Many People Feel They Work In Pointless, Meaningless Jobs, Research Confirms (phys.org) 302
A new study found that people working in finance, sales and managerial roles are much more likely than others on average to think their jobs are useless or unhelpful to others. Phys.Org reports: The study, by Simon Walo, of Zurich University, Switzerland, is the first to give quantitative support to a theory put forward by the American anthropologist David Graeber in 2018 that many jobs were "bullshit" -- socially useless and meaningless. Researchers had since suggested that the reason people felt their jobs were useless was solely because they were routine and lacked autonomy or good management rather than anything intrinsic to their work, but Mr. Walo found this was only part of the story.
He analyzed survey data on 1,811 respondents in the U.S. working in 21 types of jobs, who were asked if their work gave them "a feeling of making a positive impact on community and society" and "the feeling of doing useful work." The American Working Conditions Survey, carried out in 2015, found that 19% of respondents answered "never" or "rarely" to the questions whether they had "a feeling of making a positive impact on community and society" and "of doing useful work" spread across a range of occupations.
Mr. Walo adjusted the raw data to compare workers with the same degree of routine work, job autonomy and quality of management, and found that in the occupations Graeber thought were useless, the nature of the job still had a large effect beyond these factors. Those working in business and finance and sales were more than twice as likely to say their jobs were socially useless than others. Managers were 1.9 more likely to say this and office assistants 1.6 times. [...] Law was the only occupation cited by Graeber as useless where Mr. Walo found no statistically significant evidence that staff found their jobs meaningless. Mr. Walo also found that the share of workers who consider their jobs socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector. The study has been published in the journal Work, Employment and Society.
He analyzed survey data on 1,811 respondents in the U.S. working in 21 types of jobs, who were asked if their work gave them "a feeling of making a positive impact on community and society" and "the feeling of doing useful work." The American Working Conditions Survey, carried out in 2015, found that 19% of respondents answered "never" or "rarely" to the questions whether they had "a feeling of making a positive impact on community and society" and "of doing useful work" spread across a range of occupations.
Mr. Walo adjusted the raw data to compare workers with the same degree of routine work, job autonomy and quality of management, and found that in the occupations Graeber thought were useless, the nature of the job still had a large effect beyond these factors. Those working in business and finance and sales were more than twice as likely to say their jobs were socially useless than others. Managers were 1.9 more likely to say this and office assistants 1.6 times. [...] Law was the only occupation cited by Graeber as useless where Mr. Walo found no statistically significant evidence that staff found their jobs meaningless. Mr. Walo also found that the share of workers who consider their jobs socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector. The study has been published in the journal Work, Employment and Society.
There are only 2 types of jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the jobs that very few people can do and second the jobs that nobody wants to do. Those are jobs. Because something that everyone can do and is fulfilling is no job. Someone will already do this for free because it gives them joy.
So what's left is the things that need to be done but nobody can do or nobody wants to do. That is what you can get paid for. If nobody wants to do it, you have to pay people money so it gets done. If nobody can do it, you have to pay the people who can or else they'll do it for someone else.
That first group, the jobs that very few people can do and are in high demand, may be rewarding, fulfilling, enjoyable and give a feeling of usefulness and satisfaction. The big rest does not. Because if it did, someone would already do it for free.
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I have to disagree. People DO get paid for doing things they enjoy. Work doesn't have to be grinding, it CAN be enjoyable and fun. Hell, almost ANY job can be enjoyable and fun IF implemented in such a way as to make them enjoyable and fun.
People don't pay other people because the work is tedious. People pay other people because the job needs to be done and they're willing to pay to get it done. In the end, capitalism isn't about tedium, capitalism is about always trading things of low personal value for so
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Well, can you name a job that people enjoy doing AND that could be done by most people?
Because while I agree with you that it should be about paying for something that someone else can do better, i.e. I could tile my floor, but there's this pro that can do it faster, better and with less material, so if you want it done right, get the pro to do it. That's a nice theory.
The reality, though, is that this pro costs way too much for most people and they end up doing it themselves if there's even a remote chance
Lol. No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because something that everyone can do and is fulfilling is no job. Someone will already do this for free because it gives them joy.
Your background is DEFINITELY not education. Ask any teacher about that shit.
