Bullshit Jobs

Peter and Michael discuss "Bullshit Jobs" by anarchist anthropologist David Graeber. The result: two professional podcasters debating which jobs are real and which jobs are fake.

Where to find us: 

• Our Patreon
• Our merch!
• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant
• 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless
• Average Annual Hours Worked by Persons Engaged for United States
• The times they are not changin’: Days and hours of work in Old and New Worlds, 1870–2000
• ‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless
• Alienation Is Not ‘Bullshit’: An Empirical Critique of Graeber’s Theory of BS Jobs
• Many people feel they work in pointless ‘bullshit’ jobs, research confirms
• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure 
• Study: Leisure Time Declines
• USA Consumption as percent of GDP
• The Significance of Task Significance: Job Performance Effects, Relational Mechanisms, and Boundary Conditions
• Task significance and meaningful work: A longitudinal study
• Americans’ job satisfaction in 2024

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Transcript

Michael: Let's go in, let's go in.

Peter: Let’s go in. And you have to cut all that because last time I told the same story twice-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: And everybody commented on. I noticed that.

Peter: I didn't even think about it. I was just telling my stories to my friends. [laughs] 

Michael: It looks like someone only had one funny anecdote last week. Yeah, I saw that too. 

Peter: How many do you fucking have every week? All right, Fucking kings of comedy over here. They're like, “Oh, you're using your bits.”

Michael: Everyone else just tells one story to one person and it's just done. Nobody ever repeats a funny thing that happened to them.

Peter: You know how good my stories are by the third time I'm telling them, like, [crosstalk] I'm fucking crushing, dude.

Michael: Okay. I actually-- this one has a really obvious, little zinger to it.

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: But I don't know how to word it. But I don't know how to word it.

Peter: Michael. 

Michael: Peter.

Peter: What do you know about Bullshit Jobs?

Michael: All I know is that I'm excited to talk about this book from the vantage point of my own.

[If Books Could Kill theme]

Peter: Bullshit Jobs, written by David Graeber, came out in 2018. Graeber is anthropologist and he is a hardcore lefty. He considers himself an anarchist. So, finally we're doing a book by someone who's not a reactionary centrist.

Michael: Also, my understanding is his work is good.

Peter: It's a pretty good book. It makes some important points. It prods at some good and correct ideas. I think my big picture criticisms of it are one, it's really meandering in the way that a lot of lefty theory is. It's hard for him to land at a point. He says a lot of things where you're like, “Okay, I like this.” And then he just sort of like meanders on until you're like, “Alright, I no longer get it.”

Michael: This is like meeting anyone in Seattle, Washington. You're at a cocktail party, you're like, I think I agree. I don't know what you're saying, though.

Peter: My other big picture criticism is that the book really screams for data, but he doesn't give it.

Michael: Oh, really? That's surprising. Actually.

Peter: Sometimes he's doing it very knowingly, being like, “Look, I'm a theory guy, you know.” So, if someone wants to look into this, they should. But there are other times where it's like, there is data here and I feel like he could have looked for it.

Michael: That is reactionary centrist coded.

Peter: It is. Yeah.

Michael: I'm not going to look up the premise of my book and whether it's true, also wait, wait, wait, wait. Meta comment. Didn't he like, die tragically?

Peter: He passed away in 2020 quite young. So yeah, we will speak of him respectfully.

Michael: Yeah, he seems like a nice guy with good ideas. This is going to be a much less dunky episode, it sounds like.

Peter: Yeah, unfortunately I'm just going to send you various excerpts and then we will think about them.

Michael: Yeah. [laughs]

Peter: Rather than my usual MO of just finding the dumbest shit in every book and sending it to you.

Michael: But this was a heavily requested book, so it was inevitable that we would do this. It just sounds it has yielded a portrait of a book that is interesting but falls apart in some places. Not a fuck this book or fuck this guy kind of an episode.

Peter: I'm going to give the definition of bullshit job right off the bat.

Michael: You talk into a microphone. You post it on Patreon. Yes, I know.

Peter: A bullshit job is, “A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

Michael: That sounds quite extreme. That sounds like it would be very few jobs in America, actually.

Peter: It is very extreme. We'll get into exactly what he means in more detail, but for color, because he's on the left. This is mostly directed at certain types of white-collar work that he thinks add no real value to society. He distinguishes between bullshit jobs and what he calls shit jobs, which are just sort of like the traditional bad job, low pay, maybe degrading. You're treated poorly by society.

Michael: Yeah, those are very essential jobs. They just suck. Yeah.

Peter: That's what he says that those jobs are in fact often not bullshit at all. They're very important work.

Michael: Not to do pot calling the kettle black or whatever. But it is also funny to write a whole book about this while being a Marxist scholar at a liberal arts university. You could also argue.

[laughter] 

Peter: As we speak into microphones from our own homes.

Michael: If you ever try to describe what you do to someone who doesn't know about podcasts, it's impossible to describe it in a non-humiliating way.

Peter: It's so weird when you don't know someone because when they eventually ask enough questions to find the name of the podcast, it's like, “Yeah, here's a link to all of my opinions.”

Michael: I have started dating somebody recently and he didn't know about the show when he first met me. But when you're in this stage, you go on a couple dates, you like each other, you're flirting, texting, whatever. He's like, “It's weird to have 600 hours of your opinions on things that I can just go listen to at any point.”

[laughter] 

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: This guy I'm seeing, what [unintelligible 00:04:47] about Princess Diana.

Peter: I want one day for there to be someone who's like, “Oh, you're the girl on If Books Could Kill.”

Michael: [laughs] After meeting me on Grindr, yes.

Peter: [laughs] So, in 2013, Graeber publishes a short essay in Strike magazine, which is a radical lefty outfit called On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, A Work Rant. We've often had these situations where we're like, “This should really just be an essay.”

Michael: Yeah. And sometimes it was. Yes.

Peter: And sometimes it was. You do get the sense that someone was like, “David, can you turn this into a book?” And he was like, “All right, sure.” 

Michael: Because honestly, at least what I understand to be the premise sounds a fine essay. Some percentage of the American economy is just like, people pretending to do stuff or things that don't really need to exist. But also, if you extend that to 300 pages, you then do need to provide some data. You need to provide examples. And then it also seems like it would fall apart.

Peter: The essay is super short. And so, you actually end up with a weird situation where the essay could be longer, but the book could be a lot shorter.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: I'm going to send you some of the essay and we can talk about it. I think he hits on, this general idea that's very true. But then the more specific he tries to get, the more you're like, “Ah, I don't know.” All right. I am going to send you some of the opening bits here.

Michael: “In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by century's end, technology would have advanced efficiently, that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are effectively pointless. Huge swathes of people in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe to do not really need to be performed. 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.” 

I already disagree with this. I have had jobs that are on the bullshit spectrum. I mean this, like when I used to work in NGOs, but I don't think it's that the job was bullshit. I think it just wasn't a 40-hour job. It was 10 hours of kind of real stuff and then 30 hours of bullshit.

