Why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/?source=newsletter

by primroot • 12 years ago

164 147 12 years ago

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

Simple: the more your job is about helping others, the less it's about helping yourself.

helping other is also an intrinsic reward which lowers the amount of money you need in order to be willing to do the job

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

No, no it isn't. That's just a bullshit excuse managers and government bureaus use to justify not paying people a living wage.

craigyk• 12 years ago

a good piece. one that I suspect resonates with more people than care to admit.

gertef• 12 years ago

Title is junk, article is overwritten, some claims are wholly unsuported by evidence, but there are some uncommonly heard ideas that make it worth a skim toward the bottom.

mercer6• 12 years ago

I find this article the least interesting one I've read so far, so if you find the ideas interesting, be sure to check out some of his other writing.

coherentpony4• 12 years ago

Assuming no corruption, politicians have jobs that help everybody. They are paid incredibly well.

sp3322• 12 years ago

Interesting point, but highly variable. Senators and representatives in my state get $200 for each 2-year term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_House_of_Represe...

coherentpony4• 12 years ago

There must be something else of monetary value they receive because that's a full time job. Maybe an expense account?

otikik• 12 years ago

Assuming no illness, doctors help no one.

sp3322• 12 years ago

If there's no illness, the doctors must be really good! :)

coherentpony4• 12 years ago

I take your point. That doesn't address my point, though, because not all politicians are corrupt.

anon43• 12 years ago

Politicians are in nearly direct control of their own pay. Or at least much closer to the source of decisions when it comes to deciding salaries.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Politicians are in nearly direct control of their own pay. Or at least much closer to the source of decisions when it comes to deciding salaries.

That's only true of some politicians (e.g., politicians with a legislative role -- including in many cases chief executives -- where the pay of elected politicians isn't left, as it is in some states, to a separate compensation committee of non-politicians.)

wpietri5• 12 years ago

Are they? My impression is that politicians could make a lot more in industry. And often do when they leave politics.

As a data point, looking locally, California state senators get paid about $95k and reps about $90k. Which seems to be not much more than the median salary for an "Attorney I" in the state: http://www1.salary.com/CA/Attorney-I-salary.html

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Assuming no corruption, politicians have jobs that help everybody. They are paid incredibly well.

Not really. Sure, they get paid a lot more than the median income, but compared to, say, top executives in private firms? Not even close. The President of the United States gets paid far less than the average Fortune 500 CEO.

mercer6• 12 years ago

Are they?

At least in Holland their income is really low in comparison to higher-ups in big corporations doing similar kinds of work, and much of their 'cushy' lives depend on future positions in said corporations.

These positions are often not acquired by helping 'everybody', but rather by means that often seem merely varying degrees of corruption.

outside1234• 12 years ago

This is because the more your job can only affect the live of one person, the less leverage you have. (1 unit of work effort = 1 unit of work output)

This is why we are so highly paid. We can put in 1 unit of work and enable checkout for all of Amazon, for instance.

Also: 1) supply and demand and 2) rewarding jobs pay less than shitty ones (all of finance in my opinion)

ska3• 12 years ago

It can't be that simple though. In general rent-seeking can be very lucrative, as can be positioning yourself between a good/service what funds it.

Example: American physicians are not generally more effective than French physicians, but they are vastly better paid. Far more so than can be explained by any linear relationship like hours worked, and far more than any impact analysis would suggest. Many examples in, e.g. finance exist as well.

paulhauggis• 12 years ago

They are paid better because the French government limits wages (since health dream is not private in France)

logicchains4• 12 years ago

The government enforces a quota on medical positions, enrollments and whatnot in the US, which artificially limits the supply of physicians, thereby increasing their wages. In the past hundred years or so, for instance, while the US population increased by 284%, the number of medical schools declined by 26%, to only 123[3].

Some references, one from the right[1] and one from the left[2].

1.http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-associatio...

2. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/21/doctors_carte...

3. http://mises.org/daily/1547

jameshart• 12 years ago

The guy who repairs the rail tracks that get thousands of commuters to their office every day should have a ton of leverage then, right?

noonespecial• 12 years ago

Sure if he's one of a very few people who can do it. If not, there might be someone who's willing to do it for a bit less and his leverage disappears fast.

Leverage comes at the intersection of "benefits lots" and "can be done by few".

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Actually, the guy who can ensure those rail tracks get repaired does have a ton of leverage, and reaps the reward.

It's not just the guy who pulls out a broken rail and nails a new one in place. Finding someone to do that isn't hard or expensive. It's the guy who knows who will do that for a competitive price in a timely (urgent) manner, can ensure such guys are available to thousands of miles of track, has enough replacement track on hand & well-situated, owns (or can rent) equipment to move such long heavy rails to where needed fast, has personnel handling all the QA & regulatory burdens to ensure those rails won't likely fail soon after installation, etc etc etc; few people are willing & capable of pulling all that off. Rail replacement also includes paying some to do "BS jobs" which those with the money & responsibility know are needed, even if seem largely pointless or distasteful to most casual observers. And yes there's some abuse buried in all that; human nature is far from perfect.

I didn't fully appreciate how some earn their keep until I joined a startup. Organizing productivity demands talent and risk, without which (and obtained/retained by salary) very little resembling corporate productivity would happen. Yes, swinging a hammer is valuable; knowing who should swing it, where, when, and to what purpose - moreso.

goldfeld2• 12 years ago

I think the article refers to "helping others." Surely the majority of young bright coders working on checkout systems, social apps, collecting data and learning consumer habits may have a lot of leverage, but whether that's used to help people is very debatable. You could even say they're doing the opposite, helping people accumulate debt over things they didn't really need.

mncolinlee• 12 years ago

I believe you're still misunderstanding the issue. A good fraction of engineers count among those whose lives build something and help people. Engineers who build user-facing products are still vastly underpaid relative to rent-seekers, like hedge fund managers and CFOs.

Consider the fact that tech has rampant age discrimination because almost no one wants to pay any extra for experience beyond ten years or so unless that person moves to management.

