Great essay and plenty of food for thought. I will witness to holding some bullshit jobs myself. They are, in effect, a jobs creation program for the PMC.
Sadly, bullshit jobs are the one thing capitalism manages to gatekeep. Real labor is for the many, fake labor is for the few.
Of course, you can always sell your soul to crypto. That’s how I got in. I can afford name-brand cookies now, but I’m 100% going to Hell—and honestly, that’s probably where I belong anyway 🙃
Funny enough, I actually made a video on how the ‘subtle suffering’ of these jobs is… not so subtle. I know it’s the most first-world shit ever, but it’s worse than most people realize.
Some good points here. There are a few things that didn’t quite add up for me, though. For example, you write:
“They absorb surplus labor the way Orwell’s Ministry of War absorbed surplus production: not to win, not to build, but to waste. To ensure nothing accumulates—no wealth, no meaning, no idle hands with time to question the system that binds them. They keep the hamster wheel spinning. Not to get us anywhere, but so we don’t ask why we’re spinning in the first place.”
I don’t think there’s really a practical explanation for how or why this should be the case. Sure, in theory it could be true for government jobs (though not without problems), but you later make the argument that it’s actually the *government* that’s incentivized to produce value, and that most bullshit jobs are private sector. Maybe that’s true, but why would a private company spend money on trying to keep the masses occupied? If a company employs 5,000 people, and 1,000 of them are useless, is the explanation really that the CEO and shareholders are saying to each other “we must keep the rabble employed so they don’t get up to anti-capitalist mischief?” Seems unlikely.
You raise a really good point—thanks for bringing my attention to it. You’re right: it’s very unlikely that capitalists sit around literally thinking, “we must keep the rabble employed so they don’t get up to anti-capitalist mischief.”
What I’m trying to get at is less about conscious intention and more about the structural incentives created by wealth and inequality. Private companies aren’t deliberately “wasting” money to pacify people, but the system they operate in allows for bullshit to flourish anyway.
Take my own career: at least a third of it has been spent ghostwriting “thought leadership” content for executives who neither think nor lead. Pure make-believe. Why does that work exist at all? Because companies with concentrated wealth can afford to throw resources at signaling games—optics, prestige, brand maintenance—without actually producing value.
That’s the tension: capitalism loves to advertise itself as ruthlessly efficient, yet in practice it generates sprawling bureaucracies, redundant layers of management, and entire industries built on vibes. The hamster wheel doesn’t need a conspiracy to keep spinning—it just spins on its own, powered by wealth and inertia.
Very thought-provoking and utterly logical and insightful essay. I have to say that I find the enthusiasm for bitcoin (in all its variations) and sky high stock market values of companies that either haven’t produced a single thing or who tout «products» that contribute nothing to humanity the best illustration of how unrestrained/unregulated capitalism has utterly failed said humanity.
Thank you— i’ve seriously considered writing an essay about that in particular.
Funny enough, my career is in tech working at the intersection of crypto and AI. The whole industry is smoke and mirrors.
You would not believe some of the stories I could tell you.
It’s all a giant scam and pretty much anyone with a shred of intelligence knows it—but this is simply the only way to make money now. I would otherwise be flipping burgers for min. wage. Many colleagues in the same boat.
Looking forward to that essay. And: I would believe you! I salute your decision to exit that toxic environment and wish you every success in your alternative endeavours 😉
Nice article. One quibble - from someone who has been in and around government jobs for 20+ years - a good 30% are bullshit jobs. I’ve never been in an organization where we couldn’t do the same exact work with way fewer people.
And absolutely— there’s a whole bunch of actual waste in government jobs. I even know someone in that position. I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that there is more BS in the free market (which seems counterintuitive)
This was wonderful. Because of it, my subscribe was genuine, not reciprocal.
I would argue this is also a signal of the decline of U.S. productivity, and by extension, its decline as a global superpower as defined in Ray Dalio’s Principles of Dealing with the Changing World Order.
If you haven’t read it yet, check it out. Free audiobook on Spotify.
The middle class operates as a semi meritocratic pseudo universal basic income. It distributes economic stability through jobs that are often untethered from genuine value creation. This illusion is sustained by a blend of credentials, performance, and institutional inertia. It feels like merit but functions more like managed appeasement.
It won’t survive the shift from Software-as-a-Service to Employee-as-a-Service. That transition means more than automation. It marks a wholesale restructuring of how labor is extracted and compensated. AI systems don’t just replace tasks, they reconfigure expectations. When employees become API endpoints in a distributed cognition network, the buffer that sustained the middle class erodes.
Shadow IT and shadow AI are symptoms of this breakdown. Workers deploy unsanctioned tools to maintain productivity illusions, to protect themselves from visibility, to prevent being made redundant by the very efficiencies they rely on. This creates a precarious equilibrium. People are incentivized to preserve dysfunction because acknowledging it risks collapse.
So the bullshit continues. But it’s not waste. It’s containment. A delay mechanism. A soft barrier holding back systemic acknowledgment of the future already arriving.
Max, I love your style. Excellent read.
Thanks Walt, glad you enjoyed!
Great essay and plenty of food for thought. I will witness to holding some bullshit jobs myself. They are, in effect, a jobs creation program for the PMC.
Thank you! And yes, possibly the worst kind of jobs creation program that could exist.
