Bullshit Jobs
Subtitle: A Theory
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: May 15, 2018
Language: eng
Format: E-book
ISBN-13: 9781501143342
First sentence: In the spring of 2013, I unwittingly set off a very minor international sensation.
Table of contents: title: Bullshit Jobs; title: Preface: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs; label: Chapter 1
title: What Is a Bullshit Job?; title: why a mafia hit man is not a good example of a bullshit job; title: on the importance of the subjective element, and also, why it can be assumed that those who believe they have bullshit jobs are generally correct; title: on the common misconception that bullshit jobs are confined largely to the public sector; title: why hairdressers are a poor example of a bullshit job; title: on the difference between partly bullshit jobs, mostly bullshit jobs, and purely and entirely bullshit jobs; label: Chapter 2
title: What Sorts of Bullshit Jobs Are There?; title: the five major varieties of bullshit jobs; title: 1. what flunkies do; title: 2. what goons do; title: 3. what duct tapers do; title: 4. what box tickers do; title: 5. what taskmasters do; title: on complex multiform bullshit jobs; title: a word on second-order bullshit jobs; title: a final note, with a brief return to the question: is it possible to have a bullshit job and not know it?; label: Chapter 3
title: Why Do Those in Bullshit Jobs Regularly Report Themselves Unhappy? (On Spiritual Violence, Part 1); title: about one young man apparently handed a sinecure who nonetheless found himself unable to handle the situation; title: concerning the experience of falseness and purposelessness at the core of bullshit jobs, and the importance now felt of conveying the experience of falseness and purposelessness to youth; title: why many of our fundamental assumptions on human motivation appear to be incorrect; title: a brief excursus on the history of make-work and particularly of the concept of buying other people’s time; title: concerning the clash between the morality of time and natural work rhythms, and the resentment it creates; label: Chapter 4
title: What Is It Like to Have a Bullshit Job? (On Spiritual Violence, Part 2); title: why having a bullshit job is not always necessarily that bad; title: on the misery of ambiguity and forced pretense; title: on the misery of not being a cause; title: on the misery of not feeling entitled to one’s misery; title: on the misery of knowing that one is doing harm; title: coda: on the effects of bullshit jobs on human creativity, and on why attempts to assert oneself creatively or politically against pointless employment might be considered a form of spiritual warfare; label: Chapter 5
title: Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating?; title: a brief excursus on causality and the nature of sociological explanation; title: sundry notes on the role of government in creating and maintaining bullshit jobs; title: concerning some false explanations for the rise of bullshit jobs; title: why the financial industry might be considered a paradigm for bullshit job creation; title: on some ways in which the current form of managerial feudalism resembles classical feudalism, and other ways in which it does not; title: how managerial feudalism manifests itself in the creative industries through an endless multiplication of intermediary executive ranks; title: conclusion, with a brief return to the question of three levels of causation; label: Chapter 6
title: Why Do We as a Society Not Object to the Growth of Pointless Employment?; title: on the impossibility of developing an absolute measure of value; title: how most people in contemporary society do accept the notion of a social value that can be distinguished from economic value, even if it is very difficult to pin down what it is; title: concerning the inverse relationship between the social value of work and the amount of money one is likely to be paid for it; title: on the theological roots of our attitudes toward labor; title: on the origins of the northern european notion of paid labor as necessary to the full formation of an adult human being; title: how, with the advent of capitalism, work came to be seen in many quarters either as a means of social reform or ultimately as a virtue in its own right, and how laborers countered by embracing the labor theory of value; title: concerning the key flaw in the labor theory of value as it became popular in the nineteenth century, and how the owners of capital exploited that flaw; title: how, over the course of the twentieth century, work came to be increasingly valued primarily as a form of discipline and self-sacrifice; label: Chapter 7
title: What Are the Political Effects of Bullshit Jobs, and Is There Anything That Can Be Done About This Situation?; title: on how the political culture under managerial feudalism comes to be maintained by a balance of resentments; title: how the current crisis over robotization relates to the larger problem of bullshit jobs; title: on the political ramifications of bullshitization and consequent decline of productivity in the caring sector as it relates to the possibility of a revolt of the caring classes; title: on universal basic income as an example of a program that might begin to detach work from compensation and put an end to the dilemmas described in this book; title: Acknowledgments; title: About the Author; title: Bibliography