I think Stephen Colbert explained it best in his recent book, America Again. Being close to money attracts more money. Or as Piketty explained it, capital is valued higher than labor. Roles dealing with how capital is allocated are given undue benefits.

nickff• 12 years ago

"I believe you're still misunderstanding the issue. A good fraction of engineers count among those whose lives build something and help people. Engineers who build user-facing products are still vastly underpaid relative to rent-seekers, like hedge fund managers and CFOs."

The alternative explanation for this phenomenon is that we all choose different blends of monetary and non-monetary remuneration, according to our skills and desires. Some may derive great joy from helping others, and accept lower pay for this; others may eschew the socially rewarding jobs in favor of occupations which provide financial security for their families.

ahomescu1• 12 years ago

Another way to put it would be "do work that scales". It's fine to do work that helps one person, but great if you do work that helps a thousand or a million.

Looking at society in its whole, I've always thought that the category that makes the most money are the "middle men". If you put yourself between many producers and many consumers, and take a small cut of every transaction, then you get rich quickly. We have example like VISA/Mastercard, the movie distributors, and many more. I guess these are what he calls "bullshit jobs". Even CEOs fall here: they connect thousands of workers to millions of customers (in a way).

philosophus• 12 years ago

So doctors get paid less than, say, used car salesmen, pawn brokers, payday lenders, etc?

ehmish6• 12 years ago

I found quite interesting his point regarding the redirecting of funding away from automation innovations and towards military and advertising innovations. It resonated with a blog post I read recently[0]

[0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...

vikp3• 12 years ago

Humans value conformity more than we care to admit. There are a couple of studies in this vein, but one from Baylor shows that people in groups punish others who are more generous, even when the generosity benefits everyone[1].

The author makes an interesting point about people who dislike their work begrudging people who do meaningful things (in their judgement). Throughout our history, we have had an idealized vision of the average American in the back of our heads -- first it was the farmer, creating food for their family. Then it became the factory worker, creating cars for the masses -- now it may be the programmer, making the software that powers our world.

The interesting thread here is creation. We live in a country that idealizes making things and taking risk/responsibility. Yet society is heavily geared towards conformity, and work is an extension of that. Even tech startups are increasingly becoming a systematic, codified industry. Is it no wonder that there is some resentment of people who are perceived to truly be free to create?

This is why something like basic income[2] is so interesting. Once we are freed from having to conform to society in order to meet our basic needs, what will we be able to do? The cynic would say that people will all collect their checks and accomplish nothing. The optimist would say that everyone would start creating new art, music, machines, etc. I think somewhere in between, but that somewhere in between is still vastly more interesting than what we have now.

[1] http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=st... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

ehmish6• 12 years ago

The idea that people would punish, rather than revere unconventionally generous individuals sounds like the opposite of the "Big man" system, which has been rather well documented to exist [1] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29

vikp3• 12 years ago

This is interesting. One question and one semi-question:

1. Do "Big Men" first come into any semblance of power through redistribution (I give my food to Tom down the street, now he is my first follower), or does it start some other way (My father is important, therefore I am somewhat important)?

2. I wonder if humans only punish generous behavior in their peers. I assume that leaders have a different standard, as we don't see them as "one of us", and thus we allow them to do things that we would otherwise look down upon.

jbattle• 12 years ago

But the Big Man (at least in other contexts) is conventionally generous. Lavishly so, but within conventions that impose, along with the generosity, certain obligations on the recipient.

anon43• 12 years ago

There are a couple of studies in this vein

The largest and most instructive one is, I think, Facebook. And tumblr. To a lesser extent reddit. For shits and giggles, 4chan and SA.

And if you look at the latter of those, you'll see kids making things by themselves in large amounts. You could take that as support for basic income - everybody under 18 pretty much lives on basic income and then some. A lot of them make really fun things and publish on the internet.

My hunch is that if we do get basic income, it will take one to two generations before the floodgates really open and our problem will not be people being too uncreative, but exactly the opposite.

notahacker2• 12 years ago

The idea that the cat memes and horrendously inane linkbait headlines that litter the social internet might be representative of the creativity that could be unleashed in even greater volume with basic income is the best argument in favour of "worthless" mid level marketing managers and the forty-hour workweek I've ever heard.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen dilettantes' blog articles that are more thought provoking than supposed social science classic writings, but in general the more user-generated areas of the internet - populated by adults as much as kids - we'd still mostly waste the free time we got anyway.

(I've been distracted from a bit of volunteering I was going to do in order to add a comment on a social site that won't be read by anyone after tomorrow, and probably won't be remembered by many ten minutes after they've finished reading it. QED, I guess)

tolmasky• 12 years ago

Seems to me that Reddit and other internet communities serve as arguments against this "unleashing" of creativity, as they suffer from the 1% rule ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) ). In other words, if the idea is that Reddit serves as a microcosm of what basic income would do, then it suggests that 1% of people on basic income would be creating and 99% would be simply consuming.

vorg• 12 years ago

it may be the programmer, making the software that powers our world

Most paid programming jobs in IT are bullshit jobs that have no benefit to anyone. They just prop up other bullshit jobs in the accounting or legal departments, duplicate work done in some other company's marketing division, make the systems compliant with some new government regulation, work around bugs put in the systems for the express purpose of generating paid after hours call outs, exist just so the workers involved can list more new technologies on their CV's, are contractor jobs doing the work of the employees who are spending their whole day trading shares or doing nothing, laundering some open source software so it can be made proprietary, ... ... ...

Any programming job of any real benefit to anyone isn't even unpaid work. Someone doing a personal pet project is really paying because of forfeited income, as also is a student paying fees to work on a research program somewhere.

asgard10242• 12 years ago

I think he is talking about the myth, not the reality of it. And you're absolutely right, open source software probably more than anything proves David Graeber's point.

notahacker2• 12 years ago

If we're making sweeping generalizations about why "helping others" apparently pays less well, the most concise and obvious answer is that those who need the help most (those with debilitating illnesses, the developing world, bootstrapped startups, the offspring of uncaring parents) have a lot less access to cash than those that arguably need it least (fund managers, brand managers, large multinationals, high-net worth individuals). A corollary of this is the latter groups also tend to be much more forgiving of your cockups and are certain not to be aggrieved if you get rich helping them.