That first group, the jobs that very few people can do and are in high demand, may be rewarding, fulfilling, enjoyable and give a feeling of usefulness and satisfaction.
No. The "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is a fucking lie that's been perpetuated forever. Anything you HAVE to do quickly has all the joy siphoned out - whether you initially loved doing it or not.
Warren Buffett famously says he "skips to work'. The reason is simple and obvious - he doesn't need it at all. It's something he CHOOSES to do, and therefore even calling it work is a misnomer.
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Warren Buffett famously says he "skips to work'. The reason is simple and obvious
He has a few dozen billion dollars. It's obvious why he skips to work.
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Arguably anyone who has a few dozen billion dollars and still goes regularly to work to make even more money is in serious need of a mental tune-up. Considering all the wonderful people and places and things to do in the world, spending time and attention earning money makes sense only if you have to do it.
Re:Lol. No. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Your background is DEFINITELY not education. Ask any teacher about that shit.
No, but I know quite a few teachers. Most of them quit teaching kids and went into adult education. Way less stress, way less dealing with entitled little shits, way more satisfaction. Anyone still teaching kids is in it for the money and the increased holiday time. Not for the joy of teaching. At least I don't know a single one. Nobody would deal with those little bastards for free, not even their parents very obviously.
The "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is a fucking lie that's been perpetuated forever.
Funny. I have such a job. It's fulfilling, enjoyable, interesting, I get to toy with in
Re:Lol. No. (Score:5, Informative)
> Anyone still teaching kids is in it for the money
Not in the United States they aren't. The average salary in the US for gradeschool teachers is $64K which is barely above the gross national average of about $60K. Meanwhile school budgets are so low, stories of teachers paying for their student's supplies out of pocket is alarmingly common.
And if they're in some of the shittier parts of the country they're also expected to know combat-level emergency medical aide and have firearms training. I wish I was making that up...
=Smidge=
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You wouldn't last a week as a teacher in a public school. No wonder there is a teacher shortage.
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Those "entitled little shits" are exactly who filled out the survey in this article once they growed up.
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I do hope your life has shown you the difference.
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Frankly? No. I do what's fun and get paid for it. Why learn about a difference when it doesn't matter to you?
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No. The "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is a fucking lie that's been perpetuated forever. Anything you HAVE to do quickly has all the joy siphoned out - whether you initially loved doing it or not.
Warren Buffett famously says he "skips to work'.
I've been a professional programmer for around 30 years. It's still great. I enjoy my job. My coworkers do, too. The secret sauce is that my boss hired people who would get along together. He didn't hire based on skill alone, he hired based on personalities. People who leave and work somewhere else still come back for lunch sometimes.
*That* matters as much as what you do for a living. Who you are working with.
Re:There are only 2 types of jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up. A very useful and interesting discussion point.
My take on this is
- All honest work is valuable
- A job well done is its own reward
- Every task requires human knowledge, insight, and skill
- Every task deserves to be done well, no matter how lowly
- Time and attention -- not money! -- is the true currency of any economy
I have worked with technical people all my life. I have tried to surround myself with people who are far smarter, far more skilled, and far more diligent than myself. What I've learned is that
- Technical people are motivated by the chance to make a difference
- "Laziness" (in the form of never wanting to ever do that mundane, routine chore again) is the driving force behind automation
- Natural leadership is the best leadership, it is needs to flow as needs change
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"Laziness" (in the form of never wanting to ever do that mundane, routine chore again) is the driving force behind automation
Laziness is my driving force to become more efficient. I'm lazy. I don't like doing pointless work. The sensible thing to do is to ponder how to minimize the amount of time wasted on doing it.
Re: There are only 2 types of jobs (Score:2)
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Can they? Would you want to listen to them comment on the game, and more importantly, would anyone not a fan of their favorite team want to?
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1. You can get paid for anything as long as you convince someone it's worth paying for.
2. Jobs nobody wants to do in their free time is what you're talking about, because I would wager that given the choice between sweeping the street and starvation a lot of people would choose the former.
3. Just because someone enjoys doing something does not mean they will do it for free. People need to eat and pay bills, and job satisfaction doesn't do that. You might enjoy graphic design and be lucky enough to do it as
room for improvement - you're fired (Score:2)
Re: room for improvement - you're fired (Score:3)
Yeah well thats life (Score:3)
Jobs arn't meant to be fun. If yours is then great, but they exist (for the employee) to earn money.