Thucking good post acksually
Thank you friend! No one was more surprised than me
Why have I never been able to get a bullshit job? I am always expected to work my ass off. I got my degree. Gimme a bullshit job!
Sadly, bullshit jobs are the one thing capitalism manages to gatekeep. Real labor is for the many, fake labor is for the few.
Of course, you can always sell your soul to crypto. That’s how I got in. I can afford name-brand cookies now, but I’m 100% going to Hell—and honestly, that’s probably where I belong anyway 🙃
Funny enough, I actually made a video on how the ‘subtle suffering’ of these jobs is… not so subtle. I know it’s the most first-world shit ever, but it’s worse than most people realize.
https://youtu.be/X7gtO_GJRdU?si=4rnwN8DGmfYtq1-D
Some good points here. There are a few things that didn’t quite add up for me, though. For example, you write:
“They absorb surplus labor the way Orwell’s Ministry of War absorbed surplus production: not to win, not to build, but to waste. To ensure nothing accumulates—no wealth, no meaning, no idle hands with time to question the system that binds them. They keep the hamster wheel spinning. Not to get us anywhere, but so we don’t ask why we’re spinning in the first place.”
I don’t think there’s really a practical explanation for how or why this should be the case. Sure, in theory it could be true for government jobs (though not without problems), but you later make the argument that it’s actually the *government* that’s incentivized to produce value, and that most bullshit jobs are private sector. Maybe that’s true, but why would a private company spend money on trying to keep the masses occupied? If a company employs 5,000 people, and 1,000 of them are useless, is the explanation really that the CEO and shareholders are saying to each other “we must keep the rabble employed so they don’t get up to anti-capitalist mischief?” Seems unlikely.
You raise a really good point—thanks for bringing my attention to it. You’re right: it’s very unlikely that capitalists sit around literally thinking, “we must keep the rabble employed so they don’t get up to anti-capitalist mischief.”
What I’m trying to get at is less about conscious intention and more about the structural incentives created by wealth and inequality. Private companies aren’t deliberately “wasting” money to pacify people, but the system they operate in allows for bullshit to flourish anyway.
Take my own career: at least a third of it has been spent ghostwriting “thought leadership” content for executives who neither think nor lead. Pure make-believe. Why does that work exist at all? Because companies with concentrated wealth can afford to throw resources at signaling games—optics, prestige, brand maintenance—without actually producing value.
That’s the tension: capitalism loves to advertise itself as ruthlessly efficient, yet in practice it generates sprawling bureaucracies, redundant layers of management, and entire industries built on vibes. The hamster wheel doesn’t need a conspiracy to keep spinning—it just spins on its own, powered by wealth and inertia.
Very thought-provoking and utterly logical and insightful essay. I have to say that I find the enthusiasm for bitcoin (in all its variations) and sky high stock market values of companies that either haven’t produced a single thing or who tout «products» that contribute nothing to humanity the best illustration of how unrestrained/unregulated capitalism has utterly failed said humanity.
Thank you— i’ve seriously considered writing an essay about that in particular.
Funny enough, my career is in tech working at the intersection of crypto and AI. The whole industry is smoke and mirrors.
You would not believe some of the stories I could tell you.
It’s all a giant scam and pretty much anyone with a shred of intelligence knows it—but this is simply the only way to make money now. I would otherwise be flipping burgers for min. wage. Many colleagues in the same boat.
Looking forward to that essay. And: I would believe you! I salute your decision to exit that toxic environment and wish you every success in your alternative endeavours 😉
Nice article. One quibble - from someone who has been in and around government jobs for 20+ years - a good 30% are bullshit jobs. I’ve never been in an organization where we couldn’t do the same exact work with way fewer people.
Thank you, friend!
And absolutely— there’s a whole bunch of actual waste in government jobs. I even know someone in that position. I was just trying to draw attention to the fact that there is more BS in the free market (which seems counterintuitive)
This was wonderful. Because of it, my subscribe was genuine, not reciprocal.
I would argue this is also a signal of the decline of U.S. productivity, and by extension, its decline as a global superpower as defined in Ray Dalio’s Principles of Dealing with the Changing World Order.
If you haven’t read it yet, check it out. Free audiobook on Spotify.
Thanks Jon, appreciate that!
Yes, totally agreed--we are nothing if not a collapsing empire. Haven't read that yet but will add it to my list. Thanks for the rec!
The middle class operates as a semi meritocratic pseudo universal basic income. It distributes economic stability through jobs that are often untethered from genuine value creation. This illusion is sustained by a blend of credentials, performance, and institutional inertia. It feels like merit but functions more like managed appeasement.
It won’t survive the shift from Software-as-a-Service to Employee-as-a-Service. That transition means more than automation. It marks a wholesale restructuring of how labor is extracted and compensated. AI systems don’t just replace tasks, they reconfigure expectations. When employees become API endpoints in a distributed cognition network, the buffer that sustained the middle class erodes.
Shadow IT and shadow AI are symptoms of this breakdown. Workers deploy unsanctioned tools to maintain productivity illusions, to protect themselves from visibility, to prevent being made redundant by the very efficiencies they rely on. This creates a precarious equilibrium. People are incentivized to preserve dysfunction because acknowledging it risks collapse.
So the bullshit continues. But it’s not waste. It’s containment. A delay mechanism. A soft barrier holding back systemic acknowledgment of the future already arriving.
And when AI replaces all those folks … ?