Rest in Power David!

@mirkoscuccato6444

3 жыл бұрын

@mike smith Asta la Victoria Secret!

"Bosses are the last people I trust to understand what they are doing." - *David Graeber*

@ryaninjapan4726

11 ай бұрын

Incorrect: “But bosses are the last people to know what’s really going on. I trust people to understand what their really doing-or at least, if anybody does, they will.

@turtleanton6539

8 ай бұрын

4 real😊

@Erumyr

5 ай бұрын

@@ryaninjapan4726yes. Once shit comes crashing Down - management Been warning you about for months. Unpaid bills, angry customers, etc. unsigned certificates

Rest in power. Cannot overstate how much this guy has influenced my thinking for basically my entire adulthood. Can't believe he's no longer with us.

@HistoryforThinkers

6 ай бұрын

Same. No other modern thinker has been as honest, positive, and insightful all at the same time.

@sund5

3 ай бұрын

Is it enough to read his bullshi jobs books? Or is it also "neesersery" to read other work from.him to full understand? (Sorry for the spelling not first language)

@cecilfarrington

3 ай бұрын

@@sund5 Bullshit Jobs is written for a very general audience. Debt is too, but is also a very thought-provoking, challenging book - definitely read that if you haven't already. Then if you want the raw material, his more scholarly work is still written very accessibly. I read it a lot of it as a first year undergrad (and it made me switch to an anthropology major) so it's not all that difficult. I also often still find myself thinking about his "Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value" book. Enjoy!

I had a job as a landscaper in a country club. It was both a bullshit job and a shit job. It had absolutely no purpose except to make for a pretty landscape for a highly exclusive group of people to play a game on. My job was to remind rich people that they were rich. There was literally a wall separating this space from the outside world. Nothing productive ever came out of that place, it just used up a shit ton of resources.

@fgrilli

Жыл бұрын

At least you could say you created something beautiful even though, true, only for a few rich assholes.

@klettersteig599

Жыл бұрын

Is there not value in creating beautiful landscaping? Or does it matter who’s doing the enjoying of the landscaping?

@sneedfeed3179

11 ай бұрын

Your job is the opposite of a bullshit job, what are you on about? It’s manual labor that has an aesthetic purpose

@amelliangames7365

9 ай бұрын

@@klettersteig599 That value is only given to a very very small group of rich people. Golf courses take us huge amounts of resources. Meanwhile we get no forests and public parks are tiny

@5hydroxyT

8 ай бұрын

ahh golf courses, the legacy of the developed world

Here's the thing - our society doesn't care what job you do, just as long as you have one. It doesn't care if you are a good person or not, it doesn't care if you area kind soul full of empathy or a cruel beast...just as long as you have a job. Coming from a working class, I was always told (and believed) that a job was the most important thing in the world, and ANY job was a good job. I've since re evaluated my stance and I've come to the conclusion that we are being fed that myth in order to be handed the dregs of labour just to exist. Wages keep getting lower, conditions keep getting worse and more insecure, and everything else is getting more expensive. People working full time are claiming "in work" benefits just to make ends meet, and there is something horribly horribly wrong. We should not be working a job..sometimes 2 or 3 jobs, just to exist. To have all our wages sucked up at the end of the month by simple basic needs and to be left with nothing. We need to implement a Basic Income to free people from the poverty and precariat trap, and to free potential by giving people the ability to say "no" to destructive situations like exploitative jobs or abusive relationships. We can't go on trying to solve 21st Century problems with 20th Century work ideals when the concept of "work" itself has been bastardised and degraded over the years. Just "get a job" isn't cutting it any more, and the collective wealth of the nations is being hoarded by the super rich, who themselves were born into money that they did not work for.

@PorkotylerClips

4 жыл бұрын

Didn’t you guys hear what the guy in the video said? In the Soviet Union they mostly had bullshit jobs just to keep up the appearance of universal employment. This train of thought will only lead you down the same path only with a red flag in the background instead of company logo. Demolishing the system in favor of communism isn’t the answer. Modifying capitalism is. Taxing the rich and empowering trade unions of “real” jobs that are actually needed is a good start.

@PurushaDesa

4 жыл бұрын

Well said Syklone. The narrative otherwise known as "the dignity of work" - what dignity is there in exploitation and often by an ownership class who don't do any hard graft themselves? We need to transition away from that to the dignity of living - yes, paying people to stay alive if we truly value life more than profit-fuelled wealth concentration.

