The need for bullshit jobs
Why the technological system creates bullshit jobs
I don't know how it is for other people but my work demands so little for me that it isn't uncommon to have entire days where I can afford to not work at all and just pretend to be doing stuff in front of a screen, and today is one of those days.
I suspect that this isn't a rare situation, as the term bullshit jobs has become pretty popular now, and people talk more and more about how the so-called 40-hour week - which doesn't include commute by the way - could probably be reduced down to 30 or even 20 hours for many people, and their total productivity would stay the same. In fact, the total productivity might even go up when you consider how much your mood affects your productivity, and how having less time forces you to be much more deliberate and focused.1
I would say the general phenomenon behind bullshit jobs is the consequence of several aspects in current society:
The technological system has become incredibly efficient, to the point that next to one needs to provide for the basic necessities of life, such as food, water, shelter, heating or clothing.
But people still need to work because having so many people have so much free time is very dangerous for the technological system. The 2 main options being:
Escaping from reality with distractions or hedonism. This is largely a coping mechanism from the deeply unfulfilling and isolated life within the modern world I would say
Consciously pursuing what one wants out of Life, which very likely has little to do with helping the technological system grow
Those 2 options are at best indifferent to the technological system, or are at worst antithetical to it, since fulfillment (option b) often comes from simplifying one's life and what one can actually change - i.e. not the massive system that has covered the globe.
People are forced to work but cannot contribute much to the technological system since it has become so incredibly complex and the majority of people aren't particularly smart or skilled - they are just good at obeying increasingly complicated orders and instructions.
And as a result of those 3 effects, we have an economy that is increasingly bullshit, in order to sustain the hamster wheel of work which is a major control mechanism.
One aspect of bullshit jobs that is very noticeable for anyone who has worked in a sizeable company is that they usually make things worse. Adding complexity to a system without improver anything isn’t a net neutral, it’s a net negative because it creates more friction for the people who are actually doing something, usually in the form of bureaucracy. Unsurprisingly, bullshit jobs are often middlemen roles - once again because they don’t require the expertise of the actual producers - and thus it is not rare for tasks to take days rather than a dozen or so minutes because of the increased bureaucracy.2
But they exist despite those insane inefficiencies because once again, the technological system cannot afford to simply let people be free, as the more discerning ones will realize that this giant system doesn't seem that necessary for living a fulfilling life.
Another reason why I believe they exist is because of the necessity to maintain certain myths within our society, such as the myth of progress or the myth of perpetual growth. Society is fundamentally built from myths - collectives stories that orient how we view the world and our actions - in order to scale coordination.
Myths aren't inherently problematic, but the problem arises when reality needs to be changed to fit a myth rather than the other way around. The myth of progress I'm talking about here isn't that technological progress is happening, because that's just true. The myth lies rather in a judgement of value, that technological progress always makes our lives better, that newer ways of doing things are always better and that the past is a collection of stupid ideas and traditions that we've outgrown.
Like every myth that so many people believe in, it has a core of truth. Advances in sanitation and medicine have drastically cut off deaths at birth, we've let go of some awful practices like bloodletting, the thermal insulation of houses is noticeably better thanks to newer materials and increased understanding, the internet has made access to information easier than ever, just to list a few.
But to say that technological progress doesn't have its dark side is plain denial. Everyone can give such examples if they're prompted to do so: social isolation, ecological destruction, the ravages of the atomic bomb, economical turmoil and the gradual disappearance of meaningful work, increasing surveillance, plastic pollution filling our oceans and thus affecting our food, landfills being some of the biggest man-made structures, the exposure of young minds to horrendous images and videos, and a general erosion of any connection to life, community or adventure.
The more sophisticated proponents of the myth of progress will admit that these problems exist, but that they can simply be solved with more technology. I however do not believe this refutation one bit, because fundamentally, the technological system is an unconscious collective. It directs the behavior of human beings in such a way so as to maximize its own power, never asking for their voluntary participation. This is why people are so unconscious when doing basically anything in the modern world: working, driving, eating, consuming entertainment3, etc. (There is a lot more to say about the usage of unconsciousness, but once again this is for another post)
To come back to the main topic, bullshit jobs exist because the technological system only knows expansion, since the maximization of power is what has made our society so much better at competing with others in the past, and also in the presentAs a result, technological progress must be a fundamental axiom of our society, and the people who have the most power within it will justify that by arranging our social reality so as to fit the myths.
