productivity, but not a lighter workload, right? 0.75

00:45:58.580 Although it does seem like bullshit jobs is the wrong way to look at that.

00:46:02.000 There's like sort of specific political science reasons for that.

00:46:04.700 This is the heart of the episode because we've been going back and forth with like, well, he's kind of on to something, but not really.

00:46:10.740 But there are actually coherent theories of this.

00:46:13.820 It's tough to measure this in a big picture way, but you can just look at average work hours over time.

00:46:20.880 Over a long enough time frame, you do see that.

00:46:23.540 In 1870, the average American worker worked over 3,000 hours a year.

00:46:29.220 Now that's down to about 1,800.

00:46:31.120 And obviously, that's not just the result of technological advances. There are a ton of

00:46:35.440 variables. You have workers' rights movements, legislation, cultural changes. But you see very,

00:46:40.760 very similar trends across the Western world. So I think this is the best argument that generally

00:46:45.380 speaking, better technology has in fact reduced overall working hours. So you might look at that

00:46:52.160 at a glance and just think, well, Graeber is wrong, right? He's a communist dumbass and he 1.00

00:46:56.740 does not understand the glory of capitalism. That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm sitting 1.00

00:46:59.980 you're thinking. But if you zoom in, the story does get a little bit more complicated. I'm gonna

00:47:04.940 share a chart with you. This chart is annual working hours per worker across various countries.

00:47:12.460 Yeah, yeah. So basically, since what is it, roughly 1980, almost every other country has

00:47:18.480 seen reductions in working hours, especially in Western Europe, and we've stagnated. So we're

00:47:22.680 basically working the same number of hours that we were in 1980. That's right. So there are massive

00:47:27.120 decreases in working hours from 1870 to about 1970. After that, it's been largely flat. Slight

00:47:33.740 declines, but really hovering at about 1,800 hours worked per year in the United States.

00:47:38.860 Whereas Germany is below 1,500.

00:47:40.860 So now it seems like maybe Graeber is getting at something, right? There have been a ton of

00:47:44.980 technological advances since the 70s, but this has not reduced American working hours. So he may be

00:47:50.420 wrong that bullshit jobs are proliferating, but he's right that better technology and more 0.93

00:47:55.520 productivity has not led to more leisure time for Americans, at least in the last several 0.96

00:48:00.280 decades.

00:48:01.000 Which is a big deal.

00:48:01.660 Fraber has a ton of frankly rambling explanations of why it occurs at like the micro level within

00:48:07.960 organizations.

00:48:08.720 A lot of it revolves around his idea of managerial feudalism, you know, where he argues that

00:48:13.840 corporations have grown to resemble feudal relationships where wealth and power is distributed

00:48:18.280 for political reasons rather than economic reasons.

00:48:21.400 We've sort of talked about how this doesn't quite click.

00:48:24.060 Yeah.

00:48:24.180 It's an interesting angle, but I do not believe that corporations have just created 20 to 30%

00:48:29.780 fake jobs out of like a feudal spirit.

00:48:32.860 It feels more like they've just lobbied against things like more vacation time,

00:48:37.420 you know, maternity leave.

00:48:38.360 Like this is why hours are so much reduced in Western Europe. 0.99

00:48:41.220 Let's not get ahead of ourselves and start talking about Western Europe, all right?

00:48:44.500 So his macro explanation is a little more coherent and it's cultural.

00:48:49.280 It's basically like Protestant work ethic stuff.

00:48:51.720 So I'll send that.

00:48:52.560 The captains of industry, first in America, then increasingly everywhere, have been able

00:48:57.080 to convince the public that they, and not those they employ, are the real creators of

00:49:01.300 prosperity.

00:49:02.200 One could call it a revival of Puritanism.

00:49:04.580 But as we've seen, this idea goes much further back, to a fusion of the Christian doctrine

00:49:09.020 of the curse of Adam, with the Northern European notion that paid labor under master's discipline

00:49:13.580 is the only way to become a genuine adult.

00:49:16.060 This history made it very easy to encourage workers to see their work not so much as wealth

00:49:20.000 creation or helping others, or at least not primarily so, but as self-abnegation, a kind

00:49:24.860 of secular hair shirt, a sacrifice of joy and pleasure that allows us to become an adult worthy

00:49:29.640 of our consumer toys. This argument is basically that we're a society where people get their

00:49:33.420 dignity from work and that has created incentives to pursue work even if it is pointless. I don't

00:49:39.040 actually, after living in Western Europe for 12 years, I don't actually think that's the case.