The irony of Graeber's generalizations is that his job has arguably less reason to exist than most hospital paper-pushers'. As a result some of his understanding of the real world seems more theoretical than practical (I mean, I agree with him in principle about the concept behind many internships being dubious, but I don't think "for the first few years they won’t even pay you" actually applies anywhere outside academia.)

im3w1l• 12 years ago

This fact can be derived from very simple assumptions. Let's assume people value pay, and let's assume they value helping others. Different people value pay more/less.

People will then choose jobs on the "efficient frontier". Which point on the frontier depends on how much you value pay.

Now it follows from the efficient frontier that if job A is both better paid and helps other people more than job B, then no one will do job B. So for all pairs of jobs (A,B) that people do, one will be better paid and the other help others more.

hvs• 12 years ago

  If you think about it in that light, it makes the 
  achievements of the socialist bloc seem pretty 
  impressive: a country like Russia managed to go 
  from a backwater to a major world power with 
  everyone working maybe on average four or five 
  hours a day.

That is a very selective reading of history.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

The empire-building helped I'd guess. Funny how a Socialist country had to depend on exploitation to grow. Just like most everybody else.

wpietri5• 12 years ago

I'd be interested to see when actual socialists think the Soviet Union stopped being an effective socialist state and started being more of a totalitarian kleptocracy with a veneer of socialist rhetoric as justification.

I was an early Agile person, starting with Extreme Programming in 2000. It blew me away how quickly a revolutionary approach to the work I loved was turned into a bunch of empty labels and pointless rituals that covered up the same old power structure but provided the useful appearance of change. [1] It's definitely made me wonder what early Russian revolutionaries would think of how the Soviet Union turned out.

[1] http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...

tormeh• 12 years ago

"If you think about it in that light" explicitly tells you that it is an intentionally selective reading of history. Of course there's lots of other sides to the USSR, but this particular one is interesting in this discussion.

sk8ingdom• 12 years ago

Although the trend of more work today than ever is obviously troubling, as an engineer, I can't help but think that the reason we don't yet have what the past promised because "the robots" really are not that great yet--we do, after all, need an entire staff of people to design, test, build, and monitor them.

In addition, for every problem that we solve--global distribution, connectivity, transportation--we create even more. All of these "solutions" require additional infrastructure, research and development, and ultimately, breed entirely new disciplines and fields of study--i.e. STAFF. Additional flexibility breeds complexity.

100 years ago, I probably wouldn't have ventured very far from where I was born. Food would be grown locally. I wouldn't have internet, etc. Today I have MUCH more flexibility, but that comes at the price of complexity. I tend to believe the SUV / iPhone argument but think they're pretty terrible examples. All things equal, I could likely maintain the same level of technology and lifestyle as someone 100 years ago on about half my income. It's simply, not our culture, which is in large part driven by consumerism. Even if I WANTED to, most companies wouldn't allow it.

The real question we should be asking ourselves, is do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them?

The film Happiness [1] also explores the work / leisure balance in depth.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film)

don2• 12 years ago

"do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them?"

As a personal anecdote, I don't need those things. I don't need a car, I don't need a smartphone, I don't need a TV, I don't need more than a few clothes, I don't need furniture other than a bed, I don't need to eat out or eat expensive food/drinks, if I wasn't working I wouldn't even need a computer and internet. I'm quite happy without most of those things. I make an engineer's salary and save almost all of it, so that one year out of college (cheap education, no loans) I now have savings that could easily last me 5 years in the bay area at my current lifestyle (counting housing/food/healthcare) or significantly longer in a cheaper area. (Though I'm not quitting yet, I still enjoy my job and maybe there's the beginnings of golden handcuffs there.)

Unfortunately for my case, I expect it will be hard to raise a family on this below-standard-expenditure lifestyle, although that is something I think I want to do. For one thing, I can't imagine how I'd find a wife who was on board with living without all the standard American luxuries. I imagine such a woman exists, but I wouldn't know where to look.

And even though I want to take a bunch of time off and travel the world / work on my own (zero-hope-for-profit) hobby projects, I can imagine society's disapproval of this, and also can't help but wonder if I'd regret it. What if it was hard to get a job as good as this if I later wanted to go in for money like everyone else?

contingencies4• 12 years ago

Compelled to respond as after the big risk of leaving the west at 17 or so, it all worked out well for me. I've dipped back in to western 9-5 for two years out of the last 14, to great success (one employer, rose from entry-level to hiring/managing teams and relationships, international travel, more money, relocation, and finally a payout when the company was acquired) but it's just not for me right now ... and no longer required.

I can't imagine how I'd find a wife who was on board with living without all the standard American luxuries. I imagine such a woman exists, but I wouldn't know where to look.

Clearly, outside America.

I want to take a bunch of time off and travel the world / work on my own (zero-hope-for-profit) hobby projects, I can imagine society's disapproval of this, and also can't help but wonder if I'd regret it. What if it was hard to get a job as good as this if I later wanted to go in for money like everyone else?

The answer to this is definitely No, you won't regret it. As long as you can carry yourself in the workplace, you are likely to return with skills, motivation and experience far outweighing that which your peers in industry were able to gather in the equivalent period. After years running my own startup in mainland China, I found my workplace competition in London to be frankly underwhelming... to put it bluntly, I was learning things full time during those years and they were filling in time for a salary with bureaucratic and temporal challenges to overcome. Even if you can't envisage a return with such confidence, you're smart and will be fine. Fear not.

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

A telling & loaded question: Are people working so many hours because we’ve just somehow independently conceived this desire for lattes and Panini and dog-walkers and the like, or is it that people are grabbing food and coffee on the go and hiring people to walk their dogs because they’re all working so much?

Making panini or coffee - good ones - takes effort, time, and resources to a degree few are willing to engage on their own. I've a dozen coffee makers, acquired in the quest to learn how to brew a perfect cup, and still drop $1.75 at Starbucks because a swipe of a card and a few minutes of scheduled skilled labor are often preferable to finding decent beans, grinding them, heating water, buying & fitting a filter, pouring, timing, cleaning and stowing what's needed; ditto lunch and dog-walking. Sure, we could all make fancy lunches and fine coffees and walk the dogs, and enjoy doing so at select times, but most people are unable and unwilling to at that level day-in-and-day-out when slinging dirt, paper, or bits can acquire such lifestyle.

