This article isn't quite arguing along the same axis as Graeber. He wasn't working with a purposely illegible definitions, and builds of a sort of taxonomy of bullshit, with one type not really related to another.
I found the anthropological perspective fairly refreshing. Instead of starting from a definition, model or theory, it starts from people's opinions. It is certainly worth exploring that many people feel their job is bullshit. People know what bullshit means to them. Grafting that onto a tightly defined (in this case marxist) concept like "Alienation" is the opposite of that.
If companies didn't have as many lawyers, other companies wouldn't need as many. If accounting rules were simpler, we'd need fewer accountants. That's one type of bullshit. Another might be lawyers and accountants who just don't do much. Those don't reduce to the same thing, as this article attempts to.
I think if a writer chooses the term "bullshit" rather than a more precise term, and that frames things. If someone makes a scientific argument, you don't negate it with a legal one.
Anyway... I read Graeber's book simultaneously with "complacent class," By Tyler Cowen. I was amused by the serendipity. Cowen's is from the other end of the philosophical spectrum. His book had a Schumpeterian feel. Both were examining areas that are hard to measure, and thus aren't "where the light is" in terms of the old economist adage. It's easy to measure the productivity of steel workers, harder to define productivity of administrative work... the kind of work that has become very prevalent.
Both note (I think) some similar pseudo data points. One was that most (other people's) attempts to quantify office workers productivity did not find that PCs introduction in the 90s had any effect. Graeber thinks about it in decidedly non economist terms. Office workers produce "paperwork," letters, memos, reports, etc. We now have a lot more of these, thanks to Dell. The "data point" is academia. Both note a (this one is more legible) a steep rise in administration/academic ratios at universities.
To me, I found the argument convincing. I suspect FB may be the most inefficient organisation that has ever existed... or close. Twitter too, on a smaller scale. I strongly suspect that if FB's ad business happened to generate only $5bn, they would run FB on that budget instead. I don't think FB would be different, acquisitions aside. That's not a proveable suspicion though.
Meanwhile Wikipedia, for all the flak it receives for expansive expenses, is incredibly resource efficient. It's also a very big site, and it runs on a budget 1,000X smaller than FB's. It runs on a smaller budget than stackoverflow, a site modeled on wikipedia. I strongly suspect that if it had been founded as a startup, Wikipedia would spend many times more.
The reason both books were interesting to me is that they consciously try to sidestep the "are efficient market theories true?" question. Its tedious and we have hundreds of years of boring articles like this one on commenting on it.
I found the anthropological perspective fairly refreshing. Instead of starting from a definition, model or theory, it starts from people's opinions. It is certainly worth exploring that many people feel their job is bullshit. People know what bullshit means to them. Grafting that onto a tightly defined (in this case marxist) concept like "Alienation" is the opposite of that.
If companies didn't have as many lawyers, other companies wouldn't need as many. If accounting rules were simpler, we'd need fewer accountants. That's one type of bullshit. Another might be lawyers and accountants who just don't do much. Those don't reduce to the same thing, as this article attempts to.
I think if a writer chooses the term "bullshit" rather than a more precise term, and that frames things. If someone makes a scientific argument, you don't negate it with a legal one.
Anyway... I read Graeber's book simultaneously with "complacent class," By Tyler Cowen. I was amused by the serendipity. Cowen's is from the other end of the philosophical spectrum. His book had a Schumpeterian feel. Both were examining areas that are hard to measure, and thus aren't "where the light is" in terms of the old economist adage. It's easy to measure the productivity of steel workers, harder to define productivity of administrative work... the kind of work that has become very prevalent.
Both note (I think) some similar pseudo data points. One was that most (other people's) attempts to quantify office workers productivity did not find that PCs introduction in the 90s had any effect. Graeber thinks about it in decidedly non economist terms. Office workers produce "paperwork," letters, memos, reports, etc. We now have a lot more of these, thanks to Dell. The "data point" is academia. Both note a (this one is more legible) a steep rise in administration/academic ratios at universities.
To me, I found the argument convincing. I suspect FB may be the most inefficient organisation that has ever existed... or close. Twitter too, on a smaller scale. I strongly suspect that if FB's ad business happened to generate only $5bn, they would run FB on that budget instead. I don't think FB would be different, acquisitions aside. That's not a proveable suspicion though.
Meanwhile Wikipedia, for all the flak it receives for expansive expenses, is incredibly resource efficient. It's also a very big site, and it runs on a budget 1,000X smaller than FB's. It runs on a smaller budget than stackoverflow, a site modeled on wikipedia. I strongly suspect that if it had been founded as a startup, Wikipedia would spend many times more.
The reason both books were interesting to me is that they consciously try to sidestep the "are efficient market theories true?" question. Its tedious and we have hundreds of years of boring articles like this one on commenting on it.