Peter: I know that you're going to keep jumping the gun on me.

Michael: We're getting.

Peter: I agree with you. I think that one of the problems here is that he tries to drop jobs into a category. It's a bullshit job or not. But the reality is that a large part of almost any job has a bullshit component.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: All right, I'm going to send you more.

Michael: He says, “A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture. Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants in industry and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, professional, managerial, clerical, sales and service workers tripled, growing from one quarter to three quarters of total employment. In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away. But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the service sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources and public relations.”

I like strongly disagree with this. Public relations is an important thing. I did public relations for NGOs. It's important to get the word out about fucking conflict minerals. I don't know.

Peter: So, I agree there's an imprecision in his terms a lot. There's another problem here which I feel is classic lefty stuff, which is sometimes you get the sense that he's never really worked for a company.

Michael: Right, right.

Peter: He's just eyeballing it.

Michael: He's also doing a weird thing kind of from the, that you see from the right a lot, where it's this idea that things like farming and manufacturing are real jobs, like, “Oh, we used to make things in America.” And then all these office jobs are knowledge jobs are fake. But I also just don't agree with the premise. I think there's lots of jobs where you sit at a desk that are totally worthwhile.

Peter: I wrote a note down in some sections where I just said noble savage next to some of his discussion of manufacturing work, for example. Because even in my limited exposure to blue collar jobs when I was young, you see a lot of the same phenomenon that he's describing in white collar work where work is redundant or whatever it might be. And we'll get into it. Now I'm going to send you one last bit of the essay.

Michael: He says, “The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger. And on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing is extraordinarily convenient for them.”

Peter: So, I think he's basically saying, “Look, the ruling class has opposed policies that would create more free time and fostered policies that incentivize work.”

Michael: That's true. That's just like straightforwardly true.

Peter: I think if you're looking at it, that simply not hard to believe. 

Michael: But yeah, the idea that wealthy capitalists oppose things working hours reductions or mandatory free time, that's just obvious, empirically true, but also that feels distinct from the phenomenon of bullshit jobs to me.

Peter: Yeah. I agree. So, what he's basically saying, although he doesn't quite-- I'm not sure that he ever actually says this, but you can piece it together. What he's basically saying is like, “We've had these big increases in productivity. Has it brought us any more leisure time? No. And that's because there are these great institutional forces that oppose that and want to redirect our productivity elsewhere.”

Michael: That seems true. That seems fair.

Peter: There's a big response to this essay. A bunch of people write it up. A bunch of Marxists start arguing about it and I won't get into it. I will tell you, my first run at this episode, I was like, “Maybe I'll cover these intra Marxist debates.” And then like, “I read one essay and was like, no, no.” [Michael laughs] In 2015, someone took evocative quotes out of the essay and plastered them all over the London Metro.

Michael: The London Metro. The Tube. You mean the Tube.

Peter: Sorry, sorry folks.

Michael: London Metro.

Peter: Sorry. To our well-traveled listeners--

Michael: [crosstalk] Basic things. You don't say the--

Peter: The basic things.

Michael: That's like the London. Have you ever heard anyone say the London Metro in your life.

Peter:  It has also been buses.

Michael: That's also not the metro.

Peter: But it's not the tube either. So, what is it?

Michael: Oh, whatever. Don't try to fucking uno reverse. Just accept the L and move on.

Peter: I don't think it's an L. [Michael laughs] I think I introduced a nuance that you can't explain. Yeah, so they put up these quotes. One of them says, “Huge swathes of people spend their days performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. One says it's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs for the sake of keeping us all working.” These are quotes from the essay, and they cause a little bit of a stir they get on the news. I'm trying to decide whether I think this sort of thing is cool or whether it would just piss me off if I'm, like, on my way to work and it's like, great, some fucking communists. It's telling me my job is useless.

Michael: Also, I don't agree with the second one. Why would somebody make up a job so they can pay you to do nothing?

Peter: He does have a theory of this that we'll talk about, and it is a little bit abstract, and I don't quite buy it either. He writes this book, Bullshit Jobs to flesh the theory out, published in 2018, and a lot of his research for the book is essentially just compiling anecdotes from people who reach out to them about their bullshit jobs.

Michael: Those actually sound fun to be honest.

Peter: I will say, as a data set, it's pretty obviously terrible.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: People who reach out to a leftist academic to complain about their bullshit jobs probably not the best.

Michael: The representativist of samples.

Peter: But he uses that to delineate what he believes are the five approximate categories of bullshit job. Flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. Okay, now this is not meant to be exact or exhaustive. I don't think. It's just useful groupings, right? So, we'll start with flunkies. Flunkies are people whose jobs exist entirely to make their bosses feel or seem important. Okay, I'm going to send you a little bit here.

Michael: He says, “Another term for this category might be feudal retainers. Throughout recorded history, rich and powerful men and women have tended to surround themselves with servants, clients, sycophants, and minions of one sort or another. Not all of these are actually employed in the grandee's household, and many of those who are, are expected to at least do some actual work. But especially at the top of the pyramid, there is usually a certain portion whose job it is to basically just stand around and look impressive. Some old-fashioned feudal retainer style jobs still do exist. Doormen are the most obvious example. They perform the same function in the houses of the very rich that electronic intercoms have performed for everyone else since at least the 1950s.” This also is like, I don't think that's-- Doormen often serve like a security function, don't they?

Peter: He gives some outdated examples that I think are a little more accurate. One is elevator operators, which I think might be one of the better examples here.

Michael: But also, do those even still exist? I mean, those--

Peter: Not really.

Michael: They used to need one.

Peter: Certain receptionists, he believes are basically just there for aesthetics. Probably true.

Michael: I guess, but even a receptionist is part of marketing the company. You get to a place and a person says, “Hi there, welcome. What can I do for you?” There's some value in that.

Peter: There are certain things like marketing and advertising that you get the sense that he just doesn't really like respect as an endeavor.

Michael: Right.

Peter: You can also see here he loves the idea that corporations retain or recreate certain feudal dynamics. And one of his overall theories here, and we'll touch on this a bit later too, is that like corporations are not hyper efficient like the libertarians would have you believe.

Michael: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Peter: But are instead sort of like mechanisms for distributing wealth and power in an almost political sense.

Michael: That feels like totally legitimate.

Peter: Let's keep going. Goons are people whose jobs have an aggressive element, but crucially who exist only because other people employ them. Here's what he means by that.

Michael: “The most obvious example of this are national armed forces. Countries need armies only because other countries have armies. If no one had an army, armies would not be needed. But the same can be said of most lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers and corporate lawyers. Also, like literal goons, they have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would concur that were all telemarketers to disappear, the world would be a better place. But I think most would also agree that if all corporate lawyers, bank lobbyists or marketing gurus were to similarly vanish in a puff of smoke, the world would be at least a little more bearable.” This again is a weird category error thing because telemarketing, it's obviously a bad job and I hate getting telemarketer calls, but I don't think it's bullshit in that way because it does result in sales. 

