Comment by netcan
4 years ago
As I was reading Graeber, it's useful to imagine useless job economies of the past. Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers?
These classes represented a small part of most societies in the past, though not always that small. In any case, it's obvious that whatever needs these jobs serve are cultural. Don't underestimate culture. Money is a cultural construct. Power. Politics. Macroeconomics. Etc.
That's what's going on here.
In the book version of his essay, one of the things he talks about is how most of the things people would write to him about being "bullshit jobs" were not his original definition of bullshit jobs.
He gives the example of how a lot of people wrote to him about how useless hairdressers were, since people could just style their own hair. But, to Graeber, these are very much real jobs, because it's easy to see what was exchanged for payment (hair service.) Whether it was worth the money is a different question.
Clergy, in the middle ages, wouldn't be so much a bullshit job, but might be a privileged caste. The servants of the clergy, according to Graeber, are not bullshit jobs, because like the hairdresser, they are doing something for someone (presumably.) Doing laundry or bringing tea or whatever we are imagining they are serving as servants.
I believe in the book, he resigns to include the concept of "different types" of bullshit jobs, since most people seem to be unable to stick to his original definition.
The canonical bullshit job to Graeber would be someone in a large administrative bureaucracy. This is tied, in his original essay, to examining the statistics of increase in jobs in different sectors, cross-referenced with data about the growth in the productivity of a single worker. He shows that while manufacturing and service jobs have remained steady, "administrative" jobs have increased in proportion with productivity, which he says demonstrates the "bullshit job" as purely a way of having more administrators sitting around in meetings while the same number of people do actual stuff.
So... I think a lot of people (not you) missed the fact that graeber writes from what I think is a traditional anthropological perspective, as opposed to other social philosophy traditions.
Bullshit jobs described as such by the worker was a very big part of his definition. I think the definition has to drift, since an anthropologist won't typically want to impose a typology.
In any case, if medieval monks themselves considered monkery bullshit... there are snug places in Graebers' typology for them. In fact, I believe an average monastery could man every type of bullshit job category. It would depend on whether or not they themselves believe in the monastic institutions... and I would not necessarily assume that they did.
Graeber's categories of bullshit jobs is useful: flunkies, goons, duct-tapers, box-ticker, task-master. Here's a quickly found source: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/bullshit-jobs-david-graeber-w...
> how useless hairdressers were
Graeber's notion of "caring work" -- in contrast to "service work", "knowledge work", etc -- really changed my worldview about labor.
> canonical bullshit job to Graeber would be someone in a large administrative bureaucracy
My own archetype is healthcare accounting in the USA. Like "prescription benefits management". Hits all 5 categories of bullshit.
What's the cultural value provided by sitting on Axie and grinding for hours?
I'm not sure "value" is the correct question. Value depends on... values, I guess.
In any case, I suspect Graeber would have advised asking them. The grinders in manilla. The currency buyers, traders, etc. Cultural reasons are hard to extract from their cultural context without resorting to essentialism.
There are differences between a game where money comes from grinding, even if 3rd party and outsourced, and a pay-to-play currency. I suspect the people participating in that economy have a narrative, and that it makes some sort of internal sense. That's culture.
There are some comments from participants here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AxieInfinity/comments/qfe7fo/would_...
It's the same cultural value provided by a slot machine.
A way to hack someone else's brain and turn them into a slave zombie.
But I guess a lot of "real" culture is basically trying to do something similar: religions, corporate cults, schools, etc. Those are maybe only superficially less grotesque.
I think the point of Graeber (RIP btw) was to highlight that certain jobs (the bullshit ones) are self-fulfilling promises; specifically jobs "that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones." [1]
What's going on here is people doing work knowing it's actual bullshit. Just like grinding in the game. There are entire sweeps of the economy dedicated to this kind of work and it's a huge waste.
1. https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
By what definition would you consider a medieval abbey useless? I can't follow you.
> Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers?
You're really misinformed. Monks have been producing goods like wine, cheese, keeping society's records for centuries, or even being involved in woodwork or construction work, providing useful services to their communities. What does it have to do with "bullshit jobs"? Nothing.
Your comment sounds like a gratuitous provocation.