I largely agree with that. I’d even go further and say that some companies have positions just for the sake of positions and that you could easily reduce the workforce and these companies can still operate just as well.
It was well known in a company I used to work at that middle managers competed to have the most people working under them, even if those people had no useful work to do.
I enjoyed this article but a few points are worth quibbling with:
The explanation of consumerism isn't that we would need more workers to build more things to consume (which would lead to more jobs in those areas), it is that we would keep working more than we need for our basic needs because we want more stuff. That is why you work 50 hours at a BS job instead of 15 hours. I need 35 hours of BS work a week to buy a new TV, smart phone, bigger house, and eat out, travel, go to the movies etc. This may not explain the full discrepancy, but it isn't so easily dismissed by saying that the new jobs aren't in the sectors that create products.
The other item worth reviewing is the difference between a not-fun or frowned-upon job and a Bull Shit job. Telemarketing is not a bull shit job. I don't like telemarketers and I wouldn't want to be one, but they have a real task that is valuable to their company. They sell product. Each call they make is adding value to the company. The telemarketing manager who spends 10% of her time evaluating, compiling stats, and training -but 90% of her time looking busy, creating projects to justify her job, and browsing the internet probably does have a bullshit job.
When I've read about the predicted 15 hour work week, I've always assumed that the job was salaried, and paid the same as a nominally 40 hour job, so that one could still afford to live. Presumably hourly jobs would make more per hour for the same reason. With the huge increases in productivity that technology make, in theory, possible, this should work out. In the salaried jobs I've worked, I could easily get the real work done in half or less the time I spent there. Ironically, two of the jobs I had involved, as part of the job, automating and improving the efficiency of workers via software. And what did I do in those jobs? After the real work was done, I did not-to-important stuff to fill out the week's hours.
If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it's hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)—and particularly its financial avatars—but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3–4 hour days.
I largely agree with that. I’d even go further and say that some companies have positions just for the sake of positions and that you could easily reduce the workforce and these companies can still operate just as well.
It was well known in a company I used to work at that middle managers competed to have the most people working under them, even if those people had no useful work to do.
I enjoyed this article but a few points are worth quibbling with:
The explanation of consumerism isn't that we would need more workers to build more things to consume (which would lead to more jobs in those areas), it is that we would keep working more than we need for our basic needs because we want more stuff. That is why you work 50 hours at a BS job instead of 15 hours. I need 35 hours of BS work a week to buy a new TV, smart phone, bigger house, and eat out, travel, go to the movies etc. This may not explain the full discrepancy, but it isn't so easily dismissed by saying that the new jobs aren't in the sectors that create products.
The other item worth reviewing is the difference between a not-fun or frowned-upon job and a Bull Shit job. Telemarketing is not a bull shit job. I don't like telemarketers and I wouldn't want to be one, but they have a real task that is valuable to their company. They sell product. Each call they make is adding value to the company. The telemarketing manager who spends 10% of her time evaluating, compiling stats, and training -but 90% of her time looking busy, creating projects to justify her job, and browsing the internet probably does have a bullshit job.
When I've read about the predicted 15 hour work week, I've always assumed that the job was salaried, and paid the same as a nominally 40 hour job, so that one could still afford to live. Presumably hourly jobs would make more per hour for the same reason. With the huge increases in productivity that technology make, in theory, possible, this should work out. In the salaried jobs I've worked, I could easily get the real work done in half or less the time I spent there. Ironically, two of the jobs I had involved, as part of the job, automating and improving the efficiency of workers via software. And what did I do in those jobs? After the real work was done, I did not-to-important stuff to fill out the week's hours.