"But, look at the employment of my country! Aren't we so productive!" The false, implicit, equation being Employment = Productivity = GDP = Economical Growth = Good. Notice how each of the 4 equalities is highly questionable if you closely think about it.
Thus the system could never allow bullshit jobs to disappear, even though they create so much inefficiency and forces people to waste their finite life doing ... nothing. To do so would be to go against its fundamental direction of more. More technology, more employment, more control, more power. To move in the direction of health and sustainability would require admitting that actually, more work doesn't necessarily make life better. It doesn't even make the economy better in fact, because of all the inefficiencies discussed before.
This implies that yes, the economy would probably reduce in size, at least officially - informal acts like repairing things and trading things with neighbors aren't part of the reported economy, such as what GDP tracks, yet they clearly provide value - but if we were concerned with reality and having a genuinely useful society, why would this be a bad thing? An economy is a tool for society, and society itself is a tool for collective well-being. To put the method above the goal is an example of Goodhart's Law, which states that when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a helpful metric.
This law shows up again and again when societal problems are examined more closely, and my explanation is that coordination often results from collectively trying to optimize defined metrics - since vague goals are difficult to coordinate with - and this results in people gaming them since it gives them a personal advantage, since they are only rewarded for how well they perform at those particular metrics.
The thing is that health and sustainability don't matter to the technological system, and again, only power matters to it. As an individual however, you can decide to play another game. I'm not saying it's easy - I mean I'm writing this piece from a job that is largely bullshit - but it's still a possible path.
For instance, you don't have to subscribe to the dogma of More. That doesn't mean you have to subscribe to its opposite idea, that less is always better, but it means that you can decide to examine for yourself whether things genuinely add to your Life. "Do I actually care about buying this? Why do I want a car in the first place? How much of my life is only there to compensate for other things?"
I don't believe in collective change - for me those 2 words form an oxymoron. Large scale collectives do not change through conscious decisions, they are simply too massive and too powerful and are instead swayed by survival forces - mimetics mostly, and in turn everything that dictates how well an idea can spread. One of the quote about collective entities I will never forget comes from the following piece by Michael Smith (highly recommend his Youtube series on "Unsaving the World" too) :
I think the world makes more sense if you recognize humans aren't on the top of the food chain. We don't see this clearly, kind of like ants don't clearly see anteaters. They know something is wrong, and they rush around trying to deal with it, but it's not like any ant recognizes the predator in much more detail than "threat".
There's a whole type of living being "above" us the way animals are "above" ants. Esoteric traditions sometimes call these creatures "egregores" […]
The technological system has its own trajectory and as a result, I only believe in personal action. By that, I don't mean revolt or manifestations, or even writing manifestos. Many people far smarter than me have tried to come up with a vision of what they consider to be a better society, and they have utterly failed.
By personal action, I simply mean focusing one's energy on navigating towards a better life. This might seem small, tiny even, but that doesn't make it less meaningful. Deciding to do work that is actually important, even just for yourself, is very significant, because bullshit jobs are a drain on one's soul.
Many people report that they are tired and struggle to sleep, even though they work at a bullshit job. Why is that? From personal experience, I would say that deep down, those people know that they are wasting their lives at their job, but they are too afraid or confused to do anything about it. This inner conflict then leads to an expenditure in energy and a difficulty to sleep - since you cannot bullshit yourself in bed - and I would say the only real cure to that is to actually work on something important, either for yourself or being it helps people around you.
I think one of the most dangerous ideas in the modern world is that work is always miserable. I would say that work can be pretty enjoyable if you remove all the bureaucracy and bullshit that the technological system adds to it, although it's obviously not the same type of 'enjoyment' as 'entertainment' (apathy with a coating of pleasure), and that kind of work isn't readily available, since control is far too important for the system.
Still, there are many actions possible and the best things in Life often start small: writing a blog post, making a video to express your thoughts, learning the guitar, drawing your cat, learning a new language. Even if those never amount to a significant income stream, the sheer value of doing something personally meaningful cannot be overstated. Bullshit jobs rob us of our time but also of our soul, because they unconsciously tell us that our life isn't worth more than a number in our bank account. Fortunately, there is more to life than the emptiness found in the office.
The situation where having less resources can actually lead to a better total outcome isn't uncommon, this phenomenon is called the _region beta paradox_. The general idea is that humans have a certain threshold before they put in genuine effort, and thus when things get hard enough without being overwhelmingly difficult, the net result of the added effort might be better than when things were easier.
Many such anecdotes found in this video as well as in the comment section
See my post Death by apathy where I argue that entertainment is mostly apathy