Conquer Club

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

got tonkaed wrote:eh probably. it pays pretty decently though so I am cool with keeping it, thank you kindly.

got tonkaed wrote:I have a financial services job. I work from home about 50 hours a week and make enough money to do whatever I want with the rest of the time.

Seems a pretty fair trade to be honest. Premise of the article seems kinda first world problem-y to me.

2007spaceodyssey wrote:Being an archaeologist I think my work does not HAVE to be done. It is of little use for society. But I believe it is meaningful.

khazalid wrote:

got tonkaed wrote:I have a financial services job. I work from home about 50 hours a week and make enough money to do whatever I want with the rest of the time.

Seems a pretty fair trade to be honest. Premise of the article seems kinda first world problem-y to me.

it is indeed, as the article makes clear in the opening refrain. a problem it remains, however.


sounds like you've got a pretty decent set-up. but think inside the box - could you do that job in 20 hours? is 50 hours arbitrarily high? do you have time to procrastinate, doodle, drink tea and idly browse t'internet at work?

got tonkaed wrote:

khazalid wrote:

got tonkaed wrote:I have a financial services job. I work from home about 50 hours a week and make enough money to do whatever I want with the rest of the time.

Seems a pretty fair trade to be honest. Premise of the article seems kinda first world problem-y to me.

it is indeed, as the article makes clear in the opening refrain. a problem it remains, however.


sounds like you've got a pretty decent set-up. but think inside the box - could you do that job in 20 hours? is 50 hours arbitrarily high? do you have time to procrastinate, doodle, drink tea and idly browse t'internet at work?

Oh yeah, I'm working about 10 hours a week if we are talking about paying attention.

I am just punched in for 40 more hours than that. At the end of the day I would probably need to be logged in for a while to make people think i was worth the money they pay me.

People talk about work-life balance all the time. Really you just focus on your life being balanced, work is just a part of it. But at the end of the day, you still gotta pay the bills and figuring out how to have money to buy the stuff you want or do the things you wnat to do.

mrswdk wrote:Dumb article. He just writes off all white collar jobs as being worthless and serving no valuable purpose, which is obviously not true. If they were worthless then no one would pay those people to do those jobs.

khazalid wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Dumb article. He just writes off all white collar jobs as being worthless and serving no valuable purpose, which is obviously not true. If they were worthless then no one would pay those people to do those jobs.

reading comprehension: F

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away

mrswdk wrote:Dumb article. He just writes off all white collar jobs as being worthless and serving no valuable purpose, which is obviously not true. If they were worthless then no one would pay those people to do those jobs.

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.'

mrswdk wrote:Another one of the author's incredible pearls of wisdom:

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.'

Wrong. It's as if someone wants those tasks performed and is prepared to pay someone else to perform them.

To think, he's a professor at one of the UK's most esteemed universities. World's most bullshit job: professor of anthropology at LSE!

got tonkaed wrote:I'd suspect the author also is probably using a somewhat dated way of looking at corporations in terms of being able to instill loyalty and voice to workers.

I think most of us think of corporations as that thing that laid off all of those old people and gave them a jacket or something as they hit their 40 year milestones and left them with no retirement plan. We had a pretty bad decade especially in the US for big business treating employees.

You certainly see more places trying to develop cultures within the company, especially ones that appeal to younger employees. I would imagine a lot of your older workers aren't getting a ton out of that since it isn't really designed for them, but a ton of younger workers probably feel a lot more attachment and meaning to their job/employer than the author is giving them credit for.

waauw wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Dumb article. He just writes off all white collar jobs as being worthless and serving no valuable purpose, which is obviously not true. If they were worthless then no one would pay those people to do those jobs.

He's unable to look at it from a business perspective sure, but he does make a point. Bureaucracy can be a dragging weight if extended too far.

And though many marketing campaigns do serve corporate objectives, they aren't always beneficial for a society as a whole. Sometimes they are detrimental.

mrswdk wrote:

waauw wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Dumb article. He just writes off all white collar jobs as being worthless and serving no valuable purpose, which is obviously not true. If they were worthless then no one would pay those people to do those jobs.

He's unable to look at it from a business perspective sure, but he does make a point. Bureaucracy can be a dragging weight if extended too far.

Bureaucracy can be cumbersome, but that doesn't mean we can just declare bureaucracy to be worthless. There are a variety of public administration jobs that are very useful.

And though many marketing campaigns do serve corporate objectives, they aren't always beneficial for a society as a whole. Sometimes they are detrimental.

As above: those marketing campaigns generate value for someone, so they can't be said to be 'pointless'.