As for the "BS jobs": in between the productive (slinging dirt, or deciding who should sling which dirt where) are "glue jobs" and "filler jobs", not notable of themselves but required to cover & hold together aspects of productivity, without which cumulatively expensive problems would arise.

That opportunities in any job may be abused for personal gain, or trail off to nothing useful, is simply a reality of human nature and imperfect systems.

The question, foundational to much of the biased rambling in the rest of the interview, is either naive or disingenuous. We have independently conceived of odd luxuries, and made them profitable for someone to do despite being arguably wasteful, or that they are in fact our chosen outlet for the long-predicted "life of leisure". Like "living on the Moon", the remote notion is romanticized, but when given the option to ... most people are disinterested in eeking out survival on a giant atmosphere-free dead rock, or idly reading or playing games whilst subsisting on mundane food & accommodations; rather, they'd instead choose a routine of imposed obligations, coupled with swipe-a-card easy access to higher luxuries of relatively fine foods and fancier surroundings.

I guess my gripe with the interviewee is that he has a notion of how society should be, and argues toward forcing economic redistributions to make it happen ... decrying & denying the reality that the economy is what it is, on the whole, because it's the cumulation of free choices. Sure, I could be living a "life of leisure" (and nearly did) enjoying majority time of idleness; instead, I (like most) chose a more frantic life of productivity (and sometimes gap-filling) so I could enjoy relatively luxurious goods & services with the swipe of a card. Force redistribution to impose the social structure & values the interviewee wants, and methinks most of us would rebel at the results; we're not living that way for a reason.

rayiner• 12 years ago

I guess my gripe with the interviewee is that he has a notion of how society should be, and argues toward forcing economic redistributions to make it happen ... decrying & denying the reality that the economy is what it is, on the whole, because it's the cumulation of free choices. Sure, I could be living a "life of leisure" (and nearly did) enjoying majority time of idleness; instead, I (like most) chose a more frantic life of productivity (and sometimes gap-filling) so I could enjoy relatively luxurious goods & services with the swipe of a card.

This line of argument ignores the obvious collective action issues in play. I think everyone could work 20% less, and make due with 20% fewer luxuries, and 90% of people would be happy with that trade-off. But any given individual can't work 20% less, because then they'd get fired, and their kids would go to shitty schools in places with lots of crime and not be able to afford medical treatment if they got sick. So everyone works more than they want to, and most of that extra production goes to shareholders.

I'm not a "life of leisure" kind of guy. I'm a workaholic without many hobbies and not a lot of patience for relaxation. But I'm almost positive that people like me are in the distinct minority, and can't help but feel that it's us forcing our values on everyone else.

goldfeld2• 12 years ago

Exactly. What the grand parent commenter doesn't understand is that even though he wants to work his ass off to emulate a lifestyle of the aristocracy (who don't have to work their asses off as much because they're rent-seekers and capital holders), because he bought into that culturally and he has the opportunity to acquire such a lifestyle, the majority of working class hasn't bought into that (shielded by the belief that they can't get there anyway because they don't have the opportunity) and would happily accept working less in exchange for staying in the same situation, i.e. no need for luxuries and the conveniences of consumerism--but that doesn't seem fair, right? If they work less, they should lose something! Except they're already far screwed over because they make indecently less than they're worth to sustain the rich's privileges, and well it's always been like that. The societies we end up with are not the "cumulation of free choices", they're cumulative politics and power struggles.

I read somewhere recently that being a leftist or a right-winger is in part wired up on your brain. I tend to believe that, one side just doesn't seem to understand what motivates the other to think as they do.

nostrademons3• 12 years ago

He addresses this explicitly in the interview: he's not telling anyone that their job is worthless, he's saying that if you think your job is worthless, you're probably right. You, after all, have much better information than either your employer or a random anthropologist. And he said he received numerous heartfelt letters after his first article on the subject from people who had always thought that their jobs were pointless but never had the courage to say so explicitly.

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Deciding "worthless" is up to the person paying them. I may have an opinion of what my job is worth, but my employer has a much larger view of that worth than I'm privy to; if he's willing to pay me $X, then (perhaps to my bewilderment) my productivity is worth $X.

Sure, there are stark anecdotes, but on the whole the aphorism applies: a thing is worth only and exactly what another will give for it.

FireBeyond• 12 years ago

Okay, here’s one for you…

You can work as an EMT, in the back of an ambulance, running 15+ calls in a 24 hour shift (which is basically back to back with a few minutes break between calls), dealing with anything from sick old people to immediate life threats.

And you’ll get paid approximately $9/hour for doing so.

civilian• 12 years ago

I didn't believe you so I checked for myself. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/emt-salary-SRCH_KO0,3.htm Seattle probably has higher pay than usual so.... your statement is close enough.

Wow. I really thought working as an EMT paid better.

kristianp• 12 years ago

For people at the bottom of the pay hierarchy, the market forces (i.e. Hiring an EMT is more difficult than hiring a waiter/ress) are only enough to push your wage just above the minimum wage. As you get promoted into yes directly useful jobs (and become subject to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law ), you get paid more and more. There is no capitalist process that increases an EMT's pay without making sure his manager gets paid more.

Another group mentioned in the article are unpaid interns, e.g. Journalists. The market has somehow valued their jobs at zero.

Capitalism and market forces are nowhere near enough to provide for a quality of life for an intern. Capitalism is a game scored by the amount of money you have. Unpaid interns are losers in this scoring system, but you are called a socialist if you try to protect people like them. This seems to be part of what the article is saying, but using a lot of Jargon. (anarchist vs socialist unions)?

vacri• 12 years ago

the quest to learn how to brew a perfect cup, and still drop $1.75 at Starbucks

It is mystifying to me how people think Starbucks is anything like a 'perfect' cup of coffee. It's fast-food coffee. I would have expected this line to be "I abandoned my quest for the perfect cup, because Starbucks was good enough to fill the role and easy".

a few minutes of scheduled skilled labor are often preferable to finding decent beans, grinding them, heating water, buying & fitting a filter, pouring, timing, cleaning and stowing what's needed

When you have more time in your day, then having to grab a coffee doesn't have to be done in a couple of minutes during the rush to work. It can be a more languorous affair, and the ritual itself can become enjoyable.

deciplex• 12 years ago

It is mystifying to me how people think Starbucks is anything like a 'perfect' cup of coffee. It's fast-food coffee. I would have expected this line to be "I abandoned my quest for the perfect cup, because Starbucks was good enough to fill the role and easy".