@silverwave0018

4 жыл бұрын

Syklone the more jobs they can think of the more taxes people pay.

@PurushaDesa

4 жыл бұрын

silverwave 001 Well sure but that's "regular worker" taxes. If anything our political and corporate culture is dominated by _tax avoidance_ - elites rich enough to hire armies of lobbyists that will make Swiss cheese of the code, and then several armies more of accountants who'll safely guide them through all those holes. Meanwhile that ransacked pot of tax money leads to the degraded and defunded public services and social safety net the regular workers depend on. Upwards wealth redistribution 101.

@silverwave0018

4 жыл бұрын

PurushaDesa they should just try voluntary taxation n see how it gos. People who felt the need to pay it could pay it for public things for everyone. All countries most people are patriotic to there country so would just voluntarily pay. If everyone stopped paying taxes well then people don’t get the latest public buildings etc and if they wanted it newer they can donate whatever amount they choose. Also they can say what they want the money spent on when they send it. So the more people that voluntarily paid the more things could be built for everyone so it’s not like all countries would just stop paying it as they’d all want to keep getting better public things. I don’t see how it would be that bad if it’s voluntary.

1:29 we have arrived at such an advanced state of an economy where such jobs are necessary to exist to keep the economy running. To avoid crime and to avoid adults lying around all day. Work is like day-care for adults.

@marcikuhn

22 күн бұрын

Why do we have unemployment then?

Another motivation for BS jobs is for managers and executives to justify their jobs. The more people under your span of control, the more important you appear.

Just had a discussion with my dad today about robots/AI taking more jobs away from where he used to work. He talked about how there are so many pieces that come together before being sent to Toyota to be put into the car. While he had a valid point that it is unfair that the lowest Toyota employee would be paid more than the line worker making the bolts that go into the radiator, I tried to expand his mind by mentioning something that is related to this video: If we had bullet trains connecting every city down to 50k population in size, free bus rides to almost every small town, and separate bike lanes (as in a curb protecting you) alongside every asphalt road in the USA, what kind of effect would that have on car ownership? Obviously it would decline. But that would mean Toyota makes fewer cars. Which means fewer radiators are needed. Which means fewer bolts are needed. Which means that even the lauded "hard working man at a manufacturing plant" is doing a bs job. Basically once you start to really think about it, it isn't hard to imagine that billions of jobs are just here to keep us going as consumers. It is time for a change. Not to socialism. Not to a "true" form of capitalism (no true scotsman fallacies are dumb anyway), but to something better. Something the world has not seen yet.

Basically we achived a level where companies and workers became a clown for each other without they even realize.

Of course bosses are angry, because they themselves likely hold a bullshit job.

Thank you sir for your work. RIP

@scud100

3 жыл бұрын

How did he die? From choking on his own verbal bullshit?

This is one of the best books I’ve read in my life. All of his work is just marvelously well-written, well-researched, just generally very well-thought-out. Cannot recommend it enough.

Pandemic helped us realize what is essential for us in terms of both jobs and businesses. We clearly saw that without nurses, doctors, teachers, cleaners, farmers, drivers we can not run our society. Also the shops other than the ones we buy our milk and bread are not so important. We all know that the system we run today is totally inefficient because of all these jobs and business which creates no real value but It does not look like so called "market forces" will fix this inefficiency.

@davidregi7571

3 жыл бұрын

Not teachers

@GazB85

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidregi7571 Yes, teachers are important. An uneducated society would be far worse.

@anthonykennedy5324

2 жыл бұрын

You have given a list of non-bullshit jobs. Fair enough. What would be the counterpart list of bullshit jobs?

@xysg1

2 жыл бұрын

@@anthonykennedy5324 bullshit jobs are those in the service sectors such as call centres, marketing sectors, insurance advisors, Sales person etc

@anthonykennedy5324

2 жыл бұрын

@@xysg1 Thanks for the reply. But all of those jobs are necessary. They do add value. They do NEED to be done. Where is the bullshit ? I guess I miss Graeber's point.

I think Graeber is correct in his observations. The rise of education gospel and the faux idea that one cannot attain salvation (the 21st century's version of being born again) unless they have gone to college, has also generated a bumper crop of new cushy BS jobs. The two most infuriating aspect of this new phenomenon is 1. They pay well and are viewed by the public as being the "right jobs" for the "right people" who did the "right thing" and went to college, where as sh--t jobs are needed for the economy and people way of life to continue yet are less well paid, and less well treated on the job or in the eye of society. 2. These BS jobs are out there but can only be secured by certain people, as the new era of hiring practices have created so many barriers to employment that only those who are "just like" the people doing the hiring.

