Comment by fasterik
10 hours ago
The case for the "bullshit jobs" theory seems extremely weak to me. If a job is pointless and not adding value, there is an incentive to eliminate it. Markets aren't perfectly efficient of course, but they're not so inefficient as to create millions of jobs that serve no purpose.
The truth is that many people enjoy working. It's satisfying and fulfilling to build something useful or to make a discovery that contributes to human knowledge. We can acknowledge that and then consider the entirely separate question of the ideal level of resource redistibution.
Fyi the book does address these points pretty well.
As another comment mentions, this objection has already been dealt with numerous times.
But you then go even beyond the already answered market efficiency/plausibility objection that comes up ad nauseam when Bullshit Jobs is mentioned to make a positive assertion that:
> The truth is that many people enjoy working
On what basis? What is "many"? Do you think a majority of the workforce would elect to keep working if they could maintain their current standard of living without any work? Do you think this would maintain independent of any standard of living? Do you think people would no longer find fulfillment in performing some work (whatever they choose) if it was not economically required of them to perform some labor? I mean presumably the people who do not want to sit around and do nothing will act accordingly. Let them do whatever they want. Why does it follow from that to say that most people "enjoy" having to exchange their labor to earn a paycheck?
It seems to me you are making a rather remarkable claim, with little attempt at substantiation. Maybe you could answer some of my questions to flesh out your point a little more?
You're using a narrow definition of work as exchanging labor for a paycheck. I don't agree with that definition. I would define it as putting time and energy into a project to meet personal or organizational needs. One of those needs is survival, but that's not the only one. When survival needs are met, people still choose to work on a variety of things that they find meaningful or that confer social status, like artistic projects, scientific research, philosophical inquiry, creating entertainment, raising children, and building communities.
If you're going to dodge discussing the vast amounts of work people do for a paycheck we have nothing to disagree over.
I agree people will still want to do things when society has fully automated away paychecks. That is why I look forward to the elimination of exchanging labor for monetary reward. Let people freely pursue those passions you outline, a paycheck adds nothing in a world where automation provides such people with not only survival, but ample surplus and innovation.
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