BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY - DAVID GRAEBER

AVAILABLE I’m a Graeber stan for sure. He’s written the best english language book on Madagascar/Malagasy life and he’s an anarchist, it would be harder to imagine a “public” figure more narrowcasted to my interests. I’ve read a lot of Graeber and his work breaks, largely, into two camps: Scholarly work that stems from his position as an anthropologist (like his book ON KINGS, which I bought but haven’t read that whole thing, I’m mostly interested in the Malagasy parts, the rest is a bit jargon-y and wonky for me) and this more pop-anthropology stuff (most famously DEBT: THE FIRST 5,000 YEARS).  This book can be seen as a sort of continuation and expansion of his last book A UTOPIA OF RULES, which was about bureaucracy. Bullshit jobs and bureaucracy overlap quite a bit, if you can believe it.  The parts I cared less for mostly fail due to what I guess we could call an anthropologists bias. For example, lots of this book is concerned with creating a taxonomy of bullshit jobs  (like box tickers, goons, etc.) but basically all the real world examples tend to have elements of all the different types and it’s not really clear what this sort of filing adds to the discussion beyond enforcing a stereotype about a deep anthropological urge to classify and divide up. He also is really taken with the idea that bullshit jobs are largely created by a sort of covert feudalism. But these are minor quibbles. The book is great, it reads fast and is full of interesting examples and opinions. The Universal Basic Income stuff is always welcomed. Bullshit jobs are definitely huge problem and I’ve personally witnessed and heard accounts of massive almost unfathomable wastes of time and potential. It’s a good perspective to have that everyone should just be doing whatever they want for the maximum amount of time it’s possible. There really is something truly awful about doing something you know is bullshit and a waste of time for 8 hours a day. 9 hours of work