Peter: Well, I think when he said telemarketer, it did click in my brain because there are definitely some jobs where the central purpose is essentially to trick or bully someone into buying a product or a service that they do not need.

Michael: Correct.

Peter: And I think that's what he's getting at.

Michael: Dude, I sold frozen steaks over the phone for exactly one day when I was in college and I couldn't fucking handle it. That was a bullshit job.

Peter: I'm not sure. I think it's right that lobbyists and PR people and lawyers wouldn't exist if others didn't exist. If you look at some basic corporate lawyer bullshit, they write contracts.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: Again, I'm not entirely sure that he understands these industries.

Michael: And marketing gurus I mean, it depends on what they're marketing. Like, maybe they're marketing garbage, but they might be marketing a couch that you like to sit on. I mean, people buy objects that they need in their lives as well. I don't know.

Peter: All right, the next category. Duct tapers. Duct tapers are “Employees whose jobs exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization, who are there to solve a problem that ought not to exist. So, there are a lot of people in software where it's like, yeah, there's like two pieces of software sort of butting together awkwardly, and then someone's job is to smooth over the resulting issues.”

Michael: But that, again, doesn't feel like bullshit because you're making something work.

Peter: I think I agree, but I think he's sort of saying, there's an ideal world where this problem doesn't exist.

Michael: I guess, but I don't know.

Peter: I think this is the one that makes the least sense to me.

Michael: Because there's a problem and then someone gets hired to fix it and the problem is fixed, but then you're like, “Oh, no, it's bullshit because the problem shouldn't have existed in the first place.”

Peter: Here's his attempt to draw a line between what he's saying and what we're saying.

Michael: There will always be a certain gap between blueprints, schemes and plans and their real-world implementation. Therefore, there will always be people charged with making the necessary adjustments. What makes such a role bullshit is when the plan obviously can't work. And any competent architect should have known it when the system is so stupidly designed that it will fail in completely predictable ways. But rather than fix the problem, the organization prefers to hire full time employees whose main or entire job is to deal with the damage. It's as if a homeowner, upon discovering a leak in the roof, decided it was too much bother to hire a roofer to re-shingle it and instead stuck a bracket underneath it and hired someone whose full-time job was to periodically dump the water. 

I guess, but then it's like this is a much smaller percentage of jobs then and is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Peter: I do feel like it's telling that he had to make up a fake thing.

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: Rather than just tell us about a job that he thinks fits this cleanly. But I think if you're trying to do a good faith thing here, he's saying there are people whose jobs are really the result of an inefficiency that could be addressed more directly.

Michael: Feels like a different category than like telemarketers, but okay.

Peter: I agree. I do. I think he really kind of hits his stride when he's talking about industries or work that are like, scammy.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Peter: That are really are an obvious drain on society.

Michael: Yeah. Which feels like the amount of the American economy that is now dedicated to fucking scams is absolutely should be and I'm sure is the subject of many books. It's an actual huge problem. But that feels different than just people who do PR are bullshit.

Peter: I love watching you have to go through the same process that I did with every single one of these where you're like, “Yeah, kind of, but not really, right?”

Michael: Because it does feel like the phenomenon that we're talking about where it's like you read the essay and you're like, “Yeah, man, some jobs are bullshit. Here's some fun examples.” It's like you get in. You get out in a couple thousand words. But as soon as now you're trying to specify, aha, there's actually different categories of bullshit jobs. It's like, “Are they though?”

Peter: I think this should be familiar to anyone who does work ours or rights. Where you're like, “Ooh, I have this idea and I'm going to flesh it out.” And then you try to flesh it out and you're like, “Actually, I'm stupid. This is a dumb idea.”

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, totally.

Peter: All right, next, box tickers. Box tickers are, “Employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that in fact it is not doing. Sending you a bit.

Michael: “The following testimony is from a woman hired to coordinate leisure activities in a care home. Most of my job was to interview residents and fill out a recreation form that listed their preferences. That form was then logged on a computer and then promptly forgotten about forever. The paper form was also kept in a binder for some reason. Completion of the forms was by far the most important part of my job in the eyes of my boss. And I would catch hell if I got behind on them. A lot of the time, I would complete a form for a short-term resident and they would check out the next day. I threw away mountains of paper.” We found one that's like a straightforwardly bullshit job. A friend of mine is applying for citizenship in Germany. Germany is famously like they still use fax machines for shit in Germany. It's super paper and pencil. There's an online form where you fill it out, you go to the office, a woman at the office then prints it out and types it into the computer for you. Like while you stand there. [laughs] 

Michael: Oh my God, he's like standing there watching someone type into a computer a thing that he already typed into a computer.

Peter: This is like the fact that you submit a PDF resume and then also have to type it all into a fucking form. So, here's a little more about box ticking and I thought this is interesting. It's less obviously bullshit than the care home example, but I think he's getting at something here.

Michael: He says, “We're all familiar with box ticking as a form of government. If a government's employees are caught doing something very bad, taking bribes, for instance, or regularly shooting citizens at traffic stops, the first reaction is invariably to create a fact-finding commission to get to the bottom of things. This serves two functions. First of all, it's a way of insisting that aside from a small group of miscreants, no one had any idea that any of this was happening. This is of course rarely true. Second of all, it's a way of implying that once all the facts are in, someone will definitely do something about it. This is usually not true either. A fact-finding commission is a way of telling the public that the government is doing something it is not. But large corporations will behave in exactly the same way if, say, they are revealed to be employing slaves or child laborers in their garment factories or dumping toxic waste.” This is again, really cynical. I think sometimes it is, like Seattle’s in the middle of this fucking cycle where we do fact finding on homelessness.

Peter: Yeah.

Michael: And then all of the fact-finding commissions are like, “We need to be spending, like, 10 times more on this.” And then we just don't do anything because nobody wants to spend any fucking money. And then five years later, they're like, “Oh, we got to get data. Oh, let's do a fact-finding commission.” And the fact-finding commission finds the same fucking thing. So, that partly rings true, but there's also fact-finding commissions that are like useful.

Peter: Right, right, right. 

Michael: And then you move forward with the policy and you do something about it.

Peter: In my world, Joe Biden put together a commission on Supreme Court reform.

Michael: Oh, right. Yeah.

Peter: And like, as soon as they announce the commission, you're sort of like, “All right, well, it's over.”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah totally, totally. Yeah.

Peter: So, I don't know. There's something here. And certainly, I believe that there are major corporations where this exists entirely as a PR exercise that everyone knows is fraudulent top to bottom.

Michael: But also, they're pretty good. A lot of my work in human rights was about corporate human rights violations. And if you look at labor standards in apparel in Indonesia and places that had these big scandals at Nike in the early 90s, they actually have much better working conditions than they did back then. And some of the best working conditions in the developing world are in brand name factories for companies you've heard of because they've improved. So sometimes it's bullshit. It's very often bullshit, but sometimes it's not.

