[crdoconnor]

>When most people say "bullshit job", it seems to me like they really mean "job that could be solved by a well-built machine".

What Graeber seems to mean is jobs that serve the interests of some people at the expense of others and overall contribute very little, nothing, or actively work against the interests of society at large.

[notahacker]

That is what Graeber aims to describe - he's even specifically written about how technology has undermined "meaningful" employment in agriculture and manufacturing - but the problem is his arguments against "bullshit jobs" conflate jobs which don't serve society with jobs whose employees feel they're worthless because they much preferred being poet-musicians. The latter argument, and Graeber's vision of "Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at" are extremely susceptible to precisely the "lack of perspective' criticism raised by the OP. And unlike Graeber, I've met corporate lawyers who chose that line of work because they found it interesting and valuable (and I'd hazard the corporate lawyers that draft the worst contract terms and push the hardest for unnecessary litigation really enjoy their jobs)

Sitting in a corporate cubicle churning out CRUD apps on spec for customers you're isolated from probably feels like it's contributing less to society than co-founding a "change the world" startup that fails to achieve product market fit, but the former probably achieves more good for society, even if it's only the sort of good that involves people having to do less paperwork manually...

[crdoconnor]

>he's even specifically written about how technology has undermined "meaningful" employment in agriculture and manufacturing

Wasn't how I read it. He mentioned that technology "freed up" people from working in the field, though, meaning they could then be put to work in bullshit jobs.

>his arguments against "bullshit jobs" conflate jobs which don't serve society with jobs whose employees feel they're worthless because they much preferred being poet-musicians

I derive a lot more benefit from poet-musicians than I do from corporate lawyers. Admittedly, corporate lawyers are never employed for my benefit, but I think was kind of the point.

[notahacker]

One of the key differences between poet-musicians and lawyers is that if the former group do something that benefits you, you quite literally hear it. Corporate lawyers talking the board out of doing something damaging to the public because of potential legal ramifications do so behind closed doors. And lawyers for public companies are often quietly propping up the value of an awful lot of ordinary people's savings even when defending frankly indefensible acts. Similarly, the public is only indirectly picking up the tab for the production and distribution of unpopular music albums.

Shareholder return isn't an especially useful gauge of the redeeming features of sleazy corporate lawyers or artistic merit of moderately unsuccessful musicians either, but calculations of social benefit are a lot more complex than they first appear