I think you misread that paragraph somehow.

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Starbucks is hardly "perfect", but it's sure good enough to drop $1.75 on when, under the circumstances, it's a satisfactory alternative to roasting/grinding/heating/assembling/pouring/timing/pressing/cleaning/storing (which I do frequently). The "ritual itself" is quite enjoyable, but finding the tools & developing the skills wouldn't have happened without earning >$1000 to buy & try alternatives. Without the rush to work, I'd not have the resources to learn how enjoyable coffee could be.

Without the urgency to earn, the luxuries we do enjoy wouldn't be possible. Coffee wouldn't, for nearly everyone, wouldn't be anywhere close to even Starbucks "fast-food coffee". More time in your day means a lower standard of living.

baldeagle• 12 years ago

On the coffee front, specifically and off topic - get a Jura or other super automatic on Craigslist. Do the math, your $2 coffee habit (that is black and tall, right?) will pay off in a year or two after investing in a machine, plus then you won't have to deal with the S'bucks line.

taurath• 12 years ago

I would love to know where the option is for a 30 hour work week for those people who value things like extra hours with their family more than those luxurious goods and services you say you prefer. You're using yourself as an anecdote here - for many people its not a choice between leisure/idleness and work, it could be spending less time to take care of a special needs kid, or elderly parents and grandparents, or spending an extra day out hiking and exploring nature, or finding and pursuing a new passion.

I think our collective values would change if people had more time to stop and think about what is important to them. For those that realize that a fast car and 2 expensive latte's a day don't matter at all in the long run, shouldn't there be more options than assuming they want to work more to afford more things?

greggman• 12 years ago

I know a few a companies that might give you that option although probably only after a year or two of full time work so they know your work.

I have a fried who had a baby, he asked to take a 40% cut in pay for a 3 day work week. They said yes. I can't say they offer that to everyone just saying it's a possibility

mercer6• 12 years ago

I guess my gripe with the interviewee is that he has a notion of how society should be, and argues toward forcing economic redistributions to make it happen ... decrying & denying the reality that the economy is what it is, on the whole, because it's the cumulation of free choices.

I'd say you're technically correct, but mostly because 'cumulation of free choices' is rather ambiguous.

The eight-hour work day and minimum wage, for example, are a result of the labor movements efforts, but these efforts often found their origins in the 'activism' of people like the interviewee.

Much of our current economy, one could argue, is not the result of the individual employer's or employee's 'free choices', but rather via 'notions of how society should be' developed by people like the interviewee.

Force redistribution to impose the social structure & values the interviewee wants, and methinks most of us would rebel at the results; we're not living that way for a reason.

I guess my point is that we are, to greater or lesser extent depending on where we live, living with social structures and values that we would not individually rebel against. And much of that could be considered 'conditioning'. Here in Holland we have the government actively doing things that I suspect many Americans would rebel strongly against, ranging from health care to 'be nice to your neighbour' style government-funded advertising.

Now, it's a different discussion whether one agrees with forced redistribution as a specific implement (I'm not sure I do), but I'm just arguing that many of the reasons for way we live are precisely a result of that thing you have a gripe with.

(and, I guess, aside from using this to share my view, I'd be curious to hear where you would draw the line when it comes to 'notions of how society should be' -> 'imposing social structure and values')

noname123• 12 years ago

Visible help, yes. But as a programmer, I help to write HTML/CSS and rails and js code that makes a friendlier and more engaging UI that makes every user's shopping experience that much more pleasant; also unlike conventional charities that offer sometimes intangible emotional support, I can quantify "the net happiness add" by Google Analytics, the higher the conversion rate means, higher the user's "engagement" and contribution to my company and shareholder value.

I'm also contribute back to the tech community by sharing my code that I experiment on my own during hackathons and weekends on Github. Unlike other professions where things are not as transparent, I love that our field is always on the cutting edge, experimenting with the latest frameworks and technology and sharing the results (be as it may that sometimes it's not as well-documented but I make up for it by writing an enthusiastic blog post about it).

thucydides2• 12 years ago

The main reason is because human desires are inexhaustible. As our society gets wealthier, more people will be hired to perform tasks that make people's lives easier, though those tasks are ancillary to an organization's main mission. For example, the university's main mission is to educate students, but more and more administrators and staff will be hired to turn the university into a luxury resort to satisfy students' desires (big gym, mental health services, remedial education, sports, expensive food, transportation systems). And the university will also use more of its wealth to satisfy its employees' desires and problems (by hiring human resources officers and lawyers and hedge fund managers). That happens to every organization as it grows wealthier, I suspect. And those jobs, being ancillary, being divorced from directly helping people, are miserable. So, paradoxically, inexhaustible human desire for what is "better" and easier ends up creating jobs that, while comfortable, feel wretched and meaningless.

You see this in a society, too. Yes, our individual desires for "food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on" are never sated. It's partly because we're trying to keep up with our peers, but much more importantly, it's the hedonic treadmill. That is, the satisfaction we feel after buying a BMW or becoming CEO or getting a new house will fade quickly - and be replaced with the desire for something else. No doubt even the world's wealthiest people are dissatisfied with some aspect of their daily lives. Perhaps they wish for faster travel than is possible with current airplanes or for a longer lasting house or less crime or more love or whatever. That's a microcosm of what happens to the world's wealthiest societies, which, after all, are composed of people. It's why we've moved from Bell phones to iPhones, but it's also why we have so many more ennui-creating jobs.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

There's actually a hard limit. e.g. Retina displays are as good as you need because they are finer than the eye's ability to distinguish.