Compared to how things used to be even a few hundred years ago when the majority of people even in the west lived in what would today be classed as extreme poverty - eg 10 people living in a single room , no running water or toilet, the majority of children dying before they reached double figures age, most adults not making it past 50 - today we have it pretty good even if the job is dull.
Useful advertising (Score:2)
Undoubtedly most advertising is parasitical, and those doing well out of it deserved to be shunned in polite company. There are, perhaps, two useful roles for advertising:
1) Informing us of a significantly new product. This will never include car ads, and is unlikely to include electronic games - though the news that Baldur's Gate 3 is out.
2) Providing financing for socially useful items. Most obviously this is high quality journalism - as opposed to the faecal material provided by the paparazzi - as well a
Tom Baugh's "Starving the Monkeys" is better (Score:2)
So many jobs are unproductive/anti-productive and don't need to exist. With the massive tech-driven productivity gains it should be easier to support a family on a single income, or to retire early. Fun read and the free Kindle sample is generous.
https://www.amazon.com/Starving-Monkeys-Fight-Back-Smarter-ebook/dp/B0032JSL1Q/ [amazon.com]
I work in FinTech and I agree. (Score:4, Insightful)
The sum total of the impact of my work is to shave fractions of a millisecond off of submillisecond trades so that banks can make even more money. If I do a great job, the guys owning the hedge fund who own our company get to make more payments on their Mercedes.
Dilbert (Score:4, Interesting)
Researchers confirm Dilbert (and Office Space) made people laugh.
This is knowledge vs. wisdom in a nutshell.
Most of these jobs are authoritarian in nature. (Score:2)
It's a sad reality, but most corporate owners would rather have power than more money.
And in other studies... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no meaningless jobs. Just as no one ever wasted their time at work. Every person gets paid an agreed upon amount for an agreed upon unit of time to perform tasks for a company. Those with work ethics recognize that they agreed to this and do the work with a smile on their face. Nothing prevents them from providing suggestions for improvement to those in the company that specify their tasks, but it also does require the company personnel agree with them. That's not 'wasted time'. At best, it's only wasted money by the company.
My work experience became a lot less stressful when I realized that I get paid the same whether I'm writing some critical code or stuffing envelopes. It's up to the company to decide which task they would rather have me to. And yes, at times, I have stuffed envelopes with a smile on my face because the company I worked for asked me to do it because they were in a bind. I've also cleared toilets and helped move boxes.
I'll agree that if the company I worked for asked me to stuff envelopes every day instead of writing code I'd probably find another job. But I would have the decency to tell them that I prefer writing code and give them an opportunity to correct it.
My experience has also taught me that complaining about my job to my fellow workers creates a toxic environment. I've worked for a couple of companies where employees complaining to each other created an environment so bad that no one wanted to work there. Instead of finding ways to make their jobs better, i.e. working with managers or improving their skills so they could leave, they insisted on focusing on all that was bad and making everyone's lives around them miserable.
On more than one occasion, I have been asked my opinion about something from my managers. I offered it, and then supported their decision regardless of whether they agreed with me or not. Because that's their job and I understood they have access to far more information about their decisions than I do. Walking around telling everyone how stupid they are only contributes to a toxic environment.
It's interesting to me to see how many people can talk about their long string of terrible jobs. More than once, I've reminded them of the same thing.
The only common denominator in all of their failed jobs was
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This is the kind of people you should want to work with. Especially wrt occasionally "stuffing envelopes". When there's an "all hands on deck" situation, every hand should be on deck pulling on a rope. No griping! There's joy in pulling together.
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Unfortunately, to management, "all hands on deck" means working 80 hours a week. Because they're always in a crisis mode.
Wrong question, wrong assumption. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, "Does your job enable you to do the things you find meaningful?"
How about, "Do you feel that your life has meaning?" I think part of the problem here is the forced assumption that meaning and satisfaction come from employment that directly benefits the community (who decided that?), when in fact it is mostly found on a much smaller and immediate scale. Moreover, it is attention to those "small" things that most benefit society. Is your family happy? Happy families produce happy, well-adjusted people, and that is what makes a community thrive. Are you happy?