Peter: Obviously, you're more pro corporation than I am, and that's one of the big disagreements we have on this podcast. But no, I tend to agree with you. The human rights space is not my space. But if people ask me from an employment law perspective, better to work for a big company or a small one. Big one. Almost every time they're a little more on it. And I do believe that he has a deep and partially justified but not entirely skepticism or cynicism about big corporations that he should really direct more generally. Right? 

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Peter: Well, he also says this. I want to know what you think about this. Many large corporations maintain their own in-house magazines or even television channels, the ostensible purpose of which is to keep employees up to date on interesting news and developments, but which, in fact exist for almost no reason other than to allow executives to experience that warm and pleasant feeling that comes when you see a favorable story about you in the media.

Michael: [laughs] Well, then it's got value, baby. Then it's not bullshit.

Peter: This is one where, when I was in employment law, you're adjacent to HR and you see a lot of the internal marketing shit. I do think internal marketing at large corporations--crosstalk] 

Michael: It's tough. It’s tough. 

Peter: I know that this is valueless. It's obviously designed for employee morale. But you'll literally be watching a video where they hired actors to just play happy employees. That's something that exists. If bullshit jobs exist, surely in-house magazines and in-house television channels fall into that category.

Michael: Wait, do you want to hear my best example of this? Peter? You know, I just got back from LA and I heard from someone who's adjacent to Hollywood there that, for your consideration, it'll be Timothée Chalamet in Dune or whatever. Apparently, this is the conspiracy theory for which I have no evidence, but I like this story. Apparently, they put those billboards up near the actors houses so that when Timothée Chalamet is driving around, he sees the billboard saying, like, “For your consideration, Timothée Chalamet.” So that he thinks, like, “Ooh, the studio's really supporting me in this.” But it's not actually for the Oscar voters. It's just so that the actors think that the studio is behind them so they can sign them for another role.

Peter: Yeah, that's the that I believe, because it's the kind of thing that I would do. I have what I think is a good example of box ticking.

Michael: Okay.

Peter: Sometimes if you work at a company, you will need to hire an outside law firm, and you will hire a very fancy law firm that costs more, not because they're better, but because if something goes sideways and one of your higher ups comes looking for you can say, “Look, I hired the fancy law firm.” Now does that mean that fancy law firms are bullshit jobs? No, not necessarily. But how many people's jobs within those firms rest on that principle? All right, finally, the last category of bullshit job. Taskmasters. Taskmasters are employees “Whose role consists entirely of assigning work to others or those who make up bullshit for others to do.”

Michael: I also think that every bad boss I've ever had is doing a bullshit job.

Peter: Yes. I mean, I think at a glance, I was really skeptical of this one, because assigning work is obviously not pointless.

Michael: That's called management. Yeah.

Peter: But when he goes through examples, it's obvious he's talking about middle managers who are supervising people who don't really need supervision.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Peter: And I think that guy exists, right?

Michael: Totally yeah.

Peter: I feel I have two criticisms of his whole category idea. One is the one we've touched on, which is not a lot of jobs fall into these categories, but a little bit of a lot of jobs is bullshit by these definitions. But then also he's thinking in terms of jobs within organizations. But it makes a little more sense to me to think about it in terms of industries. Does the good or service you provide have any social value? Because you could have two guys that have the same job but toward completely different ends. So, one guy builds apartment buildings and the other builds private prisons, right.

Michael: Right. 

Peter: But one of them is less socially valuable and perhaps pernicious.

Michael: Dude. A couple years ago, I was dating a guy who was an event planner for I don't know, Goldman Sachs or one of these New York financial firms. And he was making like $400,000 a year. And I also know people who are event planners for NGOs who make like $36,000 a year. And it's like, it's the same job. They're just on different ladders.

Peter: No, it's not. No, because an event planner at an NGO is just putting together a holiday party. At Goldman Sachs, they need fucking fireworks.

Michael: [laughs] They have Beck playing or something. They have springs [crosstalk] showing up.

Michael: No joke.

Peter: That Goldman Sachs. You're making-- I understand your point. I'm not trying to argue with it. But no joke. That Goldman Sachs job probably fucking sucks.

Michael: Dude, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter: The fucking CEO is up of Goldman Sachs is up your ass because fucking Ty Dolla $ign is [Michael laughs] 20 minutes late for your corporate, for your corporate things. [laughs]

Michael: The way that he described it was not. It sounded very similar to the people that I know in NGOs because NGOs also have like large events. They have these fundraising dinners and stuff which are genuinely very difficult to plan. Basically, a bunch of rich people get together in a room and you serve them dinner. That's essentially what he was doing for whatever Citibank or whatever the fuck it was. And it was remarkably similar.

Peter: I do think that Graeber is not trying to talk about who's doing good for society with their career and shit like that. He's really making this narrower point about how big corporations have become these sprawling monstrosities that are no longer geared toward efficiency, but have developed these self-contained patronage operations.

Michael: I guess again, it's like you need data on that. It's going to be so different industry to industry. NGOs are not like that at all.

Peter: All right. Let's talk data. This has all been very subjective so far, which is why neither of us have any idea what the fuck is going on.

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: When Graeber wrote the original essay, he did not put data in it, really. And that wasn't really the purpose of it. 

Michael: I guess. Yeah. 

Peter: The subtitle of it was a work rant, right? 

Michael: Totally, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: He's not trying to put a coherent thesis.

Michael: This is the kind of thing that your friend would tell you at a bar and you're like, “Fire.” Yeah, absolutely.

Peter: Yeah. You're like, “Right, dude.” Dude, you're so right. You should write about that. And if you're on the left, your friend does have a magazine that no one reads.”

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: He's like, “You should write for my magazine.” When the essay gains traction, YouGov runs a poll in the UK and Graeber puts the results in his book as a proof of concept. The YouGov headline reads, 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless which is pretty dramatic.

Michael: Yeah, that's really high, actually.

Peter: Graeber cites the poll in his opening chapter basically being like, “Look, I was right.”

Michael: But it's also totally subjective.

Peter: Yeah, but here's what the poll asks. Okay. The poll asks, is your job making a meaningful contribution to the world?

Michael: Oh, well, [laughs] that's like, completely different.

Peter: Yeah, it really. It really is right. So, 50% said yes, 37% said no, and 13% said they didn't know. If you look back to his definition of a bullshit job, it's like a job that is entirely pointless.

Michael: Right, right.

Peter: If someone says, “Are you making a meaningful contribution to the world” that reads to me a significant contribution to the world.

Michael: Morally valenced in some way.

Peter: Right, right. There's all like, either it's a large contribution or has a moral quality to it. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people are just sort of like, “Oh, I don't know.”

Michael: Because as a teenager, I worked for years in video stores. And that was not a bullshit job. But that was not meaningfully contributing to the world either. It wasn't like a charity or something. It's like, “I sat at the counter and people rented videos,” whatever. I would have answered no to that question, but I don't think that was a bullshit job.