@alexkrasnic3850

6 жыл бұрын

Chris Doeller theres no bs job.... notice how he cant give specific examples

@gavloft

4 жыл бұрын

I have a degree in cleaning science and I have always had employment as a cleaner.

I literally used to sit in my job and say this shouldnt even be a job and if it was my business there would be no way i would be paying people to do it.

@y2kmedia118

4 жыл бұрын

I've worked many bs jobs and I have considered a lot of time walking to the boss and asking him why the fuck does he even pay for a job like this? Then I remembered that I'm saving money to finance my creative vision and dream and I'm traveling and buying books and having fun while being paid to do nothing then I just said to myself "if the dumbass want to pay money for people to sit down and do nothing then that's his loss lmao" Bullshit jobs however are something one should never get comfortable in because one might forget his purpose or ambition.

@scud100

3 жыл бұрын

And what was your job exactly?

@celestemcguigan3858

3 жыл бұрын

@@scud100 administration role in mining industry

@scud100

3 жыл бұрын

@@celestemcguigan3858 . Thanks for the reply. Almost all administration jobs will be replaced by a computer soon. I totally dont agree with what this guy was saying. The only jobs that are bullshit jobs are in government or universities as it is paid by the tax payer and no cares enough to do something about them. In the private sector what seems like a bullshit job is there because oversight or bullshit regulations are imposed which require someone to do bullshit to be compliant. The reason I watch David Graebers videos is to try to disprove my ideas. However, I realise more and more how narrow minded he is with his Marxist ideology. He has worked in a bullshit job which hasn’t appropriately checked the value he is offering, as if they did, he would need to get a real job

@acceleration4443

3 жыл бұрын

@@scud100 Lmao, If u think governments and states have stupid bureaucracies wait til you get a job at a large corporation.

Share this on social media. The only way we can contribute to end the madness.

@alexkrasnic3850

6 жыл бұрын

Peder theres no bs job.... notice how he cant give specific examples

@Jojo-kv6iv

6 жыл бұрын

alex krasnic He gives lots of specific examples in other videos. Also in my personal social circle, more than half of the ones employed are with bs-jobs.

@jackkraken3888

3 жыл бұрын

@@Jojo-kv6iv Can you give examples of bullshit jobs in your social circles?

Very interesting, can't wait for the book!

@alexkrasnic3850

6 жыл бұрын

theres no bs job.... notice how he cant give specific examples Deth Yon

@scolic03

3 жыл бұрын

​@@alexkrasnic3850 He does. Corporate lawyer. Work diversity compliance inspector. Health and safety presentations inspector. Efficiency and security officer who's recommendations are never taken up. Hell my own job is bullshit, I'm a "devops engineer". My current job is duct taper, I fix stuff that shouldn't have been broken in the first place. Mostly I do nothing and pray it works.

Why they exist is easy, managers need people to manage, and a certain number of them to justify their salary.

@Keklapis78

3 жыл бұрын

I am a graduate engineer, during interview i was promised with all kinds of knowledge and benefits. 10 months in the company with clueless jobscope ! The pay is decent for fresh and corona season but how am i supposed to advance my career with limited knowledge? Lol.

@jck7986

3 жыл бұрын

@@Keklapis78, there is an endless amount of work in any company, find it and get assigned:)

The large gains of technological progress are being absorbed by bureaucracy. It's a way to keep everyone equally busy to maintain a semblance of fairness. Universities have produced more graduates than the economy needs so the surpluses of technological progress and monopolization are used to accommodate those extra graduates (even though they are not needed). Employee head count provides a justification for otherwise difficult-to-explain increases in stock prices which are in fact driven by cheap credit and stock buybacks. Likely it is part of an unspoken agreement between reserve banks and corporations; corporations always need more credit in order to keep doing stock buybacks and reserve banks always need more jobs in order to meet their full employment mandate; so in effect, the reserve banks keep providing more (cheap) credit so long as the corporations keep creating jobs; it's a win-win situation... Except if you're a startup and you try to compete with a corporation.

RIP David.

When describing "bulllshit jobs", it sounded like he was describing a politician.

