Reddit reviews Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

> I just don't understand how someone could even think to analyze handshakes to this degree.
>
> How empty does your head have to be to think that a simple greeting gesture is so meaningful?

Same thing for those body language "experts" they wheel out on American TV. How bored do you have to be to care? How dull do you have to be to think there are people with expertise in this? How deluded do you need to be to think that you can do this with any level of accuracy, or that what you're doing actually matters?

Clearest example I have for this (outside of like all middle management positions): https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber-ebook/dp/B075RWG7YM/

There's a good book that goes into detail about your situation: Bullshit Jobs.

Energy accounting.

It is not like any of them. It has some features of capitalism (markets dictating production response), socialism (energy distribution) and a lot of features none of them have.

If you learn capitalist economics in college, it's a multi-year program. You're not going to learn it from me in a reddit post, but here's about the best summary I can make.

It begins with energy accounting - the assigning to every resource an energy value based on physics (the basic matter/energy conversion) and multiplied by the extractable and known-usable mass of the resource within the area controlled by the technate, and added to value of available imports, minus the value of expected exports. This sets a base modifier for prices that causes prices to climb for limited resources to reduce consumption to sustainable levels.

For renewable and abundant resources (those for which demand is less than renewable supply) price is essentially negligible and for all purposes becomes free. Accounting for these is transparent for the population at large, and is handled electronically behind the scenes only for the purposes of adjusting production to demand.

In a socialist economy the preferred item or form might be mandated by law. This prevents the production of items consumers might otherwise want and while in theory it's to increase the efficiency of production by producing one item and controlling employment levels, in practice it results in massive shortages whenever production and imports from more economically stable countries can't be subsidized (see Venezuela). In capitalism, markets dictate price entirely. Supply and demand create a balance, but this is short-term supply and demand. It takes no accounting for non-renewable resources, socialized environmental impacts, and only some consideration for long term projected growth or decline in demand (largely the result of the invention of futures markets).
The first prevents massive abuse of limited resources, but can result in mass shortages of vital goods. The second ensures as long as goods are produceable they are available as long as there is demand, but makes no accounting for long term sustainability, so products can become unavailable in the long run if resources run low, and the consequences of production are often simply ignored until its bad enough for the government to get involved and impose regulation.

Technocracy seeks to take the best of both of these - those things with limited supply can still be available at ever higher prices, set to control demand to sustainable levels, while abundant and renewable resources can be made available as desired. In either case, production is not controlled by a central authority as in socialist centralized economies, but is dictated by consumer action as in capitalism. Further, costs of environmental protection are rolled into the process - in many ways the concept of a carbon tax is a limited ad-hoc version of this. The technocratic version would cover all waste products and the full cost of cleaning them up as part of the energy price calculations, and thus an otherwise sustainable resource can become priced like an unsustainable one if the environmental impact of production is unsustainable.

Couple all that with a distribution system that sees everyone paid the same for their time (very much a socialist concept) combined with the goal of making resources and production as abundant as possible while pursuing post-scarcity, moving most labor-jobs to robots and automation and most other jobs to AI as soon as possible with the long term purpose and intent of making human labor obsolete and freeing up human time to focus on arts, invention, study, and anything else people actually value doing with their time.

I'll end by touching on a common criticism, that due to pay being separated from work people won't be motivated to do anything. The truth is a lot of work is bullshit and not necessary anyway. There are plenty of people who would work just because it's worth it to them to do it. Especially when it comes to things like invention - the greatest inventors have never in history worked for the sake of money. They did it because they loved discovering new and better ways of doing things. Einstein wasn't a physicist because the pay was good. He was a physicist because he loved it. Imagine how many people would be freed up to pursue their interests in academics, engineering or the arts if they could try out their ideas without fear of losing their house or starving if it didn't work out? Many people aren't entrepeneurs only because they fear the risks that come from leaving the work force. Many of them won't ever produce anything new no matter how much they try, but if even a few pay off it can be huge. Then imagine just how many people, due to growing up in poverty, never have the opportunity at all. Imagine if suddenly they all had the chance, limited only by their own work ethic and imagination.

Authors don't write because they hope for a big payday. They do it because they can't stand to NOT write. Actors don't act for the pay. Most actors never make ends meet with it and they keep doing it anyway. The big stars earn enough to live on for the rest of their lives in one or two movies, yet they keep coming back and doing it again.

The truth is people do NOT need money to motivate them to do something with their lives. They need money to motivate them to do shit they hate. So why not work to automate all that stuff? Make work obsolete, and keep paying people so they can live lives of meaning instead of toiling 1/3 of their life away doing things they hate, or which serve no real purpose.

And also read the book.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B075RWG7YM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1