[ home / overboard / sfw / alt / cytube] [ leftypol / b / WRK / hobby / tech / edu / ga / ent / music / 777 / posad / i / a / lgbt / R9K / dead ] [ meta ]

/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

"The anons of the past have only shitposted on the Internets about the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
Name
Email
Subject
Comment
Captcha
Tor Only
Flag
File
Embed
Password (For file deletion.)
Matrix   IRC Chat   Mumble
ReturnCatalogBottom

File: 1627293530758.jpeg ( 133.06 KB , 1080x675 , graeber-jobs_1200-48475b2….jpeg )

 No.403036

Receptionists, inventory managers, government bureaucrats. Mindless droolers doing useless repetitive tasks that can be easily automated with 80s level software. Why do they exist? To babysit the general public until all important jobs are shipped to SEA? Even some STEM jobs are absolutely useless, any programmer adding useless bloat for company websites via a CMS is in this same category for me. I thought capitalism was about effeciency and rational use of ressources?
>>

 No.403038

>I thought capitalism was about effeciency and rational use of ressources?
Oh anon, if only that were true.
>>

 No.403041

In socialism, a major goal is to lower labor hours through maximizing efficiency. Automation is wanted under socialism. Since the workers own the mean of production, everybody benefits from automation.

In capitalism, a goal is to increase profits. Often, it is more profitable to let a human slave away for many hours rather than to automate his job. Furthermore, the common worker does not benefit from automation at all.

So many jobs are there because an underpaid wagie is cheaper than automation.

Some jobs are there so you don't have millions of unemployed susceptible to stoking a revolution any time.

Some are there to manage capital and workers because the bourgeoisie is too lazy to do so.

Some are there because the bourgeoisie falsely think they add value, or so they can justify higher prices.
>>

 No.403043

>>403041
so basically just to babysit people? But over time as the rate of profit falls, there would be less incentive to keep these people around? That's why there is such a high unemployment rate right now. It's because so people are fighting over these useless corporate jobs
>>

 No.403052

>>403043
The main reason is simply because automation is more expensive for many firms than people are.

A side reason, especially for governmental jobs, is to babysit people.

As automation capacities improve even for the most tech-illiterate and dumbest porky, so will unemployment rise. This is why billionaires like Musk or Gates advocate for a UBI: They don't want a horde of unemployed later who can be used for revolutions etc, they want a servile population who can cash in their subsistence-level welfare checks and keep consuming the products the billionaires peddle, effectively subsidized by all the workers who couldn't be automated away.

This is why UBI by itself is a band-aid and should be opposed by any communist, unless this UBI mechanism takes place in a society where the workers own the robots, AI and other tools.
>>

 No.403063

>>403036
There is another reason why capitalism hasn't really harnessed the potential for automation of computers. Capitalism has a tendency to de-skill people so that workers require less training to make them more replaceable.
This de-skilling has resulted in most people only interacting with computers on a very superficial level, that is limited to very simple things. All the practical and detailed knowledge that is necessary to automate a great number of tasks is in the heads of people who are unable to convert it into code, because capitalists do not want to invest in leveling up the skill of workers. Because skilled workers could want better wages or change employers.

This is a new contradiction in capitalism that somehow puts capitalism in the camp of decelerating technical progress.
>>

 No.403071

Are those jobs actually useless? A lot of people underestimate how difficult it is to actually get daily shit to properly work. Many little contributions are required to not cause the industrial complexity of the modern world to break down.
>>

 No.403078

>>403071
Yes. Not only are they useless but they add unnecessary complexity and useless bureaucracy that only stalls productivity.
>>

 No.403080

>>403071
Hiring process today:
>sorry you have to get all those additional paperwork ready, like references, cv, cover letter, bank statements, social security number, criminal record….

