An economy needs to economize. To maximize its resource and energy efficiency. Not the number of jobs. Nor the amount of busyness. Something most ten-year-old understand very well from their economy-building computer games. They will always build an efficiency-maximizing economy. Our economy simply does the opposite of what an economy is supposed to do. This becomes particularly obvious once an economy moves past its peak labor efficiency. Which our economy did back in like 1990. When technological efficiency and automation led to a diminishing relevant workload.
We are 30+ years past said peak labor efficiency but continue to maintain the obsolete work-for-income paradigm. With fatal implications and consequences. Instead of finally decoupling income from labor and distributing the wealth generated by our actual economy, we maintained this narrative of "never-enough-jobs". Leading to billions of purely systemic and/or redundant, non-contributing bullshit jobs. Representing a giant abstraction layer parasitizing on our actual economy. Not required to maintain our standard of living. Celebrating redundancies. Manipulating cash-flows and perception. "Legitimizing" a random story about poverty and billionaires. Or dealing with mere symptoms.
Said #bullshitjobs are wasting our lives, most of our resources, energy and fossil fuels. Causing the collapse of our biosphere (a.k.a. climate change), "inflation" (the inflation caused by money-printing is, relatively speaking, almost negligible at this point) and pandemics (thanks to purely systemic exposure to pathogens).
All of this has been anticipated by philosopher Alan Watts back in 1960 already. Referring to it as "nonsense employment" in his talks: Alan Watts | Socially Responsible Automation & UBI.
In 2012, the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber coined the #bullshitjobs meme in his legendary article: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant.
In late 2020, soon before David passed way too early, he published another brilliant article on the environmental implications of #bullshitjobs: To save the world, we're going to have to stop working.
I have been communicating all of this independently ever since 1999. Feel free to follow me on Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube or TikTok. This page represents a crude attempt of helping people to understand humanity's #1 issue.
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Genuine economy: |
Our "economy": | |
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Monetary system: |
Governments in charge of our money supply.
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, [...] the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless [...]. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1809
Money, behaviour and society: the invisible link | Stef Kuypers | TEDxAntwerp
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Weird 3-letter organization in charge of our money supply.
"If I were to take to heart the collective suffering that the money system inflicts upon the world, I believe I would drop dead on the spot because it is that horrific." -- Margrit Kennedy
Debt: the first 5000 years - David Graeber
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Economic ideology: |
Cooperation, distribution of wealth generated by the diminishing relevant work, maximizing efficiency.
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Poverty, competition and maximizing inefficiency and redundancies to extract numbers and to redirect cash-flows via a giant abstraction layer of #bullshitjobs.
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Purpose of governments: |
Manage the economy to benefit society. |
Assure the population that "bogus debt, widespread poverty and maximizing employment via #bullshitjobs" represents an economy. |
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Tax accounting: |
Tax accounting does not exist as governments are in charge of our money supply and not "lacking" numbers. A truly grotesque notion. |
:-( |
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Marketing: |
Economy cooperatively produces generic high-volume products without the need to market microwave ovens to ourselves.
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:-( |
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Insurances: |
Direct allocation of purchasing power and/or replacing stuff that breaks is magnitudes more resource and energy efficient than maintaining millions of insurance skyscrapers and offices. |
:-( |
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Education: |
:-) |
A lot of education in the context of systemic nonsense. Like marketing, tax laws, "economics", etc. ... "Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained." -- Chris Hedges |
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Construction: |
:-) |
Construction of systemic and/or redundant infrastructure, such as marketing offices, insurance skyscrapers or 200-fold redundant companies and data centers, etc., etc., ... |
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Transportation: |
:-) |
Most traffic stemming from systemic and/or redundant #bullshitjobs. A lot of transportation in the context of constructing, maintaining and re-supplying systemic and/or redundant infrastructure. |
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Medical sector: |
:-) |
Treatment of a million systemic issues and symptoms. From depression and obesity to substance abuse, poverty induced violence, systemic traffic accidents and pathogens spreading via #bullshitjobs. Like #covid19. Etc., etc., etc., ... |
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IT: |
:-) |
Most IT jobs exist within a systemic and/or redundant context. Working for hosting provider #307 of 5000. Taking care of the data center of systemic and/or redundant companies and institutions. Developing SEO tools, tax accounting software or "Clash of Micropayments"-clone #205. Or consulting for companies that should not exist. |
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Charity: |
:-) |
People are not supposed to suffer from financial insecurity nor to lack the bare necessities of life. Nor to be homeless. Hundreds of millions of jobs are dealing with symptoms of our negative-sum monetary system and negative-sum economy. Another good example of how artificial scarcity and systemic poverty cause enormous economic efficiencies. Besides the unnecessary and unfathomable suffering. Which can also be seen in terms of economic inefficiency. |
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Daycare: |
:-) |
An insane amount of children require daycare as their parents are stuck in #bullshitjobs. When parents are only supposed to work for 1-2 days a week. |
The work-for-income paradigm has been obsolete for ~20 years. You should only be working for like 5 hours a week, doing meaningful things. Unfortunately, your governments forced you to destroy your planet via 3-4 billion nonsensical #bullshitjobs instead.https://t.co/Reaf2Dys1I
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) December 4, 2020
"Poverty and billions of #bullshitjobs" is no economy.https://t.co/CvVEE1yMqu
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) January 6, 2022
3-4 billion #bullshitjobs are:
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) June 28, 2022
.) wasting our lives.
.) wasting our resources, energy and fossil fuels.
.) devaluing our currencies.
.) causing "inflation".
.) causing #climatechange.
.) causing megafloods, megadroughts and famine.
.) allowing #covid19 to spread.
Nobody cares.
No ten-year-old would ever build an employment-maximizing economy in their computer games. They will always build an efficiency-maximizing economy. It took 10,000 crazy "economists" and politicians to sell us the opposite of an economy. With fatal implications and consequences.
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) October 13, 2022
Our children should be enjoying a #basicincome, 5-6h workweeks, a healthy biosphere and an amazing future. But they are growing up in an impoverished and radicalized society. Suffering from existential anxiety on a dying planet; destroyed by mandatory nonsense employment.
— #bullshitjobs (@bullshitjobs) October 20, 2021