More on useless work:
"According to Graeber, the same free-market policies that have made life and work more difficult for so many people over the past few decades have simultaneously produced more highly paid managers, telemarketers, insurance company bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists who do nothing useful all day."
Add salespeople and sales managers and you understand my life...
" Kim Moody argues that rising productivity and low pay has more to do with intensifying management techniques, like lean and just-in-time production and surveillance technology that polices workers, than it does with automation. If that is true, then it seems like we are stuck in a vicious loop of companies creating more bullshit jobs to manage and police workers..."
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"This is what statistics actually show—productivity in industry skyrocketing, and with it, profits, but productivity in, say, health and education declining, therefore, prices going up, and profits being maintained largely by squeezing wages. Which in turn explains why you have teachers, nurses, even doctors and professors on strike in so many parts of the world."
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"Brooks: Another of the arguments you make is that the structure of the modern corporation resembles feudalism more closely than the ideal of hypothetical market capitalism. What do you mean by that?
"According to Graeber, the same free-market policies that have made life and work more difficult for so many people over the past few decades have simultaneously produced more highly paid managers, telemarketers, insurance company bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists who do nothing useful all day."
Add salespeople and sales managers and you understand my life...
" Kim Moody argues that rising productivity and low pay has more to do with intensifying management techniques, like lean and just-in-time production and surveillance technology that polices workers, than it does with automation. If that is true, then it seems like we are stuck in a vicious loop of companies creating more bullshit jobs to manage and police workers..."
--
"This is what statistics actually show—productivity in industry skyrocketing, and with it, profits, but productivity in, say, health and education declining, therefore, prices going up, and profits being maintained largely by squeezing wages. Which in turn explains why you have teachers, nurses, even doctors and professors on strike in so many parts of the world."
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"Brooks: Another of the arguments you make is that the structure of the modern corporation resembles feudalism more closely than the ideal of hypothetical market capitalism. What do you mean by that?
Graeber: When I was in college they taught me that capitalism means that there are capitalists, who own productive resources, like say factories, and they hire people to make stuff and then sell it. They can’t pay their workers so much that they don’t make a profit, but they have to pay them at least enough that they can afford to buy the stuff the factory produces. Feudalism, in contrast, is when you just take your profits directly, by charging rent, fees and dues, turning people in debt peons, or otherwise shaking them down.
Nowadays the vast majority of corporate profits don’t come from making or selling things but from “finance,” which is a euphemism for other peoples’ debts—charging rents and fees and interest and whatnot. It’s feudalism in the classic definition: “direct juro-political extraction” as they sometimes put it. This also means the role of government is very different: in classic capitalism it just protects your property and maybe polices the labor force so they don’t get too difficult, but in financial capitalism, you’re extracting your profits through the legal system, so the rules and regulations are absolutely crucial, you basically need the government to back you up as you shake people down for their debts."
We don't need to do so much of what we do. Capitalism has us all grasping at ghosts.
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