00:49:42.220 They have the same thing there, but they have fewer working hours than we do and they have

00:49:44.780 like paid vacation like i just don't think this works for like we work 15 more hours than other 0.91

00:49:50.880 capitalist countries like they also get a sense of self-worth in fucking denmark but they just 0.97

00:49:55.680 work less than we do so here is my attempt to synthesize bullshit jobs with the best research 0.99

00:50:02.600 i could find okay there's this economist juliette shore who studies this and wrote a very influential 0.65

00:50:08.640 book in 1992 called The Overworked American. And she was also trying to understand this very basic

00:50:15.620 phenomenon. Why did productivity stop reducing hours in the 1970s or so? And where did that

00:50:22.400 extra productivity go? Her main explanation is that in the United States around this time,

00:50:27.420 the extra productivity stopped turning into more leisure time and started turning into consumption.

00:50:32.100 In 1970, household consumption was under 60% of GDP. By 1990, it's in the mid-60s. And for the

00:50:41.020 last couple of decades after the publication of her book, it's been about 70%, just south of 70%.

00:50:45.280 She points out that if you survey people, they are not materialist. They actually value free

00:50:50.880 time. She conducted a survey of people making around $30,000 a year, which is about $70,000

00:50:57.680 in today's money and asked if they would trade a day of work each week for an equivalent reduction

00:51:04.040 in pay, 70% said yes. She also points out that polls asking people to rank their priorities

00:51:10.380 between things like health, family life, etc. always result in material things ranking very

00:51:15.800 low. One obvious explanation for this is that people are lying, either to themselves or to

00:51:20.080 the pollsters. They think they want more leisure time, but when presented with a choice, they'll

00:51:24.360 choose more money. But Shore's broad argument is that these choices are shaped by institutions and

00:51:30.060 norms. So not only are there social and cultural pressures to work, but even if you wanted to

00:51:35.900 reduce your working hours, it's not always easy, right? Most people cannot trade their job for a

00:51:40.940 part-time version of their job, right? There's also a finite amount of well-paying part-time

00:51:46.000 work in general. The job market is built around full-time work, right? I do this for everything,

00:51:51.480 But I also think the decline of unions, people don't want to get fired in America.

00:51:55.280 So you do what your boss tells you.

00:51:56.680 I mean, this this kind of feels obvious.

00:51:58.640 And like this is like it's where it's sort of obviously going.

00:52:01.280 Right.

00:52:01.580 But like in Germany, they're now under 1400 hours per year on average.

00:52:06.100 Right.

00:52:06.500 France hovers around 1500.

00:52:08.480 And you look at like, well, what would account for this gap?

00:52:11.180 And she says stronger unions, labor law protections, mandatory vacation.

00:52:15.700 Right.

00:52:15.880 Why are they working less?

00:52:16.700 Well, they all take like a month or two off every single year.

00:52:20.780 I will say, like, culturally, when I worked in Denmark, I was part of a unionized NGO.

00:52:26.100 We would have meetings where my boss would be like, oh, I need you to get me that by Monday.

00:52:29.560 And people would just be like, oh, no.

00:52:32.740 People come into, like, my boss's office and be like, oh, it's sunny out.

00:52:36.400 I'm going to leave at, like, 3.30 today.

00:52:37.980 That rocks.

00:52:38.420 People are not afraid of getting fired.

00:52:40.100 People are so afraid of getting fired in America to use health care.

00:52:43.280 Oftentimes, you're not, like, you can get evicted much more easily.

00:52:45.680 Like, losing your job is just objectively much more devastating here.

00:52:48.720 And so you have to do whatever you can to keep your job.

00:52:50.960 And like you just don't have that in Western Europe in the same way.

00:52:54.660 And a lot of that is unions.

00:52:55.700 I mean, you know, it's also like labor protections.

00:52:57.340 It's other things too.

00:52:58.620 I mean, they go hand in hand.

00:52:59.720 Yeah.

00:53:00.020 So I think she's making an argument that like half supports Graeber and half doesn't, right?

00:53:06.020 He's basically saying our capitalist overlords want us to work for this like sort of like abstract reason, right?