Likewise there are only so many hours in the day, and days in your life. There is a hard (large) limit to what you can do in a lifetime. We may be increasing what we desire as resources become cheaper, but it is increasing asymptotically to 'what a person can consume/experience in the hours they have'.

waps• 12 years ago

There's actually a hard limit. e.g. Retina displays are as good as you need because they are finer than the eye's ability to distinguish.

I'm sure someone will see value in a gold retina display. And if we get that done, I'm sure we'll start selling retina displays that have been baptised on pluto by the pope himself.

There is no limit.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Retina displays are as good as you need because they are finer than the eye's ability to distinguish.

Well, yes, that's the marketing angle, but its not actually true.

http://www.cultofmac.com/173702/why-retina-isnt-enough-featu...

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

More dissatisfying jobs? Really? Have you seen what most people used to do in the past, and with what resources?

If more are indeed "dissatisfied", methinks it's because they have the relative luxury of dissatisfaction in place of the harsh existential reality of survival. As the Tappit brothers noted: the difference between two headlights and one headlight is a lot less than the difference between one headlight and no headlight. Those with Bell phones complained little because the alternative was writing a letter or walking - or not communicating at all - to another person; we complain of phones as we do now because we can't imagine not having at least a landline handy.

thucydides2• 12 years ago

It depends on where and how far back you want to look. A lot of Americans worked in morally repellent conditions in factories for little pay in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Earlier, though, I suspect being a wainwright or blacksmith or bookbinder - crafting a final good and seeing directly how it benefited your customer - was more satisfying than working as a corporate lawyer or a university administrator.

The Industrial Revolution allowed us to solve more and more desires. All of our basic ones are satisfied (in the West, for 99% of people). But the treadmill of desire continues, so jobs were created to satisfy those, too. And they feel fake because those jobs are increasingly divorced from central, "real" human desires.

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

"At the same time, these companies are willing to shell out huge amounts of money to paper-pushers coming up with strategic vision statements who they know perfectly well are doing absolutely nothing."

Ahh. So for some reason, private companies (or shareholders, if you like) are willing to give their money to people who they know are doing absolutely nothing. Well, I simply don't believe that.

sheepmullet• 12 years ago

Shareholders have a lot less influence over the running of a medium-large company than you would think.

In a 1000+ employee profitable company do you really think the shareholders will revolt because senior management has a few dozen worthless positions that help consolidate their power?

kitsune_• 12 years ago

You underestimate the power of bureaucracies, private and public.

shkkmo4• 12 years ago

There is also a difference between a) earning return on capital for investors, and b) contributing value to society.

Teachers tend to be heavy on b) and light on a).

Hedgefund managers tend to be heavy on a) and light on b).

orasis• 12 years ago

"... ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people."

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

Most of work, especially the corporate work that pays well reliably, isn't improving the world or helping people. It's helping individuals within companies in their campaigns for more money and more status. It's helping one middle manager become a director, or one executive beat out another one. The problem is that (a) 90% of corporate executives are completely worthless, overpaid deadweight, and (b) people have no choice where they land (under closed allocation) and have no say which boss (i.e. private-sector politician) to throw their muscle behind.

It really is amazing how much of the work done by the highest-paid people is completely unnecessary, if not counterproductive.

lightblade• 12 years ago

Not true, Bill Gates put a computer on every table and made billions of dollars while at it.

jokoon• 12 years ago

well bill gates is one of the few guys who managed to properly get something in return, at least he understood there's no such thing as one way altruism. You have to insert yourself in a business model to make things happen.

of course if we had thousands of bill gates, I guess it would be better don't you think?

wpietri5• 12 years ago

Did Microsoft make a single desktop computer? I don't recall seeing one.

fred_durst• 12 years ago

Why have so many people been convinced that money is anything more than an arbitrary system at this point? It is bizarre to me how many smart people keep believing that it isn't. The reason something generates money from something else is simply because it does. There is nothing good, bad or otherwise about it.

AndrewKemendo2• 12 years ago

I think this idea of the bullshit jobs, and the implicit removal of them, has corollaries with what was posted here recently: "How to get business ideas - remove steps" [1]

The trouble is, as was pointed out in the article, is that removing steps means removing a person from their source of income and in a lot of cases also their identity and social network. So how do you remove bullshit jobs without causing a massive collective existential threat?

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338

wpietri5• 12 years ago

It's definitely an interesting topic. One of the reasons Toyota had a deep tradition of avoiding layoffs was so that people would feel safer helping remove waste from the system.

One way to look at it: idle people with decaying skills and self esteem are just another kind of waste. So if your first step is to eliminate some particular sort of bullshit work, the second step could be to find some non-bullshit way to employ the people who no longer are doing anything.

Thinking broadly, that shouldn't be hard. After all, we could afford to pay people to do bullshit, so we'll be even better off if we pay those people to do something productive. But the current way we account for things often makes it tricky in specific cases.

shkkmo4• 12 years ago

“I want to do something with my life that actually benefits others; but if I go into a line of work where I care for other people, they pay me so little, and they put so much in debt, that I can’t even take care of my own family! This is ridiculous!”

Yet, the big swing in silicon valley is B2B.

The question we should asking ourselves is:

What can we, as software engineers and web developers, do to support our working class?

We need to reduce their debt, reduce their cost of living, and decrease the amount of time they waste dealing with the intricacies of living in modern society. How can we do this?

Balgair3• 12 years ago

In the US at least, we could use a way to increase voter participation. I believe in democracy and this republic. Believe being the correct word here. So many times, I fear for my country. I see evidence here on HN that it's all shit. That people are stupid and can't be trusted, maybe less so than the politicians. But I still believe that democracy is the best way out of it all. I have seen when a little girl realizes that her classroom rules really do change based on her vote. I have seen that power and hope in the faces of children and adults alike. I believe in democracy.

If you want to alleviate the debt burdens of the working classes, get them to the polls. If you want to reduce their cost of living, get them to the polls. If you want to help them have more efficient lives, give them more freedom and rights by getting them to the polls. Find a way to get people voting and out and helping each other. Then, I believe that people will fix it themselves because they know that they can. You have to tech a man to fish, not fish for him. The best way to teach a man to reduce their debt, to reduce their cost of living, to decease the time they spend on waste and paperwork is to teach them that they have the power to do something about it.

shkkmo4• 12 years ago

I don't believe that voter participation is not a magic pill and will not fix anything by itself.

