We Squander Creativity More Than Any Other Resource
by design
David Graeber is definitely onto something. The modern world really does suffer from a profusion of bullshit jobs. Many readers may no doubt ask, “Is there another kind?” to which I can only reply, “I’ll let you know if I ever see one in the wild.” Graeber calls out Hollywood as perhaps one of the last bastions of “legit” jobs, those which pay well while also being socially useful. These rare, intellectually stimulating, remunerative and worthwhile careers, Graeber argues, are available only to nepo babies; it’s a closed shop. I don’t watch television anymore. I haven’t for years. I still go to the movies, but not as often as I used to because I’ve already seen Superman, Spider Man, Batman, etc. at least three or four times each with different actors. Graeber’s intent here seems to be to emphasize the genuine social value of creativity and good things that creativity can be used to bring into existence. I agree in principle. Hollywood? I’m not so sure.
Source: Openverse
There is no denying that herding people into bullshit jobs stifles creativity. Millions of people work every day doing tasks that have absolutely no meaning or objective value. As Graeber points out, in many cases bullshit jobs pay much more than socially useful or otherwise intrinsically rewarding jobs. His theory is that society essentially bribes people to waste the best years of their lives arranging paperclips (that exact task is cited in one of the frustrated testimonials in his book, believe it or not). If you’re chained to a desk most of every week, and if you’re too busy putting out life’s fires or mentally fried to think or create outside of your day job, then you can’t become a competitor to your employer or organize resistance to the prevailing political elite. If, by some miracle, you summon the energy and slip through their dragnet, you have almost certainly signed a blanket intellectual property agreement that assigns your every conscious thought to the company—irrespective or where or when it occurs.
Those who do essential, but unsatisfying, work—what Graeber calls “shit jobs”—need not be so richly compensated because they are not seen as posing an intellectual threat to the social order. This can occasionally backfire, as in the case of the early 20th century unionization movement that rallied everyone from slaughterhouse employees to coal miners. But the core system of economic oppression works quite well. For extra effect, people who do not work themselves to exhaustion doing jobs they hate are labeled as unworthy of public respect and support. Slackers! Sinners! Indeed, one of the most important roles of organized religion is to shame the great majority of people into accepting their miserable lot in life. Religion surely must rank as the greatest and longest con ever perpetrated on one group of humans by another. The systematic beating down of the poor is as effective at quashing creativity as is the bribing of middle class professionals to forget every useful skill they ever learned.
The third category of jobs, which Graeber describes as most genuinely useful to society, are rewarded with praise and prestige rather than money (something that would be impossible to pull off with bullshit job holders). Think of some of the occupations you would be most concerned to see disappear: nurses, teachers, local cops (not ICE), firefighters. All the propaganda surrounding “first responders,” including the countless soaring television and film dramas that have been made to celebrate their “heroism,” are intended to stand in for decent pay. These workers might well prefer that some of that film money to be used to give them raises, but instead we give them shiny badges and cool uniforms, along with impressive-sounding job titles (admit it—you’ve always wanted to breeze into a room and announce yourself as Detective Sergeant Friday). We thank them for their service. As Graeber puts it, it’s as if society felt that paying them more would be unfair: they get to do the world’s most important jobs, so let the rest of us at least keep the money.
Graeber ends his book with an endorsement of universal basic income (UBI). I do not agree with him on this point. All UBI would be is another Medicare Advantage-type program whereby new insurance or “sustenance” providers would emerge to offer gradually, yet steadily worsening benefits in exchange for poor and unsophisticated people signing away their universal income. This arrangement would gradually come to look a lot like prison, with tainted food and unsafe apartments designed to allow the rich to skim as much UBI as possible off the top without obviously and visibly being responsible for large numbers of deaths. As with most current bullshit job holders, a middle status group would be allowed to earn enough additional wealth to be able to purchase a few token shares in those companies, thereby earning capital gains and dividends in exchange for their complicity. Otherwise, a UBI program would merely function as another dose of quantitative easing, pumping money into the economy to stoke demand. The predictable result of higher inflation would eventually destroy any additional purchasing power held by UBI-only recipients.