Book: 20260713 to 20260811, "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber

 

20260720 - Preface: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

There was no bullshit jobs before industrial revolution.
Is it necessary waste?

20260721 - Chapter 1: What Is a Bullshit Job?

The author argues that "bullshit jobs" refer to those that other people can bypass and easily handle directly.
According to this definition, in the age of AI, all white-collar jobs are in big trouble.
PS: Once humanoid robots become widespread, blue-collar jobs will also be in big trouble.

There is a very thin line between extreme luxury and total crap. p22
What is valuable extreme luxury? The ones that improve our life quality and not just because of market branding.

Most of documents are useless as no one will read them. It's good idea to let AI to generate them based on relevant information, such as meeting recordings and computer source code.

20260722 - Chapter 2: What Sorts of Bullshit Jobs Are There?

There is large latency between technology development and social structure/tradition.
So, in AI age, more Bullshit Jobs will be there, especially in public sections.

### 20260729 - Chapter 3: Why Do Those in Bullshit Jobs Regularly Report Themselves Unhappy?

concerning the experience of falseness and purposelessness at the core of bullshit jobs. p73
We cannot lie to ourselves. We know that we are not getting better, while we are getting older. Our gene hates bullshit jobs.

If it's just boredom, nowadays, we can listen to podcasts with AirPods. The better choice is to madidate. Or else, it's better to switch to other jobs. It's not worth to exchange our time for money if there is no compound effect.

20260731 - Chapter 4: What Is It Like to Have a Bullshit Job?

How does it come to seem morally wrong to the employer that workers are not working, even if there is nothing obvious for them to do? p102

It's not just employers. Most people are like this.

• If they've paid for an AI subscription, they feel compelled to use every bit of their weekly quota. Anything left unused feels like money wasted.
• If they have access to GPT-5.6 Sol, they refuse to use GPT-5.5 Instant—even when the latter would produce an answer that's perfectly adequate.
• When parents see their children "doing nothing," they feel obligated to find something "meaningful" for them to do. Otherwise, they see it as wasted time—or even a wasted life.

Yet when it comes to themselves, the standard is often the exact opposite:

• If they can lie down, they won't stand.
• If something can be put off until tomorrow, they'll settle for getting by today.

How to handle boredom? Make it a game. Find something challenging.
For example, if we were asked to sit somewhere doing nothing, try to madidate.
If we were asked to do meaningless paperwork, try to make some fun it, just like ""Catch-22".
If work in a shop loading stuff, try to become humorous and make strangers laugh.

20260807 - Chapter 5: Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating?

Bullshit jobs are generated from abundance. In primitive society, there is no bullshit jobs.
Employee's benefit, including CEO's benefit are often conflict with the benefit of shareholders. Everyone want to gain more even if that means sacrifice the company's benefit.
So, cost is decided by profit. The more profit, the higher cost.
Is there some way to reduce bullshit jobs in wealthy society?
How can we create proper amount of stress?

20260811 - Chapter 6: Why Do We as a Society Not Object to the Growth of Pointless Employment?

What do bankers contribute to our society? It seems that David Graeber doesn't understand economy and "the survival of the fittest".

Price is decided by supply and demand, and that's the reason that school teachers only get low pay. Bankers allocate financial resources to accelerate the growth of economy. They caused disasters, but also let cars and refrigerators get populated quickly, and let millions of people get their homes in short period of time.

Price is not associated with value. Air and water are critical to everyone, but are almost free.

In the end, you can see people doing the nongratifying duct-taping work during office hours and then doing gratifying work on core technologies during the night. p219
The cost of an extra copy of software is almost zero. How will AI change this?

It also makes it maximally easy for the factory owner to insist that no, actually, workers are really no different from the machines they operate. p237
This means, to some extent, all repetitive work are bullshit jobs, which should be taken over by machines(AI).
Then, how about playing Go board game? It's never the same, but AI can do it much better than human. And, what's the point of playing Go game?
If AI is much better CEO, should we let AI to take over all companies?

Bullshit jobs are not good choices, but they are the least bad choices. Or else, where can we put out attention on? There is no real meaning of life to most of people.

What's the meaning of life? It must be related to our gene. Anything that can help our gene thrive give us the meaning of life.

20260811 - Chapter 7: What Are the Political Effects of Bullshit Jobs, and Is There Anything That Can Be Done About This Situation?

What's more, faced with the "problem" of abundant leisure time, people in those societies seem to have had little trouble figuring out ways to entertain themselves or otherwise pass the time. p266
True. This makes perfect sense!
Except one thing: in those days, people don't have much alcohol, drugs or computer games.
Danger is real, but not that dreadful to many people.

To deploy UBI, there are a few thing need to do first.

1. Tariff protection.
   Or else, oversea cheap goods will flood in to bankrupt most of domestic companies.

2. Automate almost all production and services.
   Without full automation, socialism leads to disaster. This has been proved many times.