Episode 63 - "Busy Work"

Some 37% of workers believe their jobs are pointless, and if we include the jobs that exist to serve those pointless jobs in some way, it's possible that half of the jobs in our economy today (mostly residing in the informational sectors of white-collar work) could disappear with no ill-consequences. In this episode we read and hear from listener-submitted examples of pointless jobs, explore the nature and causes of this phenomenon as outlined in David Graeber's book on the subject, and imagine a world where such pointless assaults on our soul can't happen.

Chapters

• 07:29 Our Own BS Jobs
• 18:24 What are the definitions and categories of BS jobs?
• 31:09 Even More BS Jobs
• 47:47 Concepts about these BS jobs
• 1:00:13 BS jobs responsible for social media?
• 1:06:07 Why do BS jobs proliferate? What are the structures?
• 1:19:55 Bringing it all home; policies to support; what we can do

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

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CC BY-SA 4.0