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Friday 13 October 2017

The 5 Types of BS Jobs



As we know, this kind of cynicism has been around for decades at least but the impact seems to be less than negligible. There are so many things we must pretend not to know, yet so many of us do know and don't mind hearing about it again and again. It's such fun. For now.

5 comments:

Clacket said...

Well, non-jobs are in a way an enormous waste. Not prima-facie too controversial. Real waste, real money, real irrecoverable wealth (and consequently and importantly – people are slow to understand this critical point - real power) down the toilet. I am a profound believer in economic gravity, as much as I believe in gravity itself. I think that in my own particular area of law I can just 'sort of somewhat' absolve myself of this stricture. Ultimately, we eat what we kill and if we don’t we starve, as to a lesser degree do those that depend on us. Needless to say, we attract an ecosystem of hosts of jackals, parasites and regulators. Many of whom have better prospects and pensions (and most irritatingly more sanctimony, less self-awareness and probably less scruples) than we have.

That’s life I guess, a cost of doing interesting business. One shouldn’t be too judgmental. They presumably have families to feed as well. Much more, it is human nature in action. We are crowding, safety seeking herds at heart, presumably for time-served and rewarded evolutionary reasons to date. Even the guy in the video (with whom I pretty much entirely agree) is presumably and slightly ironically some kind of funded academic.

All that needless and unreciprocated niceness aside, I am pretty much stunned by the crappiness and vacuity of a lot of modern jobs and the dull soul-destroying contortions now needed to clamber up the anthill. That, and the historical ignorance; and the weird reward scale. The real hero to me is the plumber who fixes your heating in midwinter. This is a guy who addresses your primal needs! Not HR. They just have no sense of fun (not as flippant an observation as it seems).

BS baffles brains is a cliché way older than me. Is it just a matter of degree? And have we passed a tipping point? This stuff is older than we think. The poet W B Yeats was, just for instance, gloomily if not entirely reliably prophetic about this sort of stuff a hundred or so years ago.

I do enjoy your thoughtful and oddly provocative site. I can imagine it turning into a chore pointing up the latest exemplar of the ship of fools (an image that I think almost goes back to medieval times, more or less, so what’s new?)

All the best

Anonymous said...

We have too many people, the world could run very nicely with about one third to a half the current numbers. Cecil Northcote Parkinson explained it all, work expands to fill the available time and now it also expands to occupy the available people. We find crap jobs to soak up the folk and avoid putting capable workers truly in charge. With more efficiency and automation and robots the humans may need to be 'managed'. Form an orderly line please.




James Higham said...

One really good job is retirement.

wiggiatlarge said...

For a myriad of reasons retirement is not a job though it can be a chore sometimes a painful one and for many there is nothing really good about it even as an existence !

A K Haart said...

Clacket - yes non-jobs are an enormous waste but it isn't easy to see how the situation could ever be corrected or even if it needs correcting. Could be an aspect of prosperity but it doesn't feel stable long-term.

Roger - years ago I did a back of fag packet estimate of how many people my outfit could lose without causing any impact on the environment we were responsible for. I came up with a reduction of about one third to a half too. Anyone could do it so I assume many have.

James - best job I ever had.

Wiggia - I'm enjoying retirement but that may change as the years go by and age has its say on what can be done.