@fturla___156

3 жыл бұрын

Politicians always give out bullshit jobs to their cronies that supported them in campaigns, and if the hired help isn't competent enough to do the job, the guy is often not 'in the loop' when business matters count. Look at all the Trump hired help placed into government jobs that had no science background but they were put in charge of departments such as the Arts and Sciences, the FDA, the CDC, etc. And the worse post is that idiot, Louis DeJoy, who never had a post office background and he's destroying the mail service intentionally to try to prove you cannot use the mail to send in your vote.

R.I.P.

I am entirely unconvinced that anyone with a bullshit job actually knows they have a bullshit job. At the very least they usually outright deny it when I confront them. Of course, denial may be an intrinsic element to having and keeping a bullshit job.

@stankssmile5865

10 ай бұрын

People in banking sector have told me they are tired of their bill shit jon

2:30 He says this sincerly but it is hilarious because this is litterally the position of so many people.

@DarkMoonDroid

2 жыл бұрын

No. He was not being sincere. He was describing how some people think. Just because he didn't roll his eyes and exaggerate certain words doesn't mean he agreed with them.

Interestingly, full employment was exactly what the Bretton Woods agreement was planning for post-WW2 Europe and North America. But with near full employment came rising inflation and the creditor class (banks) really didn't like that. And then we got Reaganism and Thatcherism in the 80s.

A guy who may never have had an actual "job" in his entire life discussing jobs. This is comedy gold. Academics who spend most of their work time inside "campus life" bubbles have caused more chaos and destruction in the last few centuries than is ever talked about.

I couldn't agree more. I have been saying this for years. Almost all of my employers of the last 30 years, many of whom had less education, wasted my knowledge on trivial tasks when there were plenty of value-creating opportunities left unaddressed. Many of the 50% of people that believe their job makes a contribution have no conception of more efficient and feasible processes that would render them superfluous. Also, this is about to be exponentially exacerbated by artificial intelligence. (Soon, large numbers of workers will likely be either laid off or continue working, as many currently are, without adding any cumulative value. It will be the continuation of an absurd tragedy if we as a society are actually so stupid we would rather people perform worthless activities than pursue something that may actually create economic value, not to mention personal satisfaction.) As this occurs, productivity will skyrocket while demand plummets, leading to dramatically falling prices. Still, without something like a universal basic income, we may soon find ourselves in the nonsensical position of being capable of producing enough goods and services for literally everyone while simultaneously letting a large group of people suffer unnecessarily.

I see tons of Bullshit jobs at top firms all the time for reasons connected to nepotism, incompetency, politics, power struggles, tenure, etc. - much of these idiots simply get in the way of the people that are doing the real work and those people are the ones that are often least respected and are not given the rewards, position, and respect they deserve. When you look at employment open positions and a post is an underling spot for 'assistant' controller, financial analyst, code manager, coordination host, etc. much of these positions are going to do the hard labor and mental thinking to do the jobs that the lead personnel should be doing, but there's a high probability that the top guy can simply phone his work in and never show up.

"Pretend to work, pretend to pay" is not Soviet Union. It was Flamengo at the 90's/2000's. This is a quote from Vampeta.

people at the head of a bureaucracy likes to increase the number of people under them. It comes at no personal cost to them and they benefit by having an elevation in importance.

Bullshit job: The guy who installs turn signals at the BMW factory. ;-)

@StewartMellor-qn1kt

Жыл бұрын

Could you handle a BMW then...I doubt it you'd wrap it around the nearest lamp post !

Not a bullshit job: Audio-guy for video production.

someone needs a mic...

This man is an intellectual legend. Full stop.

These days we need any type of job just to stay afloat these tough economic times.

I would love a rant by George Carlin about bullshit jobs. 😂

It’s so no one one has any power to make executive decisions that can cost the company money

It is obvious that this is happening, and it is fun to see someone who finally makes the effort of talking about this 'phenomena'. I suspect that even David is one of those, who is given the oportunity to take part in this big bullshitting, but after a while he got bored, or turned off by doing nothing useful and he finally started to make something valueable and talk out loud about this nonsense.

Love all the pro-cap commenters volunteering to put dunce-caps on themselves and showing everyone how they can't listen and reason any better than a kindergartener. 👏👏👏👏👏 Thank you for making our work easier.

Many of these jobs I have noticed are held by people in their 60's - they have been with a company for 25 or more years and have been great workers but everyone knows their intellect is failing and nobody has the courage to show them the door so they spend the last 8 years of their working career collecting a salary north of 50,000 a year doing what any 8th grader could learn to do in 6 months.