Sometimes, it's a people problem (Score:2)
I enjoy the kind of work I do. It can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. It can also be frustrating at times. What commonly makes it one or the other is usually pretty easy to identify: put simply, I work for someone else. That "someone else" and their attitudes about the requirements for my job and their opinions (misplaced or otherwise) on how well I'm doing my job can very quickly shove me from feelings of meaningful employment right over to feelings of frustration and tedium.
But I'm one of the luck
I quit one of those! (Score:2)
It was a generally safe job (which I burned out in), and it wasn't so much because I burned out, it was more because my mind felt it was a soulless job, mindnumbingly repetitive, yes - I was an IT supporter in a HUGE corporation.
Then I got the challenge of a lifetime after a period of burn-out (where I took a LONG break), I saw this struggling smaller (but still quite big international company) that was restructuring their company, with zero money, and just out of a crisis... and they had to rebuild their e
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It is to me.
It is what allows me to do the fun and fulfilling things "I" want to do outside of work where I live my real life.
As long as I make enough money to support my lifestyle, I really couldn't give a fuck what the works was....as long as it is white collar work inside with AC.
Also depends on other people (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a teacher (college level). With a good class, involved, doing the work, earning good grades - there's a great feeling of achievement and contribution.
There are other classes. Sometimes, an entire class gets infected by a weird mood, and decides they just can't be bothered. Last semester, I failed 3/4 of the students in a class that was meant to be (relatively) easy. Yeah, that was a pointless, meaningless semester. One only hopes that some of the students learned a life lesson...
Anyway, TFA: it's a surprising ordering of professions. Educators mostly feel very motivated - I totally get that. On the other hand, I would expect service jobs like "installation, maintenance and repair" to also feel motivated and useful - without Joe Plumber, the world would go to sh!t. It's an interesting list, right at the top of the article - do have a look...
Research revealing the truth. (Score:2)
It's kind of obvious when you think about it. Besides the usual political shit-slinging we call an "election" these days, what is the ONE thing every US President is desperate to promise and validate for their constituency?
MOAR JOBZ.
Yup. That often means more jobs by any bullshit means necessary, meaning your job may in fact be quite pointless and meaningless because the justification for it was pulled out of a politicians ass to secure a vote.
Load them up on the B Ark (Score:3)
Definite Your Self-Worth Outside of Work (Score:5, Insightful)
But eventually, you find yourself in the second third of your life and you realize, the most important things in life are your family, hobbies, and leisure activities. You also realize you job is just a fiscal means to do manage those things you care about.
Not saying that people running the great career ladder all life long are doing a bad thing, but I'm also saying that having the flexibility to go to your kid's event, take that international trip and disconnect, or building a USC Lego Millennium Falcon over a month, is priceless happiness.
Not to mention, when you die, your boss will replace you, and everyone at work moves on. So I wouldn't invest too much of your self-worth into a place that won't care within a few weeks of your passing.
Oh no! (Score:2)
And here I thought that being a LinkedIn career coach would bring meaning to my life!
Fortunately, jobs in management, finance and sales (Score:2)
Is this BS AI layoff justification? + cheerleaders (Score:2)
Researchers had since suggested that the reason people felt their jobs were useless was solely because they were routine and lacked autonomy or good management rather than anything intrinsic to their work
Is this going to be used as a justification for putting people out of work with AI? This smells like bullshit. Work sucks. If it was fun, you wouldn't have to pay people. Look at NFL cheerleaders. They compete hard and are paid next to nothing. Why? Supply and demand...there are millions of former high school cheerleaders who want to get paid to look hot, dance for a few minutes, and maybe blow their dad's favorite linebacker. If it was volunteer-only, hot chicks would still do it. It's so fun for t
The modern conflict (Score:3)
There's a fundamental problem here. A great many (younger) people view having to do ANY job as an intrusion on their quality of life. So of course lots of people will view their job as pointless and meaningless. And they look at folks in Gen-X (like myself) who enjoy their work as drones who mindlessly bought into the system and don't know they're enslaved. I do very much enjoy my work. That's good, because at 30% of life it would be a real shame if I hated it.
If your job really is meaningless, then the "point" is to feed you and yours. And some people do, indeed, do that for their whole working lives. But... you can aspire to better. I have a nephew that has NO motivation. He delivers pizza for a living - and there's no sign of change anywhere on the horizon. But he's content and happy. I would argue he's in a better place than a cubicle-bound worker who spends 40 hours a week concentrating on being unhappy.