Peter: He also cites a poll of Dutch workers from 2016 where, according to him, 40% of respondents said that their jobs had no reason to exist. But very similarly, if you look at the poll, the actual question was about whether they experienced their job as meaningful. So, like, very similar, right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah. 

Peter: He does make a big case for self-reporting about this. He basically says, like, “Look, there's no way to come up with an objective metric.”

Michael: Yeah, that's true.

Peter: Bullshit job is. And like, the best we have is self-reporting because people have a decent sense of this stuff and they might not always be correct in our opinion. Basically, this is the best way to go. And I agree, there is no way to do an objective determination of whether a job is bullshit and maybe self-reporting is best, but the other side of that is self-reporting is still very bad.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. And also, it's like the reason why the only thing that works is self-reporting is partly because of the muddiness of the concept. Because you're asking, like, “Is your job bullshit?” But like, the term job implies something you don't want to be doing. You're doing it because you get paid. So, most people are going to say, like, “Yeah, my job's bullshit.”

Peter: [00:31:28] There were a couple years ago, some researchers at Cambridge wanted to see whether there was empirical support for this, and they pulled together a bunch of data and they tried to compare it to his affirmative hypotheses throughout the book.

Michael: How many were gooning? How many were duct taping? Yes.

Peter: [laughs] They looked at the European Working Conditions Survey that filed data from 2005 to 2015. So, the survey asks workers to rank whether they “Have the feeling of doing useful work on a five-point scale.” I think that much more closely tracks the bullshit jobs definition. And when you phrase it that way, only 4.8% of respondents said that they did not feel like they were doing useful work at all.

Michael: That's actually lower than I thought it would be.

Peter: That climbs to 5.6 in the UK, but nowhere near.

Michael: [laughs] Oh, I know, Peter. You look at the UK not a lot of people are doing useful work here.

Peter: Just professional transphobes.

Michael: Yeah, I know.

Peter: So, if you say, do you think that your job makes a meaningful contribution to the world? 40% of people say no. But if you're just like, well, is it useful at all? Then only 5% say no. I will note there is some data that shows that in the United States, this number goes up pretty dramatically. One piece of research said it's at 19% in the United States.

Michael: Whoa. Okay.

Peter: There's another part of Graeber's thesis that he lays out in the book that is a little bit testable, which is that “This problem is worsening, There is every reason to believe that the overall number of bullshit jobs and even more the overall percentage of jobs considered bullshit by those who hold them have been increasing rapidly in recent years alongside the ever increasing bullshitization [Michael laughs] of useful forms of employment.” So, he says there's every reason to believe that the number of bullshit jobs is going up. But then the only actual evidence he provides is that the service sector is replacing agriculture and industry as like a percentage of the economy.

Michael: That's just a completely different thing.

Peter: That's the thing is like if the claim of the book is the service sector is a larger part of the economy than it used to be, then you wouldn't have a book, right? Like that's not interesting. It's not really debatable.

Michael: He's doing the thing that you find a lot in the ultra-processed foods discourse where when people describe it in the abstract they'll say like, “Oh, they're addictive food substances, the super artificial junk.” And then you get into the actual categories and it's like all tortillas and all bread. Because he's basically saying he's identified this thing of everyone's doing bullshit jobs. Then he just says the service sector is increasing, knowledge jobs are increasing, which. So. Yeah, right, but that's not the same thing.

Peter: So, he's basically arguing that service jobs are frequently bullshit, whereas agriculture and industry are generally not. And so, the rise of the service sector indicates a rise in bullshit jobs.

Michael: A lot of these kinds of manufacturing jobs bullshit too. You're doing something super redundant.

Peter: That's the thing is there's tons of redundancy in manufacturing. Yeah, but his point broadly is that technology and automation has taken all of these jobs and that it's left a void that we've filled with this bullshit. That are like, because we all feel the need to work and corporations want people employed because they're little feudal societies in his mind that we filled the void created by technology with bullshit jobs.

Michael: I don't know that I agree with this because again, companies wouldn't be spending money on work just for ideological reasons.

Peter: He thinks that you're a capitalist sucker. That argument is like, oh, you think markets are efficient, dipshit.

Michael: Well, I don't think markets are efficient, but I also think these are profit oriented industries. The whole problem with the way that we've structured capitalism is that they put profit above everything else. I don't think companies like “Hahaha, we must keep employing people to do nothing.”

Peter: But yeah, why do in-house television channels exist at corporations? Because someone's stupid.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. Completely.

Peter: Because a bunch of dumb people thought it was a good idea.

Michael: Or there may actually be this again, you need to look at the data. There may be indicators that this does affect retention.

Peter: We probably are being unfair to in-house television channels or whatever the fuck, because if that shit's working to boost morale for 15% of people, it's probably worth the investment. That fact that it makes us want to kill ourselves might be irrelevant here. Let's dig into this a bit because I think there is this question of what industries house the bullshit jobs that Graeber is constantly touching on. I'll send you this.

Michael: He says, “Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors or mechanics? It's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock workers would soon be in trouble. And even one without science fiction writers or Ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer if all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal consultants were to similarly vanish.” I mean there's lobbyists for animal rights and stuff. The entire category of lobbyists is just weird to do this. Private equity CEOs he's fucking correct about. But that's not because the job is bullshit, it's because the sector is harmful. That's just like a different concept.

Peter: And that's what I think he misses with like where he has this perspective on certain industries. And then he's constantly bouncing back and forth between being like “This role is bullshit, which can be defensible in certain respects.” The lady with the fake paperwork bullshit job. And then being like, yeah, and like lobbying is also bullshit. And it's sort of like, yeah, no, I have a ton of objections with how this industry operates, but it doesn't feel like it's the same thing where it's just completely pointless.

Michael: Yeah. The fact that he says private equity CEO is really weird.

Peter: Right.

Michael: Because in most of his categories, what makes a bullshit job is a bullshit job is like you're doing stuff your boss wants you to do. That makes no sense. But if you're the CEO of a company, you're the one making people do stuff.

Peter: It's also hilarious to include Ska musicians in this. This is such a fucking leftist academic thing to do. [Michael laughs]. He's writing this in 2018.

Michael: Yeah, he's squirrel nut zippers are the real essential workers.

Peter: Let's talk about the people that we all know are essential less than Jake, [Michael laughs] but I think he's getting at something here. If you just try to imagine a good faith version of this, there are some jobs where the utility of that job is just readily apparent. If you are sweeping the floor, the benefit that you provide is a lot more immediate and clear than someone who is putting together decks on a marketing team somewhere. 

Michael: Totally.

Peter: When I was a teenager, like I said, I swept floors, and if I slacked off for a day, someone would notice. Yeah. You had this very clear and discreet objective.

Michael: This would never happen. But if were to not release an episode every single week, nothing would happen.

Peter: The fans would get angrier.

