Product, Industry, and Evolution

kudos

For those who started their career prior to 1990, I would like to introduce a term abstract job, also known by the loose-whip tongued as 'B.S. jobs.' Some have no experience of them, I have had personal experience of them, and most Millennials will recognize the concept though they may be sheepish about admitting to having been in one. In my experience, it is the job that is fully externally realized, that represents a categorical divorce of industry, product, and labour. They are generally created for a specific and ephemeral need that is not widely known or recognized. An extreme example would be someone whose job it is to copy content between MS Excel spreadsheets.

Consider the Greater Honeyguide. It is a species of bird that sends vocal signals to humans to guide them to bee colonies to find honey, which once destroyed, it then itself feeds on for survival. This system of necessity appears to have lasted many generations, but does the bird really perform a real job in association with a real product or service for the human? How did it go from being a contingent fact that birds luckily found honey, to an industry of birds in many different territories that expect to find honey?

What do you think is the structure of real labour? By that, I mean work that satisfies the following fields, which are not exhaustive or mutually exclusive:

Industry: Recognition of the work widely and unconsciously as a source of use value (i.e. carpenters, painters, lawyers, etc.). The association that the labour leads to something significant or has social meaning. Ideally serving to allocate resources to certain forms of virtuous work with a collective purpose.
Evolution: Fulfillment of necessity within a system of existence. Tends to it's own existence (i.e. personal assistants, chatbot programmers) and has a place in its existence that can't be easily rationalized out of. Ideally to allow the labourer a sense of self-determination, or that they have learned to do something that will further their survival and selection. If they lose their job, they can find another like it.
Product: Generates quantitative and qualitative value. Produces something that has these forms of value either to end users or as capital. Example: a photographer that shoots wedding videos. Ideally creates the sense that the labourer is bestowing value on a result of their labour. Taking the Excel spreadsheet example, this individual can be replaced by ChatGPT so their work could be construed as standing in the way of the product.

L'éléphant

Until years ago, the model of production is that the demands dictate the supply. But now, through marketing, industries could create 'demands'. So, the supply also dictates the demands.

Product: Generates quantitative and qualitative value — kudos

Just look at the American EPA statistics on the generation of solid wastes from the 1960 to now.

schopenhauer1

↪kudos

Simple, the ideal is that people should not be used for labor, not that labor is the purpose of human life. That’s one reason Marx was wrong. His very notion of happy producer is itself exploitive- it’s just pushed back to the existential level rather than the economic system level. My advice- get out of the “production is the point of life” mentality. Of course this leads to Pessimism and AN, but I’ll meet you there with open arms when you get there :wink:

L'éléphant

Simple, the ideal is that people should not be used for labor, not that labor is the purpose of human life. — schopenhauer1

Not in the sense of mass production. No.
But there are carpenters, bakers, and chocolate makers who truly enjoy their labor.

Tom Storm

↪kudos

Many are quite happy doing a bullshit job as long as it is engaging and provides community connection. In Graeber's seminal book on this, the key problems seem to be the waste, boredom and alienation. I would think there are bullshit jobs that are fun.

If one holds a critical view of human culture and society, it is pretty clear that the category of bullshit jobs can be enlarged beyond mere box ticking pointlessness to include CEO roles, marketing, conference organizing, consultants (in almost any area) management theorists, sociologists and a host of others. Obviously, this category of 'bullshit' is dependent upon what presuppositions one holds about purpose and value.

But there are carpenters, bakers, and chocolate makers who truly enjoy their labor. — L'éléphant

Indeed.