I'm shocked! (Score:3)
I could've told him this. All those people who say "Just do what you love!", I can't stand them. I just need a way to make money from hiking, eating well, playing rpgs, reading and "enjoying myself". Poverty sucks, ask any poor person.
Heirarchy (Score:3)
It is telling (Score:3)
that he went to the US to vet the best numbers for his study.
Europe has its own large amounts of bullshit but America is leading the world.
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I'd expect that a Swiss researcher would look for the data in his own country, or the countries that make the unified market surrounding his own country.
Re: It is telling (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he had to come to America to find these stats because this is the only place that the fantasy where your job is supposed to be personally meaningful and rewarding is taught to children at a young age. Most places realize that being compensated for performing any task to support yourself and your family is the meaningful reward.
Re: It is telling (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok...since when did people in the US get this "fantasy" that your work was supposed to have meaning, etc?
I certainly never grew up with this line of thought.
A job is something there to earn a living, period.
I've never known anyone that had a higher calling for their job...maybe with the exception of some doctors I've known.
But a job is work....they pay your for work.
99.9999% of the world will not pay you to do something you like to do, or is fun or self fulfilling.
This has to be something VERY recent, in latest generations, you know...the ones that got a trophy for participation, and were told they could be anything they wanted, etc?
These same ones that apparently weren't given enough tough skin to deal with a world that doesn't give a shit about them and somehow expects things have to go their way, etc.
Who teaches their kids that their work in the world has to matter?
They're setting them up for extreme disappointment when they hit the real world and discover that a job for most, is something you do to earn a living and support a lifestyle for themselves and their dependents.
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It's kinda foolish to pay people to do the fun and rewarding stuff since people most places will do that for free (being fun and rewarding and all). "Pay me to do my hobby!" is definitely an American value.
Re: It is telling (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting 'paid for your hobbies' is the result of eliminating manufacturing and other productive jobs and replacing them with a BS service and HR based work. This created the deep dissatisfaction being spoken of and so people are doing the fulfilling jobs of yesteryear as hobbies.
Re: It is telling (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was in engineering school in the mid-90's, the graduate director in Engineering at that time, in that school expected Her Engineering students to, in part, be driven by a need to make the world a better place. She said exactly that to me.
All medical professionals, especially Nurses, want to help society, pretty much. At least all I met when my mom used to teach at Boston University in the master's level nursing program and before that at Boston College and Rhode Island College.
I would hope that law enforcement personnel (those that aren't just the high school bully, now an adult) want to make society better by helping to reduce crime. I
When I was a soldier, most of the soldiers I knew wanted to protect America from threats abroad so that Americans could live safely and securely in the peace that we provided them (Naive, yes, but that's what we thought)... the fantasy some are taught that anyone who is a soldier is just some murderous psychopath who the government can harness as a killing machine is NOT THE CASE.
It seems to me that many fields are not explicitly focused on making the world a better place, but do so tangentially... Imagine your dentist, is he/she making the world better? Yes, of course, one client at a time! One mouth at a time!
I am certain, that with a moments reflection you too can come up with many professions that help to create a 'better world' just not directly, maybe.
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Re: It is telling (Score:4, Insightful)
No shit, right? People aren't robots.
If you don't enjoy what you do for a living, why are you even doing it? Maybe look around for something that better suits you. Obviously I wouldn't be doing my job if they didn't pay me, kind of the delineation between a job and a hobby, but the day I dread going to my job is the day I find a new job.
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Money..plain and simple.
If I had enough money not to work...I would not work.
Re: It is telling (Score:5, Insightful)
> Who teaches their kids that their work in the world has to matter?
good parents?
Re: It is telling (Score:4, Insightful)
"Everybody should go to college" is a lie.
"College makes sense regardless of the cost" is a lie.
"Learning medieval history will definitely help you support a family as much as engineering will" is a lie.
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I don't know, plenty of jobs have a "I made someone's life better" quality to it.
The obvious ones are your doctors, your nurses, your firemen, all emergency workers really.
But also, most construction workers. When you talk to them they tell you "I built that neighborhood over there, me and the guys", or "that new beltway, I pave it".
Real estate agents often describe their work as "helping people find the house they will raise their children in". That seems pretty impactful to me.