00:53:14.300 where they maintain this like feudal control over people and it benefits them she's basically saying 0.97

00:53:21.200 no what's happened is the money goes to consumption so it's not that bullshit jobs 0.84

00:53:27.280 are being sort of like created out of the ether by corporations to keep us working or something

00:53:33.680 along those lines it's that we now consume more which creates demand right so like we got richer

00:53:40.460 But instead of saying, oh, hey, I'll trade that for free time, we trade it for consumer goods, which creates demand, which creates more jobs, right? 0.95

00:53:49.160 So you could sort of view those as the bullshit jobs, right? 0.88

00:53:52.180 The excess consumption that goes beyond what we actually need. 0.96

00:53:56.720 And that's sort of vague in and of itself.

00:53:59.220 The repairman on the Libubu vending machine.

00:54:01.920 Right.

00:54:02.600 Yes.

00:54:02.940 The Libubu is perhaps a great example, right?

00:54:05.060 Like demand has been created out of thin air for a thing that literally no one needs, right?

00:54:10.460 Right. I think that is sort of a category of bullshit. It's just like needless consumption. 0.99

00:54:16.420 Watches, for example, people are buying watches.

00:54:18.600 That we do not need. That we do not need. I was just watching a TikTok by like a watch

00:54:26.000 TikToker. 0.98

00:54:27.000 Dude, I think we've reached the ultimate bullshit job, a watch TikToker. I can't think of anything 0.99

00:54:32.560 more bullshit than that. 1.00

00:54:33.760 How else would I learn about watches? 0.99

00:54:35.020 the funniest type of guy is the guy who's like i like a rolex because that will get you into the

00:54:42.760 room where you can do more business oh it's like an investment in like my it's like a linkedin

00:54:47.160 post yeah i'm spending 12 grand on a wash because it opens doors for me and god knows how much 0.98

00:54:54.340 that's worth and it's just like i can't imagine how much of a fucking pervert someone would have 0.94

00:54:58.420 to be to be like yo that guy's got a rolex yeah i'm definitely going to that guy's seminar now 0.96

00:55:02.860 So there is one sort of final thought section he has.

00:55:06.420 Okay.

00:55:06.800 The final chapter sort of touches on policy.

00:55:10.020 He says, I don't usually like putting public policy recommendations in my book.

00:55:14.000 One reason for this is that it has been my experience that if an author is critical of

00:55:17.400 existing social arrangements, reviewers will often respond by effectively asking,

00:55:21.200 so what are you proposing to do about it then?

00:55:22.940 Search the text until they find something that looks like a policy suggestion and then

00:55:26.120 act as if that is what the book is basically about.

00:55:28.460 So if I were to suggest that a mass reduction of working hours or a policy of universal

00:55:31.960 basic income might go far in solving the problems described here, the likely response will be to see

00:55:36.680 this as a book about reducing working hours or about universal basic income, and to treat it as

00:55:40.940 if it stands and falls on the workability of that policy, or even the ease by which it could be

00:55:45.200 implemented. I mean, that's fair, although that's what we're about to do. Yeah, it's sort of like,

00:55:48.600 what am I, the fucking smartest guy on earth? I don't know. I'm just pointing out a problem, 0.98

00:55:52.860 right? I do respect somebody that has a book that's just like, hey, this sucks. Yeah, like, 0.97

00:55:56.380 you're all a bunch of flunkies and goons, and I don't know how to fix it, but I'll see you guys 0.60

00:55:59.540 later i complain about like uh hollywood making like sequels and remakes all the time i don't 0.99

00:56:03.220 have like a public policy solution to that it just sucks why don't you make a movie 0.98

00:56:06.880 why don't you make a gay little indie film why would it be a gay little indie film peter i love 0.99

00:56:13.460 a gay little indie film i'm uh i'm on your side michael and i will i will fund you so don't get 0.82

00:56:18.180 too angry but so does he just end by saying i don't have any public policy recommendations and

00:56:21.640 here's my reason you know the final chapter has a bunch about like the sort of impact that he

00:56:25.680 believes that this has on society, that it creates these, like, resentments up and down

00:56:29.600 the ladder and that, you know, I think this is sort of like a very basic lefty idea that

00:56:33.940 elites take advantage of resentments between non-elites.

00:56:37.820 Right.

00:56:38.000 So, yeah, I think he sort of has this belief that these jobs drag on society.

00:56:43.720 I don't think he has identified like a discrete and identifiable thing.

00:56:47.660 Right.

