[padobson]

You nailed it.

Look at the jobs he cites as meaningless: It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish.

Bailiffs, lobbyists and legal consultants are directly tied to state actions. Private equity CEOs and actuaries directly benefit from a century of monetary policy that slants the playing field toward finance. 5/7ths of the examples he came up with rely on state intervention for their existence, and yet he blames capitalism.

Even his musician/corporate lawyer friend owes his own employment to the vast swaths of corporate laws and regulations that exist.

Then he finishes with this: If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job.

Again, how can you not point to government monetary policy and say this is exactly what's happened?

[gus_massa]

My favorite is "all-night pizza deliverymen". It's not pointless. They have this work because someone buy pizza at odd times.

If someday in the future drone delivery is allowed, and it's cheaper to use drones than humans, then they will get unemployed an no one in the evil elite will drop a tear.

[It's more complicated, because the delivery guy sometimes help with the other activities in the pizza shop while not driving, like cleaning or moving the sacks of flour. So the dismissal will not be immediate.]

[jbmorgado]

That's the exact point of the all article that you seem to miss: just because there is a market for it, it doesn't meen there is an actual need for it.

Hence the motto of the article: capitalism creates unnecessary jobs.

[gus_massa]

Then what is an useful job?

* There is no need of professional potatoes farmer, because everyone can have a personal (family?) potato plants in the backyard.

* There is no need of professional general doctors, because everyone can look up the symptoms in Wikipedia. (I strongly recommend a professional surgeon!)

Jobs specialization is very useful. For example in a small software project someone can do all the job. But in a big software project usually there are some divisions. Someone does the UI, someone the server stuff, someone the Android port, ... It's not a flat organization where everyone just add code wherever they want willy nilly. Perhaps someone can fix an obvious typo in another part, but for big changes most of the work is done by the official or unofficial owner.

[jbmorgado]

Yes, let now try and mix basic food needs like planting potatoes with you getting the munches at 3 AM and asking for a pizza delivery just because you know there is a service like that available. Whatever wins you the argument in your head, right?

[EpicEng]

Define 'unnecessary'. If I run a pizza shop and there is sufficient demand to justify late night deliveries, then that position is absolutely necessary as I'm trying to maximize profits.

[jbmorgado]

"then that position is absolutely necessary as I'm trying to maximize profits"

Yes, that's the all point of the article and also the one I explaining: Capitalism is about "maximizing profits" not about social, intelectual, or even productive efficiency.

[heynowletsgo]

That's not his point. He's saying people buy pizza at night because they are unnecessarily working at night. Selling pizza at night shouldn't be necessary because its an artificially created market.

[SnowingXIV]

It's not artificial. I want pizza at night so I need someone to bring me pizza at night.

[heynowletsgo]

It is if the market wouldn't exist without people being forced to work at night. The difference seems to be very hard to understand.

[dcdanko]

So the article is a moral tirade against all night pizza delivery?

[JamesBarney]

That actuaries and private equity CEOs benefit directly from monetary policy is a non-mainstream idea, I was wondering if you could go into more details about this.

[notahacker]

The idea that an active monetary policy [indirectly] boosts the earnings of the finance sector by trying to facilitate stability, providing a direct subsidy in the form of coupon payments on bonds, and managed steady inflation encouraging people to invest their savings through financial intermediaries rather than bury banknotes in the garden is pretty mainstream. And financiers certainly have more knowledge and lobbying power than the average organisation when it comes to calling for a particular monetary policy shift.

But I'm not convinced the idea promoted in the original article that the real objective is to persuade the masses to give up their free time to work 60hr weeks in finance (as opposed to because the masses prefer predictable payrises and not losing all their savings) has enough theoretical underpinnings to elaborate on.

If anything, the more controversial aspect of mainstream monetary policy is the opposite: that its theoretical underpinnings assume that there can be too high a proportion of the population in work...