Surely, many (most) do it fi
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Maybe he had to come to America to find these stats because this is the only place that the fantasy where your job is supposed to be personally meaningful and rewarding is taught to children at a young age. Most places realize that being compensated for performing any task to support yourself and your family is the meaningful reward.
Mod this guy up!
I have been blessed and lucky to have a rewarding career, but the crazy idea that was drilled into young people's heads that they will graduate from college with a degree in a socially relevant discipline, then get a career that is meaningful, one in which they will make a big difference in the world, every single one of them rising quickly through the leadership structure, to make the world a better place...
well, that's just grade a, fresh bullshit.
And by the way, the title of this su
Re: It is telling (Score:5, Informative)
The study didn't ask "does your job make you feel special and rewarded, beautiful unique snowflake?"; it asked whether you think your job has a positive impact and whether you think your job is useful.
Those are two very different lines of inquiry: plenty of (sometimes literally) shit jobs that have obvious positive impacts and utility; and plenty of others that are somewhere between useless and actively parasitic but well compensated and provided with prestige and a self-congratulatory mythos.
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Those two are the same from my perspective. It doesn't matter whether you *think* your job has a positive impact or is useful. If that job wasn't useful then it wouldn't exist. "Positive impact" is totally arbitrary but again, if it didn't provide a positive impact for the employer than the job would not exist.
Re:This requires only minimal self awareness (Score:5, Funny)
That's until you notice that all the "invisible hand" does is to sneak up behind you to fist you when you least expect it.
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That's until you notice that all the "invisible hand" does is to sneak up behind you to fist you when you least expect it.
Raw even!
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But he's only working in the finance department!
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most jobs aren't aimed at "making a positive impact on community and society"
They actually are according to the Religion of Economics. It is called the "Invisible Hand": everyone should be professionally greedy, and, lo and behold, this turns into a blessing towards society.
Has anyone ever found any reliable evidence that this is in fact true? It sounds suspiciously like a "useful myth" - useful, that is, to certain people only. (That would be the greedy, in case you weren't following me).
I'm all too familiar with Adam Smith's pithy reminder in "The Wealth of Nations": "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".
But it's a very, very, very long step from that cosy domestic
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most jobs aren't aimed at "making a positive impact on community and society"
They actually are according to the Religion of Economics. It is called the "Invisible Hand": everyone should be professionally greedy, and, lo and behold, this turns into a blessing towards society.
Has anyone ever found any reliable evidence that this is in fact true? It sounds suspiciously like a "useful myth" - useful, that is, to certain people only. (That would be the greedy, in case you weren't following me).
I think that the guy was being sarcastic.
The so called invisible hand is like many other truisms, a bit of truth, a bit of bullshit. While many people who are not wealthy believe that they are horribly oppressed, and held down by the greedy, they might have an adjustment to their outlook if they were to be transported to the mid 1800's in a similar social class.
We do make enough surplus resources to give people in poverty a lifestyle that isn't too shabby. Section 8 housing, which can cost them almost n
Re:This requires only minimal self awareness (Score:5, Interesting)
"Invisible hand" does NOT imply that "corporations are allowed to do precisely what they want."
The concept of the invisible hand does NOT require a complete lack of government regulation. Quite to the contrary, government regulation is necessary in order to ensure that the invisible hand is not chopped right off by monopolies/cartels. Adam Smith even said as much.
Re:This requires only minimal self awareness (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This requires only minimal self awareness (Score:5, Insightful)
They actually are according to the Religion of Economics. It is called the "Invisible Hand": everyone should be professionally greedy, and, lo and behold, this turns into a blessing towards society.
I know you're being snarky but let me clarify a point. Smith observed people are self-interested and greedy. They'd like to exploit their customers. They can't because competition guides them "as if by an invisible hand" to socially beneficial results.
Walmart can't charge $1,000 for a can of beans because competition with Target and Amazon won't let them. Competition is the key regulator of business behavior, not people's better natures and not government.
Re: Economics is highly successful (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Economics is highly successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Economics is highly successful (Score:4)
If you compare the worst example you can think of to capitalism, capitalism looks really good. That doesn't make it the best option. It is only one part of a balanced government/society system. And it needs checks against it.
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Which is why the soviet states, with their local supplies of cheap oil and gas, large nuclear industries, and good relations with the gulf states did so well.
