This discussion of
"b******* jobs" is very interesting, even though the move to support UBI as an answer is less so. I have definitely noticed this phenomenon, and it does seem to violate the logic of capitalism. Yet it seems to be growing, not shrinking.
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My job involves a fair amount of what Graeber would probably call 'bullshit' as it does leave me plenty of time for doing things that are not work related. However, I feel that I'm valuable to the company at least as much for what I know (about our computer systems and procedures) as what I do and part of my salary reflects this rather than the amount of time I spend in a chair at work. This is probably increasingly common.
I'm in a particularly tough spot on this. As technical support, my job is less "factory worker" as it is "fireman". You don't pay a fireman for his hours of labor, you pay him to be johnny-on-the-spot when a fire breaks out. Anyone who expects 40 hours of labor a week out of their on-site tech support just isn't thinking. There have been bad weeks where I've worked in excess of 40 hours, but those are crisis situations, and not the day to day. In fact, if that condition is your company's day to day, I recommend either hiring more techs, or firing the ones you have for manufacturing crises.
But UBI is not even a pipe dream. It's been tried, and surprise! it doesn't work. Finland, that "socialist" (but actually free market capitalist) society tried it and not only found it too expensive to sustain (even with their small population), but that it actually killed productivity and encouraged people not to work (which any Econ 101 student ought to be able to predict).
That's not to say the Left doesn't keep talking it up like it's the future (after all, spending other peoples' money is what they do best). But it's like how they talk about Communism when you point out the Finns tried it and found it didn't work. "They didn't do it properly, you see?" No True Scotsman.
I'd also point out that the two authors cited in the article are neither economists, nor have they ever run a business or kept a payroll. It's easy to claim that "the link between salaried positions and real work has long been tenuous at best", when you ignore the fact that businesses don't normally pay salaries for no good reason. "many highly paid jobs serve little purpose at all" is the battlecry of the ignorant who see a CEO, don't understand why anyone is worth all that money, and declare him to be a useless appendage. Much like Chesterton, if you don't understand why something is the way it is, then the failing is not with that "something" but with your understanding.
A bullshit article about bullshit jobs, IMO.
“Flunkies” are the modern equivalent of feudal minions who make bosses feel big, important, and strong. Whereas they were once doormen and concierges, they now tend to be receptionists who do little besides answer cold calls and refill the candy bowl, or personal assistants who drop off their boss’s dry cleaning and smile when he walks through the door."
My experience is that 'personal assistants' aka 'executive assistants' aka 'executive secretaries' do a great deal to keep chaos at bay. That's certainly been my experience, and my personal & organizational productivity has improved notably after hiring a good one.
"“Goons” essentially bully people into buying things they don’t need: Marketing managers and PR specialists do this, as do telemarketers. "
Persuasion is something different from bullying. The writer is perhaps suffering from the old aristocratic prejudice against people who are 'in trade'...why am I not surprised to see this in The New Republic?
"How much activity on social media takes place during work hours? How many doctor’s appointments, errands, and online purchases occur between nine and five?"
In many cases, the people who are doing personal things while at work are also doing work things while at home, and actually working a lot more than the 8 hours a day that they are theoreticaly being paid for?
None of this is to argue that there is a lot of waste motion in organizations, business as well as government (and even worse, 'nonprofits'), but the authors seem too agenda-driven to diagnose it correctly.
A few reasons that I think are a better explanation of the waste motion in business organizations:
1--excessive mergers & acquisitions. There is a lot of confusion that generally follows a merger...overlap of functions, struggles for supremacy, people in different geographical locations, etc...and a lot of them do more harm than good.
2--bad organization design. Creating and tuning an organization structure that functions well is *hard work*, and is too often ignored in favor of mush about 'teams', without clear thought as to how the teams are to be defined and how they are to interact.
3--related to the above, too much overlap of functions. Fear of making crisp decisions because it might upset someone. I'm reminded of a jury I was on once where, every time we started to get into get into a good debate, the forewoman would say something like, 'now, now, everyone's entitled to their opinion.'
4--too much delayering. Contrary to the article, the trend in recent decades has not been to add *more* organizational layers, but too *reduce* them.
5--the decline of the secretary...as I noted above, secretaries, assistants, whatever you call them, play(ed) an important role in keeping chaos at bay.
6--just plain lack of good management. A CEO of my acquaintance spoke of the need to 'play whack-a-mole' to keep outbreaks of bureaucratic behavior at bay. Too many fail to do this.
In my profession there have always been days where "it is an embarrassment that I am accepting money for this" counterbalanced by "they can't pay me enough to do this job."
Slate Star Codex had a lot of discussion on whether guaranteed jobs were better than UBI. You might like the posts. Here's one of them.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/
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