In the 30s:
>lmao just give the boss a firm handshake
>>

 No.403121

>>403080
Exactly so much of this shit is fucking pointless. I fucking hate applying for jobs
>>

 No.403152

Regarding automation
Machine have fixed costs. Yes, you can improve them and make more efficient machines, but in terms of fuel and operational capacity you can't wring any more money out of them than a set figure. Human labor is not like this, they can be underpaid and forced to work unpaid overtime, have their entitlements cut, etc.
Furthermore, machines are not consumers, they do not buy products. This is part of the reason why industrialists supported abolition, slaves are not consumers, wage earners are.
>>

 No.403154

>>403036
Porky is happy long as surplus value is extracted in the immediate future, if that's done digging ditches and filling them back up then so be it.
>>

 No.403156

>>403052
UBI really seems reformist-like, I cannot understand the contradictions it would cause in the system to lead to a revolution
>>

 No.403202

>>403156
UBI would have made since in the late 80s/90s. Outsource labor as much as possible and create a permeate welfare consumer class to keep money circulating. Right now though? We need a WW2 WPA to build climate refugee cities and reorganize all of society to the coming disaster. We need a labor draft to an army style workforce for coming realities. Not that that is going to happen, if anything in America they'll try to impress people to keep McDonald's running as the sea levels come in and swallow all of the nation's capital along the coast
>>

 No.403210

>>403202
Well in the US, you have to find a place where it won't be deathly hot in the coming years for the refugees. Because the first climate refugees will be coming from the Western States to the East, while the Southwest and those closest to the Mexican Boarder will continue to try and be the fascist bitches they are and most like start killing the refugees coming from the Global South. In the US its as you said the Corporate mouth pieces will try and impress the people that the McDonald's is still running despite most if not all the East Coast is under water or Destroyed by constant Hurricanes as the Hurricane Season will end up not just being a season and being a year round thing.

Now is the time to start reinforcing cities and finding ways to reduce the amount of heat. Weather proofing infrastructure and switching from the heavy use of Fossil Fuels to Nuclear for the time being until we can figure out a way to keep climate refugees and not turn to Eco Fascism.
>>

 No.403259

They're not bullshit jobsthey

-facilitate profit
-build a labour aristocracy in the West wedded to imperialism

The reason Graebers retarded stance on "bullshit jobs" and why his article then book became popular was because the sentiment resonated with western workers who no lomger produce anything, have de-industrialised their countries and literally just oversee the great behemoth that is the Western financial economy - of 'aimlessly' (to the workers) moving money from one location the next

Graeber was a retard that hit upon a half truth and became popular whilst not understanding it. No capitalist employs people if they dont make a profit and the rapid expansion of tent cities and slums in US cities proves that
>>

 No.403292

>>403259
iirc Graeber does not claim that bullshit jobs don't generate profit only that they are useless for the good of humanity. He's an anti-capitalist so he is deliberately not measuring these things from the POV of capital.
>>

 No.404374

>Why do they exist?
These jobs exist to support the incomes of friends and family of people that already work there. These people also support the careers of those that got them the job.

Try applying for a public service job. You won't get it because it will always go to somebody known by somebody that works there. I literally know nobody that has got a public service job even though my friends and I have applied hundreds of times.
>>

 No.404401

The amount of labour that actually produces value in the US is pretty tiny: the few remaining factory jobs, shipping energy and logistics, agriculture, restaurant workers. Pretty much every other job is directly paid off the surplus value they produce (and the labour from overseas). I think its weird that a lot of people including OP seem to imply the high-intelligence/education jobs aren't less 'bullshit' than the mindless pencil pushers, when the opposite is true. Lawyers and doctors, any mathematician apart of finance capital or risk management, very high paying jobs that produce no value.
>>

 No.404640

>>403259
illiterate struggle session
>>

 No.404720

>>404401
OP insinuated the opposite. Stem and blue color jobs are the only real jobs.
>>

 No.404722

Does anyone have the link to OPs book?
>>

 No.404810

I heard the content of the book is this: A guy with a huge audience asks them for stories about doing pointless work and compiles them in a book. I'm sure you can get some fun and bizarre anecdotes out of that, but that approach is not a serious investigation of anything.

>>403259
>de-industrialised
Has that actually happened as a general thing? What has certainly happened: specific companies or specific industries in specific regions shutting down. We can collect pictures of closed-down factories all day long, but then we are just engaging in the same quack methodology as Graeber seems to (I admit I haven't read the book). Suppose a factory gets modernized so that it now produces the same amount of stuff with half the staff. Suppose many factories in a region get modernized that way. Suppose a big part of the population there shifts to service work. Whatever your impression is from having asked people living there then and now about their jobs, it would be wrong to say the region is undergoing de-industrialisation.
>>

 No.404948

Tangential note: Its unlikely that UBI would have any significant redistributive effect over time.

This is because it creates pressure to raise prices and hence tends to be inflated away.

In fact, a suspicion I have is that the reason the neolibs tend to support it is that (because of this property it has) it can be used as a means of stealth austerity: Cut actual social programs using as justification that people have been compensated by ubi.
>>

 No.404962

Because of bullshit mentality of "MUH WORKING GOOD, LAZY BASTARD. PROLETARİAT SHOULD HARDWORK" and "I WORK, SO YOU SHOULD WORK TOO"
Honestly, i don't understand why anyone should work expect than STEMfags, teachers and architects/designers. We only need them
>>

 No.404963

>>404948
any sane UBI would be index linked.
>>

 No.404996

File: 1627399189068.pdf ( 1.87 MB , 225x300 , david-graeber-bullshit-job….pdf )

>>404722
Here fren.
>>

 No.405093

>>404962
May be not so many workers know they could work less. I do not know how one can still keep this position on work after looking at productivity growth, like, working good for what, to be fired? To produce more unemployment? For higher income inequality?
Everyone should work, OK, but why so many hours? Why by working longer you get the same gods as workers in 1970 + some toys? While productivity is a few times higher.. boomers where living OK, they have houses, cars, what else, but were working 8 hours. Productivity permits working less, if productivity is twice higher, then workday can be twice lower, but work day is becoming longer.

I mean, it might be easy to convince them.
>>

 No.405099

>>405093
* same goods, foox.
>>

 No.405230

>>403202
Can you stop being a millenarian
>>

 No.405488

>>404963
Same for minimum wage. But it wasn't in the US.

Why on Earth would you expect the US to implement sane policies?
>>

 No.405501

>>403036
>I thought capitalism was about effeciency and rational use of ressources?
well, kinda, you just always have to ask "efficiency of what?"
Capitalism tends to rationally use ressources and be efficient purely for the goal of increasing profit, outside of that imperative, not so much.
>>

 No.405555

>>403036
>I thought capitalism was about effeciency and rational use of ressources?
Legal fetishism flows naturally from neoliberalism because the law is what formalizes the market's rules and handles disputes among market actors, it is the ideology of Rechtstaat.
Now when you apply the market logic to everything… The consequence is that you now need a bunch of people to mediate between different parties just like in a legal situation, so you get "bullshit jobs".
>>

 No.405561

>>403036
>bullshit jobs
Mmmph
>instead of "not profitable jobs"
You, burgers, had a so wonderful life, you could fake a socialist state* in the job sector: Many of non-productive jobs, titles, specializations, etc were created, that now the U.S. superiority is succumbing, now the only jobs you care, you argue in favor of, is those that actually create profit.

*: In the sense of not going for driven profits decisions on what to study.
>>

 No.405631

>>404374
This. Bullshit jobs only exist for people with friends and family that will give the jobs to them. If you're an average dude without connections, you can't get bullshit jobs except low pay crap like Uber Eats deliverer.
>>

 No.405636

If you allow proles to have free time they might use some of it to think and get unauthorized ideas. They also won't be earning a wage, which they need in order to buy commodities.

Unique IPs: 30
[Return][Catalog][Top][Home][Post a Reply]
Delete Post [ ]
[ home / overboard / sfw / alt / cytube] [ leftypol / b / WRK / hobby / tech / edu / ga / ent / music / 777 / posad / i / a / lgbt / R9K / dead ] [ meta ]
ReturnCatalogTopBottomHome