![[Book Club | Part 1 Discussion] Bullshit Jobs](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/VeEzTLxq4X.jpg){kind=link}
David Graeber – ‘Bullshit Jobs’. In this book, David Graeber argues that there are millions of people across the world — clerical workers, administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel, and many others — who are toiling away in meaningless, unnecessary jobs, and they know it. Capitalism is supposed to bring efficiency, but instead of freeing ourselves from the suffocating 40-hour workweek, we’ve invented a whole universe of futile occupations that are professionally unsatisfying and spiritually empty. Graeber argues that unions and a universal basic income can provide a potential solution to the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.
Reading/Discussion Schedule:
Preface, Chapters 1 & 2 - Sunday 21st November
Chapters 3 & 4 - Sunday 28th November
Chapters 5 & 6 - Sunday 5th December
Chapter 7 - Sunday 12th December
PDF of the original essay that led to the book
lol yeah. It's such an important point, because he makes it very clear early on that when he says bullshit he doesn't mean it how others have meant it in the past, as this hierarchal judgement of the worthiness of something people like to do and want done. A bullshit job isn't making video games that you personally don't enjoy, nor is it sex work, nor is it even criminal behavior. It's work that even the worker themselves acknowledges shouldn't exist, and wouldn't exist if not for the absurd machinations of a deeply hierarchal system that treats rich people as somehow spiritually in tune with what's most efficient.