Q & A

Q: What is a bullshit job?

A: A bullshit job is any job where you are paid for having a title as opposed to what you are able to produce. Most jobs in government, academic administration, and corporate middle management fit this description. Other jobs primarily in the legal and financial services professions also fit this description because the vast majority of what they do is of dubious merit.

The value of a job can be measured in its social contribution. For instance, a doctor saves lives and improves health. A stockbroker churns the doctor's trading account to generate more commissions for himself while blowing what the doctor has earned. The doctor has a real job. The stockbroker has a bullshit job.

Certain people of a capitalistic bent will accuse me of being a socialist. They will claim that all jobs that pay well must be of some great social contribution simply because they pay well. But they overlook the very real phenomenon of fraud. The free market that generates the doctor also generates the infomercial quacks hawking herbal remedy cures. Likewise, other people are able to find their con to live by and run with it. I call these people the Parasite Class.

Whenever a company or a society generates a higher ratio of bullshit jobs to real jobs, you have a collapse. Recently, Lowe's Home Improvement decided to fire 1700 middle managers and hire more part time people to work the floors in their stores. This is a smart move on the company's part as someone there finally realized these middle managers add no value to the company. They eliminated the bullshit and decided to roll with the real.

Bullshit jobs are the result of bubble economics. This is why so many college grads find themselves unemployed because they had prepared themselves to find employment in these bullshit jobs that no longer exist now. Without real job skills, they work for substandard wages at places like Starbucks while living at home with mom and dad. I don't feel sorry for them.

Blue collar jobs are real jobs because they are always of some social benefit. Those jobs have been denigrated and given lower social status. Yet, a blue collar worker is worth more than any middle manager. You can't fire the people that actually do the work. You can fire the middle manager though with no ill effect. Lowe's is doing this now.

Recessions correct the bullshit as companies must actually do what is in their financial interest to remain profitable instead of indulging the luxury of having email sending suits fellating one another all day in Machiavellian office games. Blue collar workers suffer first as the parasites cut muscle and bone to try and save the fat. The error becomes clear later as the parasites realize there is no one to actually do the work they don't want to do. The imbalance becomes apparent to upper management who then move to hire back the real workers and eliminate the parasites who have royally fucked the company. Tough economic times cleanse the system and reallocate the malinvested resources.

Bubbles rise and pop and will continue as long as we have central banking. For the man in the street, he only has to ask himself one question. If everybody wants to be the chief and nobody wants to be an Indian, what will that do to our world? What would happen without our garbage men, our auto mechanics, our plumbers, our electricians, our construction workers? And why do we look down and despise the very people that make our lives livable? And why do we praise and revere people who gave us such shit as the housing bubble?

The doctor loves his stockbroker who fucks him in the ass while looking down his nose at the plumber that fixes his garbage disposal. Yet, that plumber gives a real service. Meanwhile, that stockbroker is milking the fuck out of Dr. Dumbass. The doctor gripes that he has to pay that plumber a couple hundred bucks for his time as if such low status people should work for free purely for the pleasure of servicing such an esteemed person as himself. Yet, he pays that stockbroker thousands to churn his account, drive up his tax bill, and yield a meager return that could have been beaten by simply buying and holding shares in an index fund. At the end of the year, he is poorer than he should be. But at least that garbage disposal works.

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