Book Surgeon No. 7

Anthropologist David Graeber did not shy away from a provocative title for this book–Bullshit Jobs. He generally does not seem like the type of person that was afraid to express his perspective, even if some would find it upsetting. His argument that many of the jobs are at least partly useless may threaten the identity of many readers, who may begin to question the underlying meaning of their jobs. Yet, upon reading his book, one realizes that Bullshit Jobs is not simply a book attacking certain useless industries or jobs; rather, it is a book with heavy philosophical underpinnings about the nature of work, as well as the changes in our society that have transformed our work environment to its present state, where many people are in jobs that they themselves feel are useless. This book was born from a previous essay by Graeber, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, which unsurprisingly received both support and criticism. To acquire data for the essay and subsequently this book, Graeber interviews many people about their work, finding that there are many jobs that seem to have no purpose or produce a good or service that is of little use to others. Since the people with the most information on the utility of a job’s tasks are the workers themselves, Graeber sets forth a final working definition for a bullshit job: “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.”

I have been interested in reading Bullshit Jobs for quite some time now since I have been studying and thinking about similar themes since my freshman year of college. One of the key papers that introduced me to themes about the necessity of work was Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren (1930) by John Maynard Keynes–one of the most influential economists to live in the last several centuries. In this short paper, written during a period of economic pessimism, Keynes addresses a key question: “what can we reasonably expect the level of our economic life to be a hundred years hence?” He asserts that the modern age started with the accumulation of capital that began in the sixteenth century; before this period, economic progress was incredibly slow. In the eighteenth century, “the great age of science and technical inventions began … [and] the growth of capital has been on a scale which is far beyond a hundredfold of what any previous age had known.” Specifically, for instance, in the United States, “factory output per head was 40 percent greater in 1925 than in 1919.” As a result of these trends of economic growth, Keynes predicted that the economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, would be solved within a hundred years. In other words, at the present rate of technological change, within one hundred years, we would be able to produce enough goods to provide for the needs of our entire population with almost no human labor. However, Keynes, who in many ways was ahead of his time, also writes about some of the social challenges that this progress would bring forth to our society. For instance, he discusses the challenge of technological unemployment, which is incredibly pertinent today as new technologies, like self-checkout machines or self-driving cars, are changing the landscape of required work. One challenge of this technological unemployment is that humans have a fundamental need to work and feel purposeful; as Keynes writes, “there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.” Yet, he suggests that we would be able to satisfy a need for purpose in work through “three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week.” Reading this paper now, almost 100 years later, we question why the standard work week is still more than forty hours, not fifteen. One reason is our seemingly endless growth of consumerism; as technological change has allowed us to produce goods more efficiently, we have found a way to constantly expand the scope of goods we feel are necessary to live our lives. Another reason seems to stem from this fundamental desire to work and feel productive, which Graeber also discusses as a reason for the proliferation of bullshit jobs described in his book. 

Finally, what can we do about the current state of our work? This question is particularly complex since it involves intertwining economic, psychological, and political inputs. However, one possible idea, which I have been a proponent of for several years, is a universal basic income (UBI), which would require a whole essay of its own to discuss some of the merits and criticisms of such a solution. I highly recommend anyone to read Graeber’s argument, which he discusses in the last chapter of Bullshit Jobs, or to read about the arguments for and against a UBI from any other reputable and well-researched source. Nonetheless, even if political change to our work landscape comes slowly, questioning and thinking about our own relationship with work and where we derive meaning will allow us to find more awareness and fulfillment within our own lives.