However, if you do believe that. Then get on it!

nemothekid• 12 years ago

Increased voter participation doesn't seem particularly helpful when everyone just decides their votes based on whatever talking head is on FOX/NBC.

rattray• 12 years ago

Exactly the question to be asking, in my opinion.

I like what Balgair has to say, to some degree - though voting without education may backfire, so it's not that simple.

Some off-the-cuff ideas re; debt reduction, in the hope that others find their flaws & suggest others:

- Facilitating P2P debt may help make debt cheaper by crowdsourcing the "overhead" of evaluating creditors. I believe there's a site that does this but can't recall the name.

- Reduce student debt by making expensive college degrees obsolete. I think the next step in that (now that we have libraries, wikipedia, coursera, udacity, etc) may be changing hiring practices: a startup that helps companies hire based on experience/aptitude rather than falling back to the college degree heuristic could have a big impact. Relatedly, other startups (or FOSS) might replace the traditional degree in other ways, like guiding students through free online tracks or connecting them to advisors, mentors, internships, peers, and jobs.

- Change how employers pay employees. Most large employers have cheap debt and/or lots of cash, while many of their lowest-paid employees have terrible credit. This means they have to rely on mind-bogglingly expensive services like Payday loans and credit cards to cover their basic expenses (which don't come due on payday). A startup that helps employers pay daily instead of fortnightly, or pay bills directly, or even provide credit directly to their employees could put a lot of money back in poor pockets.

- I don't know the other main sources of American debt. Car payments? Large houses? I just don't know. But a systematic investigation of the sources of the debt, the costs of servicing it, and the underlying reasons it's required may be a decent way to scout out some good ideas!

Ultimately, though, much of this comes down to Policy and Culture. Student debt would evaporate if we just had free education. Cost of Living would likely plummet if we had terrific public transportation. There may be tax schemes (land taxes?) that would lower rent/home ownership costs. A culture of minimalism would likely also reduce cost of living =)

thisisnotatest• 12 years ago

Facilitating P2P debt may help make debt cheaper by crowdsourcing the "overhead" of evaluating creditors. I believe there's a site that does this but can't recall the name.

I'm not sure if it's what you're thinking of, but www.wefinance.co is a new startup in P2P debt, hoping to do exactly that.

dragonwriter5• 12 years ago

Facilitating P2P debt may help make debt cheaper by crowdsourcing the "overhead" of evaluating creditors. I believe there's a site that does this but can't recall the name.

There are a number. The one I'm most familiar with Prosper.com. (Most of them technically aren't really P2P debt because the central site is the lender of record, in order to deal with regulatory compliance, which can be quite involved when it comes to lending and debt collection, but they approximate P2P lending.)

lilsunnybee• 12 years ago

And you consider yourself not working class? They (we) aren't irresponsible children, who need our finance and modern-world coping problems solved for us by the ever-more capable upper classes.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

What nonsense! Certainly there will be outliers, but in general people get paid more because they help others more. Your pay comes from other people giving it to you willingly. They wouldn't give it to you unless you were helping them somehow.

I think the confusion is that, as you get paid more, you tend to help people less directly. A minimum-wage fast-food worker is obviously helping people. That's what he does. He probably says the literal words, "May I help you?" a hundred times a day. But he's not helping very many people and he's not helping them very much, and that's why the job doesn't pay so well.

Compare to, say, a chemist (as in chemistry, not the British term for a pharmacist). He's not directly helping people. In his day to day work, he doesn't interact with the customers. But he's helping to create new products and maintain existing products that people want, in a fashion that can be ludicrously indirect but is still ultimately extremely helpful.

Or look at senior management. We like to deride them, but most managers in most companies are useful. They don't help the customers directly, but they help their employees help people, and that can translate into a lot of help in a big company.

Yeah, there are people who get paid a lot to basically shaft other people, but they're not the common case.

shanghaiseo• 12 years ago

In this sense, I'm guessing he's pointing that those who help with more immediate, physically-demonstrated (helping) results are getting paid less. Coming back around, like you said, I agree that jobs (such as chemists) do "help." In fact, he's helping the helper. Yes, as you mentioned too, even though there might be no "consumer good" produced, senior managers can be described to help indirectly, although the clients may not see their actions on the front end. It's a weird combo of perspective and purpose to grasp. Most jobs are 'helping,' whether it is for something or someone; its not a one-to-one process, but often a chain of events that can change order. "The more your job helps others, the less you get paid" is pretty shallow.

mikeash2• 12 years ago

Thinking about it more, there's a fundamental limit to how many people you can help directly in a day. There are only so many hours in a day.

If you want to break that barrier, you have to provide your help indirectly in some manner, whether it's shaping an organization for people to work within, or building tools that help them do their jobs, or what have you.

fecklessyouth3• 12 years ago

The Enlightenment produced a society which identified pleasure as its most fundamental social value. As Locke says, individuals are hardwired to pursue pleasure. And as Smith says, capitalism is the economic system best able to produce the most total pleasure. Thus, if you can produce lots of pleasure for people, if you are useful, if you can make money appear out of the stock market, you are rewarded. The jobs most rewarded by society are those that are most pleasurable to others, like CEOs who can turn profits for board members. The group who's pleasure is the deciding pleasure is the dominant social group, who has the most of whatever currency matters to society. (Status, property, now cash)

Whether someone is virtuous, or caring, or helps others, is irrelevant in ascertaining their value, and thus how they should be paid. A teacher might produce pleasure in a student, but that student is in no capacity to makes its pleasure the deciding one. The moral good of a job is, at best, a footnote, and only valuable insofar as far as the dominant groups are pleased by them. The market doesn't care about your moral good.

The mistake of writers like this one is supposing that such a system can be fixed within the confines of modern capitalism. It cannot. People will conduct their campaigns, and go on strike, and create new movements, and perhaps pay teachers more out of social duty and pity, but they will ultimately butt heads with the philosophical underpinnings of modernity. If this writer is serious, the solution is not to turn to mere Marxist-inspired theories of labor, but to Aristotle and Aquinas.