The Soviet states did well? (Score:2)
On what possible definition of 'well' are you suggesting that? The collapse of the state capitalist system of the USSR and Eastern Europe revealed a remarkably inefficient economy whose total output was less than the value of the stuff they were extracting from the ground. Most people in most of those countries spent a lot of time queuing for the occasional supplies of things that were not generally available.
Re:Economics is highly successful (Score:5, Informative)
Oh really? You compare to 1950 then, as the end of the first half of the 20th century?
Well, let's see some numbers then:
Ave US salary(1950): $3210
Ave US salary(2023): $51000
Average House Cost (1950): $7350
Average House Cost (2023): $408800
Years Salary to Buy house(1950): 2.2
Years Salary to Buy House(2023): 7.95
Groceries (1950): $500
Groceries (2023):$15,627
Percent Yearly Salary Groceries(1950): 15.57%
Percent Yearly Salary Groceries(2023): 30.64%
I could go on, but this makes the point. Four times the salary to buy a house, twice the food budget necessary.
So, how is the economy better for average people than the first half of the 20th century?
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Oh look, an American (Score:3)
The problem that the average US citizen has is that they are totally unaware of what is happening in the world outside the borders of their empire. In the rest of the world the numbers in absolute poverty - with an income less than approximately $2 a day - has fallen amazingly in the past 30 years. The world's economy has been relatively stable - the hiccough of 2008 and the pandemic have been navigated with relatively little damage to economy. Overall we have not suffered the cycles of boom and bust which
Re:Economics is highly successful (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Economics is highly successful (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are pulling that 6,000+ number out of your ass.
Re:This requires only minimal self awareness (Score:4, Interesting)
Because those jobs ARE useless.
But not all jobs are useless or pointless. You just have to understand that the point of working is NOT "making a positive impact on community and society" - that's just silly bullshit. Except for charities and government agencies, the purpose of all jobs is to produce goods and services for a business so that business can make money. /
I think this kind of depends on what exactly you mean by "making a positive impact". I would argue that if your business produces a good or service that people actually want then that is making a positive impact on society. People are able to a get a "thing" that they otherwise wouldn't have and that makes their life "better". Sometimes the nature of the impact of this benefit can be several steps removed and somewhat more difficult to (for lack of a better word) measure but that doesn't mean it isn't there. eg if I work in "finance" and I help arrange loans so that people are able to start businesses and produce useful stuff that could be considered a net benefit to society. I've helped more businesses to exist which provide goods, services and jobs.
However I do think there can be jobs that can be highly profitable but don't really produce anything useful. eg if I work in "finance" by writing high-frequency-trading algorithms that allow me to front-run people performing actual trading and siphon money out of their pocket and into mine, nothing actually useful to anybody is being produced by my efforts even if I'm making gobs of money doing it.
Yes businesses exist to make money. But personally I think there is a difference between a business that makes money by selling stuff that people want to buy and one that exists solely to suck money out of the system without providing any benefit to anyone else. And if I were working for the latter type of organization I suspect I too would find my job unfulfilling.
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Cities, states and countries involve death, which makes those units of organization not bullshit.
Companies on the other hand -- McKinsey & Company comes to mind, who predicted muliti-trillion dollar annual value creation ftom blockchain, then from metaverse, and now from Generative AI. And they are a drop in the bucket.
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Bullshit comment.
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The only job that is bullshit and meaningless is the job that is not paid enough.
Teachers, child caregivers, end-of-life caregivers, bus drivers, farmers, and scientific researchers have entered the chat.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The only job that is bullshit and meaningless is the job that is not paid enough. Hardly any employee does their job to feel fulfilled, they do it to earn their wage.
I don't think I entirely agree. Yes people generally do their jobs primarily to earn a living. If not it's generally called a "hobby" not a "job". But people can do something for more than one reason, and I do think that there are some jobs that are meaningless even though they pay well. For example I used to write software for the banking industry. I wrote software that helped a bunch of bankers fill in useless reports that no one ever read that were only being produced because some politician that did
Re:Many people feel ... ah, feelism and feel econo (Score:5, Funny)
Why not bullshit companies, bullshit cities, bullshit states, bullshit countries.
We don't need two Kansas Cities or two Dakotas, and what the fuck is a Lichtenstein?