@borisyeltsin6293

3 жыл бұрын

ehhh, to be fair, out of uni I was making over 100K as a 22 year-old, thinking I could have been doing this job in high school. a lot of my colleagues - same thing. a few years older, making boatloads of money, not really doing anything at all

R.i.p.

David Graeber, so youre telling me that basically BS jobs are those of CEO, CFOs and all of those business/political gigs? LOL

*Politician is* the best example for *a Bullshit Job.*

I want to read

Great audio, not

Every politician in the world

I think his hypothesis for why these jobs exist is too macroscopic and political, although it is interesting and I'm sure the political clout plays a part in the calculation made by really big corporations (those big enough to have a hand on the wheel of politics). I would focus rather on the fact that these are big companies (not necessarily so big to be political but big enough to be unwieldy) and what he said - the bosses are the last to really know what's going on. Thus what tasks do and what tasks don't require a whole job/worked dedicated to them get muddled by bureaucracy and decision by committee etc. There are perverse incentives that come into the calculation with recruiters the process of employment itself as well.

I would suggest David to study about "Bullshit Product", and I think he can even discover even more Bullshit Jobs from the manufacturing sector simply because we are producing so many pointless electronic products.

It was like my experience doing job as marketer in NGO greenpeace shit, with retailers from the basic for stepping carrier with minim payment and then the board NGO hire manager with 5 times salary without basic experience as retailers for get funding. Its so stupid ever for still stay with bla, bla enviroment content campaign. Its bullshit job !!!

What happened to him?

i sleep in a boat for 10 days a month eat and sleep only

The graph at 1:13 is wrong. If you check the source, 50% think their jobs are meaningful but it is said in the video that 50% are "unsure".

Fuck work!!

Examples of these bullshit jobs specifically by title would be?

One of the greatest thinkers. R.i.p

I'm not spiritually evolved enough to _not_ want a bullshit job.

2:04 it happens because we have a fake money printer that is controlled by politicians and their cronies

летіла лопата, упала в болото. яка зарплата - така й робота...

This sounds like a self confession on the speakers "job".

The irony of how publishing houses themselves felt in this category...

The highest form of charity is the creation of employment... the onus is on the employee to find out how to render value and service in exchange for that salary, which is a blessing

A microphone. You should try it. It's a good thing.

Corporate socialism and the tendency of people to want control over others helps create bullshit jobs.

"One of the great mysteries of our times" Only if you never bother to read any philosophy. Read some Marx or Hegel. It's no mystery but a glaring contradiction inherent to the workings of capitalism.

Without some solid real-world examples this falls flat to me.

@Rihardololz

6 ай бұрын

AI and androids say hello.

@jjeverson2269

6 ай бұрын

The entire consulting industry is a real world example

He is bullshitting! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

So celebrities, athletes, musicians, youtubers, instagramers, and so called “influencers” are all bullshit.

@Keklapis78

3 жыл бұрын

No, you don't pretend to race, and you don't pretend to pretend (celebrities). Have you ever felt clueless about your jobscope before?

A job is just that a job: a means of paying bills, a form of networking, a means of advancing into a more meaningful career, and way of being able to purchase property or invest in Markets. The problem is people get a job and a career confused. If you used that job as a gateway to a better career, this wouldn’t even be an issue and besides the experience only benefits you. Makes that resume looks good 👍

@euskopost.5354

2 жыл бұрын

No.

Complains about bullshit jobs Is an anthropologist....................

Look, this guy makes valid points - but his personal hygiene detracts from his credibility. Someone who is too lazy to wash and comb his hair probably has noticeable body odour. His appearance is distracting and indicates that he is probably lazy in his thinking as well as in his personal grooming. I'm not saying he should have a hundred dollar hairdo and wear three-piece suits - just clean yourself up, guy.

@ethanstump

2 жыл бұрын

if you care more about the packaging than what's in the package, your more focused on style than substance. i don't care if he's wearing croc's or Hugo boss, i care about what he's saying, and if you had more sense in your head than a styled haircut on top of it, you wouldn't care either.

@upendownlinker

Ай бұрын

you seen einsteins haircut?

Yeah, a real job is like plumbing, electrician, construction,warehouse,factory... actually accomplishing something...I work at a place that has like 5 managers in every department..you can do away with 80% of manager and that bull shit position they call HR...my company is so bad the just created meaningless positions so 1 of the 5 bosses can take even more off their plate lol