For what Aristotle, Aquinas, and essentially the entire stock of pre-modern philosophy, approached differently was the question of, "what should our fundamental social value be?" Their answer was not, "pleasure." For Aristotle, it was the good produced by a life trained in socially-imparted virtues--which ultimately allowed one to contemplate the divine. For Aquinas, it was more explicitly religious: loving God, which entailed doing and believing all the things He wants us to do. And as was the case with the Enlightenment, the cultures that both these thinkers embodied were constructed around such answers, from the top down. In either system, the moral worth of work is not irrelevant, it's the only thing relevant (with differences in how moral is defined).

In-depth rebuttals should be directed to Alasdair MacIntyre, a Scottish philosopher whose book "Whose Justice, Which Rationality," I just paraphrased in part. (But seriously...)

jmcmichael2• 12 years ago

The interviewee, Davide Graeber, is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Occupy movement so probably does not believe that a solution to this problem lies with the confines of modern capitalism. He identifies himself as an anarchist.

There's more detail on his political/economic views in his book, 'Debt: The First 5000 Years':

http://p2pfoundation.net/First_Five_Thousand_Years_of_Debt

contingencies4• 12 years ago

I'm just going to re-iterate the recommendation to read this book. Although it's periodically mentioned on HN, anyone who hasn't read it, you won't regret it. I would describe it as nothing less than the most eloquent and reasoned summary of the devastatingly unfortunate wholesale misapplication of human endeavor in modern times... bar none... which incidentally lies at close to the root of many of the world's problems. In short: we've been flying with blinkers: Graeber explains precisely how and why.

fecklessyouth3• 12 years ago

Thanks. My point is, activists like Graeber are bound by philosophical systems they don't recognize, which have been in place for hundreds of years and which form the foundation of our entire modes of thought. He may dislike modern capitalism, but he probably accepts the core tenets of modernism which allow it, like the assumption that the good of man is to be achieved by man pursuing whatever his interests happen to be. He might be radical, but I'm guessing he's not a radical as to reject Hume. (the source for the aforementioned tenet).

logicchains4• 12 years ago

Just a note in regard to the notion of the moral worth of work being the only thing relevant: this is actually one of the central ideas behind the capitalist paradigm (albeit in a different form). It takes the form that, assuming all value/morality is ultimately subjective (all value judgements are equally relevant), and that a person's values are most clearly reflected in their actions, then whatever action a person takes at a given moment is the 'best' action, the action they consider most moral, most valuable. If this action doesn't limit the ability of another individual to act how they wish, then this represents a net gain in value. So if people's voluntary interactions lead to lots of money/resources going to CEOS and pro footballers, for instance, then this is the best possible outcome assuming no coercion is involved.

This is where the capitalist notion of people pursuing their own pleasure without interfering with that of others stems from. This is a qualitative, not quantitative, notion of utility, and arguments have been made that it does not allow for interpersonal utility comparisons. Which is why hardcore followers of the theory (market anarchists) oppose regulation, as it necessarily requires coercion (making someone do something other than the action they'd most like to do), and without the possibility of interpersonal utility comparisons it's not possible to justify any such coercion.

fecklessyouth3• 12 years ago

That perfectly supports my point. Because the value you mention is derived solely from utility--actions have no intrinsic value themselves. As yourself say, "assuming all value/morality is ultimately subjective." That's the working assumption of modernity, which limits the results of social movements like Occupy.

simula67• 12 years ago

TL;DR

If your job helps others, you may want to do it [1] for reasons other than money and therefore get paid less.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

cnorgate• 12 years ago

Just because certain people can't describe or understand the value of a given task or job, doesn't mean it has no value. Clearly if person A pays person B to perform a task, then person B must be creating at least as much value as they're being paid. Who are you or I to judge that value? We're neither receiving the value nor paying for it. If person A is consistently paying more than $2 for $1 of value, then they'll soon be out of money, and the system will unceremoniously remove person A from decision making authority.

While it's nice to suggest that Wall St. doesn't create any value for people, ~20% of our GDP would suggest otherwise. The truth is that Wall St. acts much like Adam Smith's invisible hand. For our system to work, capital must be allocated to optimal uses. Command economies do a poor job of this, except in war time. Wall St. helps us reallocate capital to the most productive endeavors. That sounds pretty valuable to me. Even if the folks on Wall St. don't build your car, they did pool the capital necessary to finance the construction of the manufacturing facility. Can't have one without the other.

As a final point, if the 'caring class' isn't compensated enough, perhaps it's because there is an oversupply of 'caring folks'. Or perhaps they're not really creating any value for others? Perhaps some of the 'caring class' should get creative and find other ways to be caring, or perhaps they should find ways to provide more 'care' with their time so they can command a higher share of the value they create?

contingencies4• 12 years ago

What strikes me is that this article seems to conclude with a focus on changing society's perception of work as a means to changing its nature (I think we need to start by redefining labor itself, maybe, start with classic “women’s work,” nurturing children, looking after things, as the paradigm for labor itself and then it will be much harder to be confused about what’s really valuable and what isn’t. As I say, we’re already seeing the first stirrings of this sort of thing. It’s both a political and a moral transformation and think it’s the only way we can overcome the system that puts so many of us in bullshit jobs.) whereas Debt: The First 5000 Years focuses, to my mind, essentially on proving the heterogeneity of value and value-exchange systems (ie. psycho-social and concrete economies) in past and present human societies that deviate significantly from our present-era global neocolonial capitalist system.

I wonder if this represents a change in Graeber's own mindset, or is merely representative of the interviewer.

PS. I've had emails with Graeber and he's every bit as personable and intelligent in private communications as in his conventional written output.

mahyarm• 12 years ago

The caring classes he talks about being underpaid are probably underpaid because they tend to help the poorest who do not have much money, the amount of people with their skill set is high and their professions do not scale in the amount of people they help.

kennethcwilbur• 12 years ago

Honest question: Is the headline linkbait? I read the entire interview but I didn't see where he really explained why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid.

Why the more your job helps others, the less you get paid

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