L'éléphant

In Graeber's seminal book on this, the key problems seem to be the waste, boredom and alienation. I would think there are bullshit jobs that are fun. — Tom Storm

There have been experiments done (these are true experiments) on UBI, universal basic income, to get low income people to be more productive to get to better paying jobs (or jobs they enjoy, which means they would keep the job). The idea was, for a fixed monthly supplemental funds, the people could use their time training for skills (any skills). The UBI mistakenly postulated that low income is the reason why they remain poor. The monthly funds actually made them less likely to pursue further action.

schopenhauer1

Not in the sense of mass production. No.
But there are carpenters, bakers, and chocolate makers who truly enjoy their labor. — L'éléphant

Notice I didn’t attempt to say that, simply that people shouldn’t be used for their labor, whether it’s enjoyable or not. Hell, some assembly line workers might have enjoyed their labor under big capitslism boss man. Same principle applies.

L'éléphant

Notice I didn’t attempt to say that, simply that people shouldn’t be used for their labor, whether it’s enjoyable or not. — schopenhauer1

So, how are people going to earn money?

schopenhauer1

So, how are people going to earn money? — L'éléphant

Shit, sucks doesnt it?

schopenhauer1

↪L'éléphant

So, how are people going to earn money?
— L'éléphant

Shit, sucks doesnt it? — schopenhauer1

Hence existential problem.

L'éléphant

↪schopenhauer1

But isn't that tyranny as well? When you say that people shouldn't be used for their labor period?

apokrisis

What do you think is the structure of real labour? — kudos

I think the flip you identify is the financialisation of the real economy – the shift from producing to meet a current demand to manufacturing the consumption that can justify an unbound growth in production.

If investment in labour is about satisfying a current level of demand, that is one thing. But if the investment is in consumers willing to financialise their futures and so take on an ever rising interest burden, then that is a different world.

What then is real labour when the economy is more about selling future debt? Well financial engineering and debt marketing are well paid occupations. And real work so far as the global debt industry is concerned.

Not sure if this covers your concept of abstract jobs. But who exactly employed this spreadsheet content person and for what ostensible purpose? Did it help sell loans? Directly or indirectly?

schopenhauer1

But isn't that tyranny as well? When you say that people shouldn't be used for their labor period?
now — L'éléphant

The tyranny is to cause people to be put in a situation whereby they must labor to earn a living.

schopenhauer1

↪L'éléphant

The charade is that “it’s good for you!” And the implication is to jump off a cliff if you question the assumptions (more aggressive paternalism for what is good for people- what other people must do). All the same paternalistic impulse to promote one’s positive projects (virtue/character building, civilization, science, whatever excuse/project you want) over other people’s negative ethics.

I like sushi

↪kudos

I think it might be useful to consider 'real' and 'BS' labour on a scale of the division of labour itself.

With increased specialisation we see the onset of particular types of 'labour' sloughed off to free up time of the specialist.

kudos

↪schopenhauer1

My advice- get out of the “production is the point of life” mentality. Of course this leads to Pessimism and AN, but I’ll meet you there with open arms when you get there :wink:

Pessimism and AN (I would think AN would be enough). It seems we have two options: lose or pretend, and you're saying I'm not pessimistic enough for choosing losing? We aren't talking about production as the point of life, but the other way around, the point of life is production. You can't escape the role economy plays in being and becoming by turning becoming into a finite separateness from being. This is the mistake of reductive existential ethos, for which I have low esteem.

kudos

↪apokrisis

What then is real labour when the economy is more about selling future debt? Well financial engineering and debt marketing are well paid occupations. And real work so far as the global debt industry is concerned.

I think where you have gone with this is interesting. It sounds like you are drawing a parallel between a collective shift towards a debt-based economy of negation and seeing this negation manifested down to to individual level. If so, in what way are you hinting at a negational quality of these jobs?

Not sure if this covers your concept of abstract jobs. But who exactly employed this spreadsheet content person and for what ostensible purpose? Did it help sell loans? Directly or indirectly?

