 Cut the bull The term “bullshit jobs” was popularized in a book of the same name by the late anthropologist David Graeber. He suggested some jobs — such as tax lawyer, marketing consultant, HR — just weren’t necessary: They serve no utility, and are make-work, like those given by medieval kings to useless aristocrats. Rich bosses, Graeber believed, were spending millions employing people in meaningless roles as sops to their own ego. His book was a huge bestseller. But the idea is stupid, the tech and finance writer Byrne Hobart argues in The Diff. Graeber himself acknowledged that there was one role, actuary, which he thought was bullshit, but which actually serves a vital purpose. And economic growth means people are a lot more expensive than they used to be: Would companies really pay people huge amounts for work they didn’t need? Wouldn’t they be outcompeted by the companies that didn’t do that? Lots of people dislike their jobs, but jobs are things you “do for money because the things that you enjoy doing get done for free.” That doesn’t make them fake. The idea of “bullshit jobs” is a “terrible, curiosity-killing concept.” Rise of the machines “In San Francisco, robotaxis are like naked guys,” says the urbanist writer Benjamin Schneider. “The first time you spot one, it feels like a big moment. After that, they fade into the background.” Until 2022, the automated vehicles mainly had backup drivers ready to take the wheel, but that’s not the case any more: Hundreds of the cars are moving around by themselves. This, Schneider writes on Slow Boring, hasn’t really been noticed by the media, which often still argues that robotaxis are years or decades away. The rise of the robotaxi could and probably will profoundly change Western cities. The question is whether they change them for the worse — exacerbating “the worst side-effects of America’s car dependency” — or for the better, if policymakers use the opportunity of the huge shift that robotaxis will bring to redesign urban areas and incentivize active and public transport to better serve “the needs of cities and their people.” Alternatively, they “could create an even more auto-centric transportation paradigm that consigns everyone to spend still more time in the car.” Politically homeless Much of the US — notably San Francisco, hence the naked guys, above — has a problem with homelessness. Much of that problem centers around people suffering profound mental illness, often disruptive, often a danger to themselves or others. A lot of articles are written arguing that the government should Do Something about mentally ill homeless people. But, the psychiatrist Scott Alexander says, when you call for that, you need to be very specific about what it is you want. It might sound simple to just commit more people to institutions. But even if you found a way to do that, most people are released from hospital after a few days, “with antipsychotics which they will immediately stop taking.” If you lock them up long-term, you’ll need a vast nationwide construction program, because there aren’t enough institutions — and even then, do you keep them in even once the drugs are working? If not, most of them will stop taking the drugs as soon as they leave, and social services can’t track them down because they’re homeless. Anything short of locking people up essentially forever “becomes just another confusing bad option,” writes Alexander on Astral Codex Ten. Maybe being that draconian is worth it, but you need to admit that’s what you mean. |