Michael: Have you started getting. I'm starting to get the mentions when I tweet something like, “Oh, so you have time to post, but you don't have time to make an episode?”

Peter: Well, when it comes to the amount that you post, they have a point, Michael. [Michael laughs] He says one must assume that the percentage of nurses, bus drivers, dentists, street cleaners, farmers, music teachers, repair men, gardeners, firefighters, set designers, plumbers, journalists, safety inspectors, musicians, tailors, and school crossing guards who checked no to the question, does your job make any meaningful difference in the world was approximately zero.

Michael: But also, dude, don't get me started on fucking school crossing guards. That's totally a bullshit job. The only reason they exist is because the streets in America are so unsafe. That's one of those kludge jobs that he was talking about, like a duct tape job.

Peter: I thought you were going to be survival of the fittest kids. Who gives a shit? [Michael laughs] So, there's also data in those European worker surveys on how people in those different industries view the usefulness of their jobs. Some of it aligns with what he's saying here. The percentage of teachers and nurses who think their jobs are useless is very low in these surveys, below 2%. But some of the jobs that Graeber categorizes as clearly useful have higher rates of workers who say it's useless. 9.7% of garbage collectors said they don't feel the job is useful.

Michael: Really? Okay.

Peter: And then on the other hand, the percentage of people in financial services who said their job is useless is about average. It's not below average like you think he'd predict. It does feel like maybe he's wish-casting a little bit here. Like he thinks that certain jobs are lecherous and useless and don't add value. And so, he thinks, “Oh, people will agree with me.” I think that you probably have a lot of people who have tedious jobs. If you're a garbage collector and you go from house to house grabbing trash and then dumping it into the truck, and then a couple days later you come back and there's more trash. I can see some part of your brain, even if it's irrational, being like, “What the fuck is this?” And I swept floors and there is a part of your brain that loses it a little bit, right? Where you're just like, “God damn it's dirty again.”

Michael: But it's also funny cause he's kind of locked himself into this self-report thing because a lot of people in the financial sector think that they're doing useful stuff and they fucking aren't.

Peter: Right, right.

Michael: If you're like chopping up mortgages and reselling them back to people, you might think that's useful, but it's fucking not.

Peter: I think you're right. This, the self-reporting here thing has blind spots because, yeah, garbage men are obviously doing useful work. Those things do not make people feel useful. And then, yeah, there are people who are just rent seeking, who contribute nothing but make a fortune and couldn't possibly be convinced that their jobs are useless because their entire sense of themselves relies on the belief that they are valuable.

Michael: Yeah, I'm drop-shipping vitamin supplements, but I have to believe it's essential because I paid 300 bucks for the seminar.

Peter: There is research showing that the more attenuated the impact of your job is, the lower your job satisfaction is likely to be. So, if you are not seeing the positive impact that you cause, even if you cause it, [crosstalk] it might make you think that your job is useless, which makes sense. It might make you think that your job sucks.

Michael: Yeah. This is my human rights career in a nutshell, where going to fucking UN conferences and giving speeches and stuff and like, no tangible impact. And everybody would sit around at night just being like, “What are we doing here?”

Peter: It's cool that you were like, “This is useless work. I'm going to go become a podcaster. It's time to really reach people.”

Michael: Every extra hour of the Olivia Nuzzi [Peter laughs] episode makes the world such a better place.

Peter: I want to draw a distinction because this came into my head a couple of times when he was talking about the internal marketing stuff, the fucking in-house television channels and all that, that grinds at you, if you're I think like us. When I worked at a large corporation or two and I saw shit like that, I'd be like, “Ugh.” But the other end of that is the way that Elon Musk runs companies.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: Yeah. Where everything is stripped down to the bone and there's none of that. And that does, I have to say, feel worse.

Michael: So, much worse.

Peter: It's got to be worse, right?

Michael: It's like the, you know, the old saying is that half of all advertising spending is wasted. It's just hard to identify which half. I feel a lot of this cultural stuff within corporations, a lot of it is bullshit, but it's difficult to find exactly where the bullshit is and where the non-bullshit is.

Peter: Yeah, it's a balancing act and on either side is an abyss.

Michael: Yeah. I feel both of us are just not joiners in that way. I've never gotten invested in the corporation I work for or the school I go to.

Peter: I do participate in sports fandom, so I do understand this.

Michael: Would you have an emotional response if Kansas City won the Super Bowl? Because I had no response whatsoever to Seattle winning.

Peter: Not only that, when I watch a team I like in a high stakes game in the playoffs or whatever, my anxiety levels are through the fucking-- [crosstalk]

Michael: Oh, you're like clenched. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: My real physical anxiety that would be almost impossible for me to replicate outside of super high stakes work situations and stuff.

Michael: This does make no sense to me. But also, I watch Elden Ring no hit randomizer runs and I'm clenched the entire time. So, I do get it on some level.

Peter: Yeah, I mean that's so much worse.

Michael: [laughs] No, it's all fake.

Peter: No.

Michael: I love it when sports people. Are like, “Oh, this is fake.” Like, oh yeah, like putting a ball in the hoop isn't fucking fake.

Peter: I know, I know that you think that it's all fake, but I do feel there's a spectrum where like-- [crosstalk]

Michael: No.

Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael: Sports is dumb. Makeup tutorials are dumb. Twitch streamers are dumb. It's all dumb. It's all bullshit jobs.

Peter: No. It's a spectrum, it's a spectrum. And sports are just a little bit farther along than no hit Elden Ring speedruns. Yeah.

Michael: False, false.

Peter: You're watching a 13-year-old who's sitting on a gamer chair/toilet play and you're like this is sports.

Michael: Whatever. Both of us are watching someone else do something that we are incapable of doing and getting invested in it. It's precisely the same thing.

Peter: That's not the definition of sports.

Michael: The quarterback fucking Dan Marino or whatever is the same level of bullshit as like the 19-year-old twitch streamer that I'm watching.

Peter: Damn it. Right now.

Michael: Brett Favre. Who's the fucking-- who’s a quarterback?

Peter: Dude, [laughs] these are-- [crosstalk]

Michael: Who's a quarterback?

Peter: These are all athletes from the 80s and 90s [laughs].

Michael: At least they're football, though. I know some football people.

Peter: They are quarterbacks. You're right. You know what? Credit where it's due.

Michael: Thank you.

Peter: Now, what's the name of a no-hit Elden Ring streamer?

Michael: I'm not going to say because it's too embarrassing.

Peter: Yeah, exactly. That’s the thing.

[laughter] 

Michael: There's a kernel of truth. There's a kernel of truth. I'm not giving it to you. 

Peter: What makes sports a little more real is that I am engaged because it is popular.

Michael: Whatever. What's the fucking difference? And it's just a question of scale.

Peter: Well, I do think there's a slight difference in that. I feel like any 13-year-old who tried really hard could do what [laughs] the Elden Ring streamers do.

Michael: That's not true because they can't do it. There's only like, “Only a few people have done it.” I'm not going to names, but I know the names.

