{"id":5445,"date":"2024-07-08T15:44:35","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T15:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5445"},"modified":"2024-07-08T15:45:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T15:45:23","slug":"a-cogent-critique-of-bullshit-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/08\/a-cogent-critique-of-bullshit-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"A cogent critique of David Graeber&#8217;s \u201cBullshit Jobs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long time since I read <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180807024932\/http:\/\/strikemag.org\/bullshit-jobs\/\">the original &#8220;Bullshit Jobs&#8221; essay<\/a> or the book it was extended into; I&#8217;m tempted to go back with this critique in mind and see what I think.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Graeber] presents an economic theory for how this happens, connecting it to the medieval practice of creating face-saving make-work jobs for talentless aristocrats, like a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Master_of_the_Horse?ref=thediff.co\">master of the horse<\/a> or a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lady_of_the_Bedchamber?ref=thediff.co\">lady of the bedchamber<\/a>. In Graeber&#8217;s telling, a monarch who mostly gets paid taxes in kind has a calorie surplus, and needs to spend it by feeding assorted lackeys and hangers-on. And the modern rich are much richer than medieval rulers, while human vanity is a constant. So of course they hire a lot more such lackeys, right?<\/p>\n<p>No! Of course not, because <a href=\"https:\/\/capitalgains.thediff.co\/p\/goodsandservices?ref=thediff.co\">economic growth makes stuff cheap and time precious<\/a>. And unstable political institutions also make safety precious. If there&#8217;s a cheap way to keep lots of allies handy, in case they&#8217;re necessary, and to keep enemies close, in case they want to try something, why not? That doesn&#8217;t apply today; Shantanu Narayen doesn&#8217;t have to worry that the illegitimate son of an Adobe cofounder is going to sail to San Jose, mercenaries in tow, and depose him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thediff.co\/archive\/bullshit-jobs-is-a-terrible-curiosity-killing-concept\/\">\u201cBullshit Jobs\u201d is a Terrible, Curiosity-Killing Concept<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long time since I read the original &#8220;Bullshit Jobs&#8221; essay or the book it was extended into; I&#8217;m tempted to go back with this critique in mind and see what I think. [Graeber] presents an economic theory for how this happens, connecting it to the medieval practice of creating face-saving make-work jobs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1pP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5445"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5448,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions\/5448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}