Re: Many people feel ... ah, feelism and feel econ (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Many people feel ... ah, feelism and feel econo (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find so surprising is that it is so comforting for people to dismiss other people's work and contributions to society as bullshit and meaningless.
What are you talking about? TFS clearly indicates that the responses are from respondents talking about their own jobs. This is "what I did is useless", not "people who do X are useless".
Nothing here is about being critical of dismissive of others.
I mean... except your comment, which appears to be dismissing a study that you didn't bother to understand.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What I find so surprising is that it is so comforting for people to dismiss other people's work and contributions to society as bullshit and meaningless.
Not just bullshit jobs, we now bullshit job sectors?
Why not bullshit companies, bullshit cities, bullshit states, bullshit countries.
Start reading the Daily Mail and you'll find plenty of people who think that way... Broken Britain et al.
I can understand why most people feel their job is worthless. You work 40 or more hours a week (8 hours a day is almost a thing of the past), get home and barely have a few hours to yourself in which time you also need to take care of your personal needs (grooming, eating... let alone self actualisation) barely enough time for rest (8 hours... Luggggsury) and back up to get back on a train or traffic
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I think it's not just the job, it's the entire unnatural way of life that leads to this feeling of apathy. Imagine that everything is the same as you describe except that, by some magic, after they come back for work, for one hour during the day they have to be involved in a gunfight with people in another part of town or a fight with the gangs in their street or defending from aliens, in order to keep the reality from collapsing. In this alternate dystopian life where you daily risking everything for one h
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One day I awoke, drove the 2 + hours to work (my salary did not allow me to live closer and public transport would have made the commute more like 4 hours each way) and was working at finishing up my report fromt he task I had been working on. I submitted my report (weather satellite simulators so we could better diagnose weather satellite failures from the ground). Then, a call came, i and my supervisor were called to the bosses office.
I was to be laid off.
They had guards there
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What I find so surprising is that it is so comforting for people to dismiss other people's work and contributions to society as bullshit and meaningless.
When we elect leaders based on who can promise MORE jobs, it becomes a bit more obvious as to why people's contributions to society are found to be bullshit and meaningless. The justification for your job, may in fact have come from a politicians ass to secure votes.
Damn near every person in society, needs a job to survive. Kinda obvious they ALL can't be awesome ALL the time. It may in fact hold little meaning or purpose other than employment, but feeding a society with jobs to keep it not merely conten
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What I find so surprising is that it is so comforting for people to dismiss other people's work and contributions to society as bullshit and meaningless.
Not just bullshit jobs, we now bullshit job sectors?
Why not bullshit companies, bullshit cities, bullshit states, bullshit countries.
Some people do this. The summary of this article is bullshit as well.
Even in the referenced paper, it notes that alienation might be as good a reason. And boy howdy, are a lot of young people alienated.
After all, they were taught that they were going to make a difference. They'd go to college, take a socially relevant major, graduate, and start to repair all of the faults that the stupid elders created. Rise quickly in their socially relevant careers, to leadership positions, there they would make the
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I'm exploring a career switch as we speak.
You mean you've been let go...
LOL! (Score:2)
That's actually a good one, even though in my case it's not true. I got my diploma in performing arts before the Web existed.
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Uh no, for a while a lot of people gave lots of money to cryptobros, that didn't make their job meaningful in any way.
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If you look at what the stock market is, it's much closer to the crypto market than 99% of the people on this site would ever want to admit. Most "growth" companies are valued so many times over their assets, cash on hand and likelihood of turning major profits that they are closer to shitcoins than value investments.
There's some truth in this, but I'd submit at least three things that make it closer to 60% - 70% parallel to the crypto market than 99%.
First, cryptocurrency fundamentally has no product or service behind it; the sole reason to spend $1 on a whatevercoin is to sell it for $1.01 or more to somebody else. Companies with a stock listing at least need a product or service worth selling in order to be traded in ways cryptocurrency does not.
Second is that while there are plenty of games that are played in the st
I don't disagree about the differences (Score:2)
You misread what I wrote; I said "99% of the people on this site."
Part of the problem is the SEC has openly refused to issue regulatory guidelines on how to apply existing regulations to cryptocurrency. "Just apply the Howey Test, duh" uh no. Doesn't work like that because 99% of cryptocurrencies fail the "common enterprise" requirement. That's what the 99% on this s