Peter: There is only a few people who have tried, Michael. 

[laughter] 

Other people are out there getting their dicks out right.

[laughter]

It's crazy how far off topic we are right now. We're like, “You're just trying to say the word bullshit sometimes so we can tie this back in.”

Michael: Exactly. That's exactly what I'm doing.

Peter: All right, there is another if you take a step back and look at his big picture thesis, there's a testable claim that he makes, which is that technology has resulted in us working more, not less. Remember he said that Keynes predicted that technology would lead us to wait, Keynes? Fuck. What is it?

Michael: Yeah, whatever.

Peter: Okay, well don't say whatever because I'm going to get strung up for this.

Michael: I'm going to keep the one where you're wrong. I'm going to look it up and then keep the take where you're incorrect. So don't worry about it. That's why I'm saying this.

Peter: But he basically says, “Look, technology has gotten to a point where it could lead us to lives of leisure.” But instead, “it has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more.” This gets at something that feels instinctively kind of true, which is that technological advances result in more productivity but not a lighter workload. 

Michael: Although, it does seem Bullshit Jobs is the wrong way to look at that. There's specific political science reasons for that.

Peter: This is the heart of the episode because we've been going back and forth with like, “Well, he's onto something, but not really.” But there are actually coherent theories of this. It's tough to measure this in a big picture way, but you can just look at average work hours over time, over a long enough time frame you do see that. In 1870, the average American worker worked over 3000 hours a year. Now that's down to about 1800. And obviously that's not just the result of technological advances. There are a ton of variables. You have worker’s rights movements, legislation, cultural changes, but you see very, very similar trends across the Western world. So, I think this is the best argument, that, generally speaking, better technology has, in fact, reduced overall working hours. So, you might look at that at a glance and just think, “Well, Graeber is wrong.” He's a communist dumbass, and he does not understand the glory of capitalism.

Michael: That's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm sitting here thinking.

Peter: But if you zoom in, the story does get a little bit more complicated. I'm going to share a chart with you. This chart is annual working hours per worker across various countries.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, basically, since, what is it, roughly 1980, almost every other country has seen reductions in working hours, especially in Western Europe, and we've stagnated. So, we're basically working the same number of hours that we were in 1980.

Peter: That's right. So, there are massive decreases in working hours from 1870 to about 1970. After that, it's been largely flat, slight declines, but really hovering at about 1800 hours worked per year in the United States.

Michael: Whereas Germany is below 1500.

Peter: So, now it seems like maybe Graeber is getting at something. There have been a ton of technological advances since the 70s, but this has not reduced American working hours. So, he may be wrong that bullshit jobs are proliferating, but he's right that better technology and more productivity has not led to more leisure time for Americans, at least in the last several decades,

Michael: Which is a big deal.

Peter: Graeber has a ton of frankly rambling explanations of why it occurs at the micro level within organizations. A lot of it revolves around his idea of managerial feudalism, where he argues that corporations have grown to resemble feudal relationships where wealth and power is distributed for political reasons rather than economic reasons. We've talked about how this doesn't quite click. Yeah, it's an interesting angle, but I do not believe that corporations have just created 20 to 30% fake jobs-

Michael: Right, yeah.

Peter: -out of like a feudal spirit.

Michael: It feels more like they've just lobbied against things like more vacation time, maternity leave. This is why hours are so much reduced in Western Europe.

Peter: Let's not get ahead of ourselves and start talking about Western Europe. All right. 

Michael: Okay.

Peter: [laughs] So, his macro explanation is a little more coherent and it's cultural. It's basically Protestant work ethic stuff. So, I'll send that.

Michael: He says, “The captains of industry, first in America, then increasingly everywhere, have been able to convince the public that they, and not those they employ are the real creators of prosperity. One could call it a revival of Puritanism. But as we've seen, this idea goes much further back to a fusion of the Christian doctrine of the curse of Adam with the Northern European notion that paid labor under a master's discipline is the only way to become a genuine adult. This history made it very easy to encourage workers to see their work not so much as wealth creation or helping others, or at least not primarily so, but as self-abnegation, a kind of secular hair shirt, a sacrifice of joy and pleasure that allows us to become an adult worthy of our consumer toys.”

Peter: This argument is basically that we're a society where people get their dignity from work, and that has created incentives to pursue work even if it is pointless.

Michael: After living in Western Europe for 12 years, I don't actually think that's the case. They have the same thing there, but they have fewer working hours than we do and they have like, “Paid vacation.” I just don't think this works for, like, we work 15% more hours than other capitalist countries. They also get a sense of self-worth in fucking Denmark, but they just work less than we do.

Peter: So, here is my attempt to synthesize bullshit jobs with the best research I could find. There's this economist, Juliet Schor, who studies this and wrote a very influential book in 1992 called The Overworked American. And she was also trying to understand this very basic phenomenon. Why did productivity stop reducing hours in the 1970s or so, and where did that extra productivity go? Her main explanation is that in the United States around this time, the extra productivity stopped turning into more leisure time and started turning into consumption. In 1970, household consumption was under 60% of GDP. By 1990, it's in the mid-60s and for the last couple of decades after the publication of her book, it's been about 70%, just south of 70%. She points out that if you survey people, they are not materialist, they actually value free time. She conducted a survey of people making around $30,000 a year, which is about 70,000 in today's money, and asked if they would trade a day of work each week for an equivalent reduction in pay. 70% said yes. She also points out that polls asking people to rank their priorities between things like health, family life, etc. Always result in material things ranking very low. One obvious explanation for this is that people are lying either to themselves or to the pollsters. They think they want more leisure time, but when presented with the choice, they'll choose more money.

Michael: Right.

Peter: But Schor's broad argument is that these choices are shaped by institutions and norms. So not only are there social and cultural pressures to work, but even if you wanted to reduce your working hours, it's not always easy. Most people cannot trade their job for a part time version of their job. There's also a finite amount of well-paying part-time work. In general, the job market is built around full-time work. Right.

Michael: I do this for everything. But I also think the decline of unions. People don't want to get fired in America. So, you do what your boss tells you.

Peter: I mean, this feels obvious. And it's where it's obviously going, right? But like in Germany, they're now under 1400 hours per year on average. France hovers around 1500. And you look at like, “Well, what would account for this gap?” And she says, “Stronger unions, labor law protections, mandatory vacation.” Why are they working less? Well, they all take a month or two off every single year.

Michael: I will say like culturally, when I worked in Denmark, I was part of a unionized NGO. We would have meetings where my boss would be like, “Oh, I need you to get me that by Monday.” And people would just be like, “Oh no.” [laughs] People come into like my boss' office and be like, “Oh, it's sunny out. I'm going to leave at like 3:30 today.”

Peter: That rocks.

Michael: People are not afraid of getting fired. People are so afraid of getting fired in America. So, you lose health care. Oftentimes, you're not. Like you can get evicted much more easily. Losing your job is just objectively much more devastating here. And so, you have to do whatever you can to keep your job. And you just don't have that in Western Europe in the same way.