00:56:47.840 I do think it feels hard to argue with the idea that the reason productivity started

00:56:54.300 going to consumption rather than leisure in the United States is that we lack what they have in

00:57:01.100 Europe, right? We don't have the unions, the labor law protections. That is the big difference here.

00:57:07.100 And I think in my mind that that's sort of like obvious leftist shit 101. But that's kind of what 0.90

00:57:13.240 I like about it, right? I kind of feel like Graber did this whole thought experiment that ended up

00:57:18.940 just landing me at like, yeah, we need labor laws. This is why I'm on the left and not on the right.

00:57:24.300 is because like these obvious things. Also, doesn't his thesis depend on Western Europe

00:57:28.500 having fewer bullshit jobs than we do? Yeah. Brother. Which he doesn't explore. 0.99

00:57:34.140 Brother. As someone who lived there, they do not have fewer bullshit jobs than we do, man. 1.00

00:57:39.640 Have you met a French person? Have you asked them what they do? 0.99

00:57:42.500 He sort of navigated his way towards some truths here, right? In different parts of the book. I do

00:57:48.200 think that there are elements of our jobs that are bullshit. It seems to be objectively true 0.98

00:57:54.000 that we are not pursuing leisure as a society in America, right? That we have not converted

00:58:00.580 our productivity into leisure. These are like real things. And I think like in, you know,

00:58:04.880 in the micro, he'll say these little things where you're like, that's true. Is the sort of

00:58:08.300 the broad macro phenomenon of the bullshit job as he describes it real? I don't really think so. 0.97

00:58:13.900 I will say I'm much more negative on this book than it seems like you are. You said this is

00:58:17.660 like an okay book. This, this thing's bad to me. I will, I will say that the experience of reading

00:58:23.220 it is probably a lot better than the experience of hearing about it every few pages.

00:58:27.860 You're like, that's an interesting way to frame that, even if it's not quite right.

00:58:31.060 Like, I do think it's like managerial, futile idea of corporations, even though it's not

00:58:36.540 an accurate way to explain what's happening with bullshit jobs, is an interesting way 0.81

00:58:41.080 to explain certain corporate dynamics. 0.95

00:58:43.180 Maybe it's the opposite of Robert Kiyosaki, where like he was just an execrable person

00:58:46.860 to spend time with.

00:58:47.880 And David Graeber seems like an OK guy to spend time with.

00:58:49.860 Yeah.

00:58:49.980 You're like, I don't really agree with that. 0.98

00:58:51.580 There's also another – a lot of the book is anecdotes that people send in about their bullshit jobs. 0.99

00:58:56.180 And it's extremely boring to read because every single one you're like, yeah, that does sound like bullshit. 0.98

00:59:00.640 For the podcast, it wouldn't be good to be like – and here's another person who said that they did useless paperwork. 0.89

00:59:05.340 But that's a large chunk of the book.

00:59:06.940 And I will say it's kind of fun to read.

00:59:09.860 There's something about it that's a little bit entertaining.

00:59:11.740 It's like cathartic, yeah.

00:59:12.620 Yeah. 0.99

00:59:12.980 There's something like – there's some like shared human experience in like this fucking shit we have to do sometimes because our boss thinks it's important. 0.99

00:59:20.540 And it's obviously not. 0.98

00:59:21.840 And that's also so relatable to the idea that some part of your job, I think this is like 0.99

00:59:25.760 universal, some part of your job is complete bullshit. 0.99

00:59:28.760 Right, right. 0.99

00:59:29.720 I was able and I still am sort of on this train to convince myself that he sort of pointed

00:59:34.140 out this social phenomenon and he's inaccurately diagnosing it.

00:59:38.760 But it's a really interesting phenomenon.

00:59:40.360 The idea that we as a society have had the option to turn our increased productivity

00:59:46.000 into leisure and haven't done it.

00:59:48.680 Yeah, I think that's true. 1.00

00:59:49.500 I think it's true that we shouldn't get rid of the ska musicians and it's especially true that 0.91

00:59:53.960 we shouldn't get rid of the no-hit randomizer Elden Ring streamer. I think that's not it's

00:59:58.860 not bullshit Peter. I want you to say what everyone listening wants you to say which is 0.93

01:00:04.420 that it's cool to throw a ball far.

01:00:19.500 You

If Books Could Kill - March 05, 2026

Bullshit Jobs

Episode Stats

Transcript