You see this argument in discussions of the finance industry a lot. What percentage of financial trading is useful allocation of capital, and how much is just shifting ownership of the things other people make?
Yep - this was also the theme of the movie Margin Call (a point rammed home by the final scene).
It's usually really hard to draw the line in finance, though - unless you're deep in the weeds.
This is partly why Graeber's attempt to look at this issue through the lens of people doing the jobs themselves was probably the best way to formulate the research.
Here's an extreme example to make the point: we pay soldiers to kill people and destroy property. At the level of our "business" (our country) this may increase "value" (our security), while at the level of "society" (the world) it may be a net loss and an enormous tragedy. The problem is that this whole idea of "the good of society/the world" is extremely fuzzy and not that useful. It presupposes the only worthwhile actions are those that increase the utility function of the entire world, which we undoubtedly lack the knowledge to do. Capitalism is just a best-try approximation at achieving that and seems to have more success than other systems we've tried.
Of course you do. You could define bullshit jobs as any job with a negative externality whose value exceeds its profitability. Many of the arguments in our society are over the existence or not of externalities and the measurement and allocation of liability for them where their existence is an agreed-upon fact.
