whoisjohngalt
10-14-2013, 07:02 PM
THE US government shutdown provides a timely juncture to consider one of the principal maladies afflicting modern democracies: the growth of "bullshit jobs".
David Graeber, a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, belled the cat on the phenomenon in August, bemoaning the growing share of work that was pointless and even damaging.
"Huge swathes of people in the Western world spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed," Graeber writes, dismissing jobs in corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources and public relations as "bullshit".
"The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound," he says.
So is the economic.
This week's partial US government shutdown illustrates just how pervasive bullshit jobs have become. That the Obama government has stood down around 800,000 public service jobs with close to zero impact on the ordinary business of life is remarkable.
The world's press has ferreted around for days trying to find in the shutdown something genuinely disruptive. It appears closure of National Parks, public monuments and cessation of a live "panda cam" at the National Zoo are the most damaging repercussions. To be sure, tourists and panda-lovers across the US are understandably miffed. But surely the deeper question here is what on earth were the other 750,000-plus, "non-essential" public servants doing?
If these jobs weren't "essential" -- government "shutdowns" in the US do not affect air traffic controllers or soldiers, for instance -- then the US government should explain why it is taxing people and businesses to pay for them. Public servants' wages are someone else's property, which should not be taken lightly. Far from damaging the US economy, the shutdown has temporarily relieved US taxpayers of the burden of paying an army of people to do things that were self-evidently unnecessary.
Concentration of bullshit jobs in the federal public service is not unique to the US. Canberra, as much as Washington DC, houses departments teeming with highly-paid people who seek to regulate health, education, agriculture and commerce, for instance, but whose staff could go on strike for a year without causing a ripple of concern among the wider populace. In the US, as in Australia, most useful services -- police, courts, teachers, hospitals and bus drivers, for example -- are employed by state governments.
This is why federal public servants, unlike their state counterparts, rarely if ever go on strike: sheer embarrassment.
Nor does the public sector have a monopoly on bullshit. As Graeber rightly points out: "While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the lay-offs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things."
Corporations, especially among the ranks of middle and senior management, are chock full of overpaid people whose real contributions to the firm's output are negligible at best. Smaller businesses don't have the revenue to maintain bullshit jobs.
Indeed, bullshit jobs are typically well-paid, with a notably strong correlation in finance. They tend to flourish in parts of the economy where people are spending other people's money, which occurs most often in government and at large limited liability companies, where shareholders are typically powerless to restrain management from wasting money on themselves, their underlings, and services of dubious value.
But as with drawing a line between art and pornography, identifying bullshit jobs is difficult. For all his overarching perspicacity, Graeber's definition is arbitrary and even elitist. He includes pizza delivery boys and dog shampooers in the bullshit category, despite the fact individuals are willing to part with their own money to pay for these services.
Graeber rails against the growth of services in particular -- by far the largest part of advanced economies -- revealing a yearning for a simpler economy, where farming, mining and manufacturing dominate. The problem is not services but, as for all jobs, whether they matter and who pays for them. Workers wondering if theirs is a bullshit job might ask themselves two questions. First, am I being directly paid by an individual or owner-run business? If Australia's tradesmen went on strike it would be catastrophic; not so much for lobbyists. But this would rule out all government and corporate workers.
Hence the need for a second test: does it matter to others if I don't turn up to work? Government and private industry are teeming with people who could stay home for weeks without impairing the quality or volume of goods or services produced by their organisation -- and without requiring another worker to fill in for them -- as the US shutdown has amply demonstrated. Such jobs typically lack verifiable output and often relate to services, such as management consultants and corporate lawyers, bought by organisations that spend other people's money.
Alas, these are necessary but not sufficient conditions for bullshit; eminent academics would fall through the cracks, for instance. Nevertheless, as productivity wanes in advanced countries it is becoming more incumbent on governments and companies alike to identify, limit, and ideally cull, the share of the workforce engaged in bullshit.
- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/shutdown-reveals-useless-work/story-fnc2jivw-1226732558702#sthash.5RRN8L97.dpuf
David Graeber, a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, belled the cat on the phenomenon in August, bemoaning the growing share of work that was pointless and even damaging.
"Huge swathes of people in the Western world spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed," Graeber writes, dismissing jobs in corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources and public relations as "bullshit".
"The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound," he says.
So is the economic.
This week's partial US government shutdown illustrates just how pervasive bullshit jobs have become. That the Obama government has stood down around 800,000 public service jobs with close to zero impact on the ordinary business of life is remarkable.
The world's press has ferreted around for days trying to find in the shutdown something genuinely disruptive. It appears closure of National Parks, public monuments and cessation of a live "panda cam" at the National Zoo are the most damaging repercussions. To be sure, tourists and panda-lovers across the US are understandably miffed. But surely the deeper question here is what on earth were the other 750,000-plus, "non-essential" public servants doing?
If these jobs weren't "essential" -- government "shutdowns" in the US do not affect air traffic controllers or soldiers, for instance -- then the US government should explain why it is taxing people and businesses to pay for them. Public servants' wages are someone else's property, which should not be taken lightly. Far from damaging the US economy, the shutdown has temporarily relieved US taxpayers of the burden of paying an army of people to do things that were self-evidently unnecessary.
Concentration of bullshit jobs in the federal public service is not unique to the US. Canberra, as much as Washington DC, houses departments teeming with highly-paid people who seek to regulate health, education, agriculture and commerce, for instance, but whose staff could go on strike for a year without causing a ripple of concern among the wider populace. In the US, as in Australia, most useful services -- police, courts, teachers, hospitals and bus drivers, for example -- are employed by state governments.
This is why federal public servants, unlike their state counterparts, rarely if ever go on strike: sheer embarrassment.
Nor does the public sector have a monopoly on bullshit. As Graeber rightly points out: "While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the lay-offs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things."
Corporations, especially among the ranks of middle and senior management, are chock full of overpaid people whose real contributions to the firm's output are negligible at best. Smaller businesses don't have the revenue to maintain bullshit jobs.
Indeed, bullshit jobs are typically well-paid, with a notably strong correlation in finance. They tend to flourish in parts of the economy where people are spending other people's money, which occurs most often in government and at large limited liability companies, where shareholders are typically powerless to restrain management from wasting money on themselves, their underlings, and services of dubious value.
But as with drawing a line between art and pornography, identifying bullshit jobs is difficult. For all his overarching perspicacity, Graeber's definition is arbitrary and even elitist. He includes pizza delivery boys and dog shampooers in the bullshit category, despite the fact individuals are willing to part with their own money to pay for these services.
Graeber rails against the growth of services in particular -- by far the largest part of advanced economies -- revealing a yearning for a simpler economy, where farming, mining and manufacturing dominate. The problem is not services but, as for all jobs, whether they matter and who pays for them. Workers wondering if theirs is a bullshit job might ask themselves two questions. First, am I being directly paid by an individual or owner-run business? If Australia's tradesmen went on strike it would be catastrophic; not so much for lobbyists. But this would rule out all government and corporate workers.
Hence the need for a second test: does it matter to others if I don't turn up to work? Government and private industry are teeming with people who could stay home for weeks without impairing the quality or volume of goods or services produced by their organisation -- and without requiring another worker to fill in for them -- as the US shutdown has amply demonstrated. Such jobs typically lack verifiable output and often relate to services, such as management consultants and corporate lawyers, bought by organisations that spend other people's money.
Alas, these are necessary but not sufficient conditions for bullshit; eminent academics would fall through the cracks, for instance. Nevertheless, as productivity wanes in advanced countries it is becoming more incumbent on governments and companies alike to identify, limit, and ideally cull, the share of the workforce engaged in bullshit.
- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/shutdown-reveals-useless-work/story-fnc2jivw-1226732558702#sthash.5RRN8L97.dpuf