The job is necessary, but is that plainly enough? Would you want to live in a state that was run by someone's imagination? I don't see how it's any better to live out the majority of your life in a job that is the product of someone's imagination; A kind of Cartesian Xanadu.

schopenhauer1

You can't escape the role economy plays in being and becoming by turning becoming into a finite separateness from being. This is the mistake of reductive existential ethos, for which I have low esteem. — kudos

But yet we have a deliberate choice to create more people, and so existential ethics DO come into play. And we can force more people who need to labor into existence, or we can choose not to. By labor, not only do I mean economically, but the burdens in life in general. You can choose to prevent others from being forced to do anything at all. It may be that forcing others into the game of life, is itself misguided/wrong. If you don't like tyranny, then tyrannical measures, like controlling that someone must be burdened with the pains/sufferings of life because you deem it worthwhile for them, is about as aggressively paternalistic as you can get. Of course, this may fit perfectly in such systems as communism, so I can see why you might not mind it.

kudos

↪schopenhauer1

Seems like closeted do-gooding to me. Why do you care about natalist solutions? Why not be a part of the problem instead? One must come to terms with the real lack of meaningful difference in order to ascribe to either. It’s a classic strategy: vacillate endlessly between complete cynicism and complete do-gooding in an effort to negate any real choice. It always ends up with a lazy survivalism as a cheap imitation of neutrality. This just-so-conveniently places the individual in a suspended irresponsibility.

schopenhauer1

Seems like closeted do-gooding to me. Why do you care about natalist solutions? Why not be a part of the problem instead? One must come to terms with the real lack of meaningful difference in order to ascribe to either. It’s a classic strategy: vacillate endlessly between complete cynicism and complete do-gooding in an effort to negate any real choice. It always ends up with a lazy survivalism as a cheap imitation of neutrality. This just-so-conveniently places the individual in a suspended irresponsibility. — kudos

Well, it seems to be that you believe that man is born for some reason (meaningful labor is a large part of that apparently homo economicus or whatnot). But I am questioning that assumption I guess. Meaningful labor is not ALL that life offers, and I can imagine a scenario where someone doesn't find any "labor" (at least in the survival sense) meaningful. And that itself pushes back against this essentialist notion of "homo economicus". It might even be the case that there are considerations of ethical proportions that override any of this scheme to create a society of "meaningful labor".

kudos

↪schopenhauer1

So correct me if I'm wrong, you seem to be implying that the labourer sees his or her abstract job as a reflection of their abstract self. This is perhaps another type of category, that is, the way that the job must become part of his or her psychology. It must be part 'imaginary.' The job must allow the person to experience a 'fitting into' or 'at-homeness' in their identity, which means it must complete a hyperbola or a mirror image into itself.

Meaningful labor is not ALL that life offers, and I can imagine a scenario where someone doesn't find any "labor" (at least in the survival sense) meaningful. And that itself pushes back against this essentialist notion of "homo economicus".

Homo Economicus seems to be influenced by a close alignment of capitalism with Platonism, Epicureanism, and with Old Testament notions of faith, pleasure, and the good. For this reason, it's ideas always seem to be out of step with modern thinking; the only modern philosophy it understands is survivalist, or generally misinterpreted, existentialism. Really, capitalism is the only system that is 'good-driven.' That is, it is supposed to automatically align itself to a state of virtue and good. Goods are automatically driven to ideal balances of price versus supply to allocate resources with maximum efficiency to areas that humans 'like.' Businesses are supposed to be in balance with consumers so that they offer each other services and meaning to the cultural whole.

And this last intuitive part 'like' is the caveat. The whole thing runs on ideas of pleasure and not pleasures themselves. Modern Homo Economicus has abandoned the finite determinisms of the old philosophy in daily life and can't stand their simplicity, but nonetheless can't escape their determination of the self, which has proven critical to its necessity in the forms of advertising and the Debordian 'spectacular existence' it presents consumers with. Therefore you have two options: Embrace selfhood and allow the capitalist ideology to erode away the new philosophy (pretend), or continue into the dirty gutters of tending to it as it's servant (lose).

Thing that's important to point out is that Capitalism is a system based on reason. It is an idea, so its physical manifestations aren't essential in concrete forms.

Product, Industry, and Evolution

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions