Hacker News Reader

Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Wasn’t this guys book on bullshit jobs completely debunked? I mean yeah, filing TPS sheets might seem pointless on their own but in the grand scheme of things someone needs to checkboxes. It might be unglamorous work but it necessary for the whole system to function.

We talk about productivity gains and why we still work 40 hour weeks and my answer is always this - you’re free to trade those productivity gains for free time. Go and find a plot of land 1890 homesteaders would normally claim, grow some food, build a sod house and eschew modern society in all its flavors - technology, healthcare, engineering, etc. i don’t mean to sound like a dick, but that’s why we still work 40+ hour work weeks despite the efficiency gains - because a modern lifestyle costs a hell of a lot more than basic subsistence.

People do this! Ted Kazinsky did it. It is possible. But of course everyone wants their mRNA vaccine technology and 10 hours weeks as well.

View on HN

I think that's an oversimplification, while I'd agree that modern life costs more to sustain in terms of required input from many different people and industries. There's also issues like the productivity/wage gap, general inertia in cultural change, the glorification of overwork, increasing accumulation of wealth by the already incredibly wealthy, how automation is introduced/managed, etc. that means we shouldn't just assume that people must work 40+ hour weeks or everything crumbles.

While some of the potential solutions I've read on this seem incredibly idealistic, I also believe there is probably a path forward where working time could be reduced significantly without the negative effects on technological, scientific or economic advancements that are presumed

How was the book on bullshit jobs debunked?

The idea is that many jobs do not contribute to "technology,healthcare,engineering, etc.", rather, salaries and work assignments are regulated to simply force people to spend most of their lives doing meaningless activities as a form of social control.

Even Ted Kaczynski talked about "surrogate activities".

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392455

Yeah, how can a narrative book like that be "debunked"? The author wasn't making a logical argument. There is no facts and data. It's an emotional and moral argument. Certain jobs contribute nothing to the world and extract a cost on the psyche of the employee.

The irony is that the socialist system he wished for produces the most bullshit jobs, as in bureaucracy upon bureaucracy. That's also the simple solution to why they exist: governments don't really care about efficiency, as they don't spend their own money. So you have bullshit jobs in bureaucracy, and in people having to cater to bureaucracy.

There are plenty of cases of efficient and inefficient processes in both capitalist and socialist systems, if any can be described as being wholly one or the other anymore. As a direct example to your point, compare the amount of bureaucracy in the US healthcare system to the UK's NHS (and how much extra that costs people per capita), or many other countries that are described as having socialist healthcare systems

So is there more or less bureaucracy in US and non-US healthcare? And how free markte is US health care really?

> to simply force people to spend most of their lives doing meaningless activities as a form of social control.

This is a human universal. Even uncontacted hunter gatherer tribes spend most of their days doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever. They sit around and talk shit with their friends. This is not social control. Humans doing nothing useful for most of the day is the norm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com