Peter: Right.

Michael: And a lot of that is unions. I mean, it's also, like, labor protections. It's other things too.

Peter: I mean, they go hand in hand.

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: So, I think she's making an argument that half supports Graeber and half doesn't. He's basically saying our capitalist overlords want us to work for abstract reason. Where they maintain this feudal control over people and it benefits them. She's basically saying, “No, what's happened is the money goes to consumption.” So, it's not that bullshit jobs are being sort created out of the ether by corporations to keep us working or something along those lines. It's that we now consume more, which creates demand. So, we got richer, but instead of saying, “Oh, hey, I'll trade that for free time,” we trade it for consumer goods, which creates demand, which creates more jobs. So, you could view those as the bullshit jobs, right? The excess consumption that goes beyond what we actually need. And that's vague in and of itself.

Michael: The repairman on the Labubu vending machine.

Peter:  Right.

Michael: Yes.

Peter: The Labubu is perhaps a great example. Demand has been created out of thin air for a thing that literally no one needs.

Michael: Right.

Peter: I think that is a category of bullshit. It's just like needless consumption.

Michael: Watches, for example. People are buying watches.

Peter: That we do not need. [Michael laughs] That we do not need. I was just watching a TikTok by, like, a watch TikToker.

Michael: Dude, I think we've reached the ultimate bullshit job, “A watch TikToker.” [Michael laughs] I can't think of anything more bullshit than that.

Peter: How else would I learn about watch? The funniest type of guy is the guy who's like, I like a Rolex because that will get you into the room where you can do more business.

Michael: Oh, it's like an investment, It's like a LinkedIn post. Yeah.

Peter: I'm spending 12 grand on a watch because it opens doors for me, and God knows how much that's worth. And it's just like, “I can't imagine how much of a fucking pervert someone would have to be, to be like, “Yo, that guy's got a Rolex.”

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, I'm definitely going to that guy's seminar now.

Peter: So, there is one final thought section he has. The final chapter sort of touches on policy.

Michael: He says, “I don't usually like putting public policy recommendations in my book. One reason for this is that it has been my experience that if an author is critical of existing social arrangements, reviewers will often respond by effectively asking, “So, what are you proposing to do about it then?” Search the text until they find something that looks like a policy suggestion, and then act as if that is what the book is basically about. So, if I were to suggest that a mass reduction of working hours or a policy of universal basic income might go far in solving the problems described here, the likely response will be to see this as a book about reducing working hours or about universal basic income, and to treat it as if it stands and falls on the workability of that policy or even the ease by which it could be implemented.” I mean, that's fair. Although that's what we're about to do.

Peter: Yeah, it's sort of like, “What am I, the fucking smartest guy on earth?” I don't know. I'm just pointing out a problem. 

Michael: I do respect somebody that has a book that's just like, “Hey, This sucks.”

Peter: Yeah, like, you're all a bunch of flunkies and goons, and I don't know how to fix it, but I'll see you guys later.

Michael: I complain about Hollywood making sequels and remakes all the time. I don't have a public policy solution to that. It just sucks.

Peter: Why don't you make a movie? [Michael laughs] Why don't you make a gay little indie film?

Michael: Why would it be a gay little indie film, Peter?

Peter: I love a gay little indie film. I'm on your side, Michael, [Michael laughs] and I will fund you, so don't get too angry. 

Michael: Wait, so does he just end by saying, “I don't have any public policy recommendations and here's my reason?”

Peter: Yeah, the final chapter has a bunch about the impact that he believes that this has on society, that it creates these resentments up and down the ladder, and that I think this is a very basic lefty idea that elites take advantage of resentments between non-elites.

Michael: Right.

Peter: So, yeah, I think he has this belief that these jobs drag on society. I don't think he has identified a discrete and identifiable thing.

Michael: Right.

Peter: I do think it feels hard to argue with the idea that the reason productivity started going to consumption rather than leisure in the United States is that we lack what they have in Europe. We don't have the unions, the labor law protections. That is the big difference here. And I think in my mind that's obvious leftist shit 101. But that's what I like about it. I feel Graeber did this whole thought experiment that ended up just landing me at like, “Yeah, we need labor law.”

Michael: Yeah. Like, this is why I'm on the left and not on the right is because these obvious things. Also, doesn't his thesis depend on Western Europe having fewer bullshit jobs than we do?

Peter: Yeah.

Michael:  Brother. 

Peter: Which he doesn't explore.

Michael: Brother, as someone who lived there. They do not have fewer bullshit jobs than they do, man. 

[laughter]

Have you met a French person? Have you asked them what they do?

Peter: He navigated his way towards some truths here. In different parts of the book, I do think that there are elements of our jobs that are bullshit. It seems to be objectively true that we are not pursuing leisure as a society in America. That we have not converted our productivity into leisure. These are real things. And I think in the micro, he'll say these little things where you're like, “That's true is the broad macro phenomenon of the bullshit job, as he describes it, real?” I don't really think so.

Michael: I will say I'm much more negative on this book than it seems like you are. You said this is like an okay book. This seems bad to me.

Peter: I will say that the experience of reading it is probably a lot better than the experience of hearing about it. Every few pages you're like, “That's an interesting way to frame that,” even if it's not quite right. I do think it's managerial feudal idea of corporations, even though it's not an accurate way to explain what's happening with bullshit jobs, is an interesting way to explain certain corporate dynamics.

Michael: Maybe it's the opposite of Robert Kiyosaki where he was just an execrable person to spend time with. And David Graeber seems an okay guy to spend time with, even if you're like, “Eh, I don't really agree with that.”

Peter: A lot of the book is anecdotes that people send in about their bullshit jobs. And it's extremely boring to read because every single one, you're like, “Yeah, that does sound like bullshit.”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter: For the podcast, it wouldn't be good to be like, and here's another person who said that they did useless paperwork. But that's a large chunk of the book. And I will say it's kind of fun to read.

Michael: Yeah, sure. Yeah. 

Peter: There's something about it that's a little bit entertaining.

Michael: It's cathartic. Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. There's some shared human experience in this fucking shit we have to do sometimes because our boss thinks it's important and it's obviously not.

Michael: And that's also so relatable to the idea that some part of your job I think this is, like, universal, some part of your job is complete bullshit.

Peter: Right, right. I was able, and I still am on this train to convince myself that he pointed out this social phenomenon and he's inaccurately diagnosing it. But it's a really interesting phenomenon, the idea that we as a society have had the option to turn our increased productivity into leisure and haven't done it.

Michael: Yeah, I think that's true that we shouldn't get rid of the Ska musicians, and it's especially true that we shouldn't get rid of the No-Hit Randomizer Elden Ring streamer. [Peter laughs] I think that's not, it's not bullshit, Peter.

Peter: I want you to say, what everyone listening wants you to say, which is that it's cool to throw a ball far. [Michael laughs]

[music]

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