[D66] Bullshit jobs

[A.O.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Enkele quotes uit 'Bullshit Jobs' van David Graeber:

• Huge swathes of people spend their days performing tasks they secretly
believe do not really need to be performed.
• It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs for the
sake of keeping us all working.
• The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is
profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one
talks about it.
• How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labor when one secretly
feels one’s job should not exist?


Summary

In Bullshit Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the
productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek,
as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, because of
"bullshit jobs": workers who pretend that their role isn't as pointless
or harmful as they know it to be. Graeber contends that more than half
of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and, as he
describes, five types of entirely pointless jobs:

flunkies, who serve to make others feel important, e.g., receptionists,
administrative assistants, door attendants
goons, who act aggressively on behalf of their employers, e.g.,
lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations
duct tapers, who fix problems that shouldn't exist, e.g., programmers
repairing shoddy code
box tickers, e.g., performance managers, in-house magazine journalists,
leisure coordinators
taskmasters, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals[1]

Graeber argues that these jobs are largely in the private sector despite
the idea that market competition would root out such inefficiencies. In
companies, he credits "managerial feudalism" as employers need
underlings to feel important. In society, he credits the
Puritan-capitalist work ethic for making the labor of capitalism into
religious duty: that workers did not reap advances in productivity as a
reduced workday because, as a societal norm, they believe that work
determines their self-worth, even as they find that work pointless.
Graeber describes this cycle as "profound psychological violence".[1]

Graeber holds that work as a source of virtue is a recent idea, that
work was disdained by the aristocracy in classical times, but inverted
as virtuous through radical philosophers like John Locke. The Puritan
idea of virtue through suffering justified the toil of the working
classes as noble.[1]

As a potential solution, Graeber suggests universal basic income, a
livable benefit paid to all without qualification, which would let
people work at their leisure.[1]