> It doesn't seem to be all that useful for real, productive work.
Even the most pointless bullshit job accomplishes a societal function by transferring wages from a likely wealthy large corporation to a individual worker who has bills to pay.
Eliminating bullshit jobs might be good from an economic efficiency perspective, but people still gotta eat.
The logic of American economic policy relies on a large velocity of money driven by consumer habits. It is tautological, and it is obsolete in the face of the elite trying to minimize wage expenses.
How is it obsolete? If everyone is unemployed and a few AI barons are obscenely wealthy, the velocity of money will be low because most people will be broke.
Seems to me like that's still a worthy target if chasing it fights that outcome.
How is it obsolete? If everyone is unemployed and a few AI barons are obscenely wealthy, the velocity of money will be low.
Seems to me like that's still a worthy goal.
If the only point is distributing money, then the pointless bullshit job is an unnecessary complication.
It's not unnecessary to the person who uses it to pay their bills.
I think GP meant that the money could be distributed directly without the job in between, i.e. UBI.
Of course that comes with its own set of problems, e.g. that you will lose training, connections, the ability to exert influence through the job or any hope of building a career.
That's certainly true.
But one is well-advised to inflate and test the new lifeboat before jumping out of the current one, not after.