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Bull**it Jobs


Liffguard

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3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Police officers? Nah. Even in an ideal society you'd still need policemen.

IIRC only the Queen and her husband are paid a salary. Other royals earn money through their estates and assets (which they inherited, but still).

Isn't that salary technically from the estates? Since the basis of the deal that was basically "the government gets money from the royal estates, but pays the monarch to live." Or is my understanding of the situation off?

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1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

They get millions in "allowances". The royals got money like the Pope.

I believe the money goes to the monarch, who then decides whether other royals will get money for their official functions (if they have any). At least on paper. I guess the government actually has a say in who gets what depending on their perceived usefulness - or uselessness.

As far as I can tell there is absolutely no money that goes directly from the British treasury to any other royal besides the Queen and her husband. You can easily find the royal financial reports here:
https://www.royal.uk/financial-reports-2018-19

The central question is whether you view the Crown Estate (which provides for the Sovereign Grant) as being assets that belong to the Crown itself (which kinda is the case, historically speaking, at least until George III), in which case one could say that the royals finance themselves, or whether you see the Crown Estate as belonging to the British nation, in which case the British nation is really funding the Crown.
It's all a question of perspective.
The extra fun here is to wonder whether you would have a public corporation like the Crown Estate (i.e. a for-profit entity managed by government) if not for the monarchy, since obviously most public corporations have been (or are being) privatized throughout Europe. Since the Sovereign Grant is only 15% of the Crown Estate's revenues (a bit more these days, because of the Palace's renovations), you could say that the Crown Estate is 85%... socialist.

 

Edit: @TrueMetis Ha, I was actually answering your question before you posted it!

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A few thoughts about "bullshit jobs" from experience, as I think I once did a bullshit job back in my youth. Or maybe more than one.
Typical signs of bullshit jobs in my opinion.
1. They typically target young people, often out of school, who are looking for their first job. Since, young people haven't had the experience of working, and knowing when to tell somebody to just piss off, particularly authority figures, they often make easy targets. Plus they are eager to start working.
2. Typically, the company with the bullshit job doesn't give a damn about its customers. Nor does it give a damn about making a good product. It's all about marketing and blowing smoke up peoples asses to move product. High pressure sales tactics are usually present.
3. Typically bullshit jobs will be associated with bullshit companies. Typically a strong sign of a bullshit company is when it has high customer and employee turnover. Typically, management will try to blame employees for high customer turnover, when you know really the problem is management and the company's business strategy. 
4. Low pay is typical, if it isn't some kind of straight commission arrangement.

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On 9/6/2019 at 8:39 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Out of personal interest, were do Attorneys fall in his framework?

Don't take this the wrong way as I work in finance. I have no doubt society needs lawyers, just as it needs some finance people.

The problem with both professions though is both can engage in rent seeking pretty easily.

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1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

A few thoughts about "bullshit jobs" from experience, as I think I once did a bullshit job back in my youth. Or maybe more than one.
Typical signs of bullshit jobs in my opinion.
1. They typically target young people, often out of school, who are looking for their first job. Since, young people haven't had the experience of working, and knowing when to tell somebody to just piss off, particularly authority figures, they often make easy targets. Plus they are eager to start working.

......
4. Low pay is typical, if it isn't some kind of straight commission arrangement.

Are these necessarily true though? How many well-paid, well-respected vice-presidents and middle to upper managers are cutting about, that could be done away with without changing any actual outputs?

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9 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

Are these necessarily true though? How many well-paid, well-respected vice-presidents and middle to upper managers are cutting about, that could be done away with without changing any actual outputs?

I have no idea what your point is here.

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2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Don't take this the wrong way as I work in finance. I have no doubt society needs lawyers, just as it needs some finance people.

The problem with both professions though is both can engage in rent seeking pretty easily.

Oh, no argument.  Heck, I think a fair bit of “consumer protection” legislation is simply meat for plaintiffs attorneys.

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1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

I have no idea what your point is here.

I think his point is that bullshit jobs are not relegated only (or primarily) to entry level and low paying positions but are distributed across all income level positions. Maybe not equally but still.

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22 minutes ago, Durckad said:

I think his point is that bullshit jobs are not relegated only (or primarily) to entry level and low paying positions but are distributed across all income level positions. Maybe not equally but still.

Okay got it. Thanks. 

Well, somebody I think said on the thread how about CEO's? 

Do we need CEO's to run companies? There are some companies that don't have them. Others that have one time or another carried on their business without them.

Maybe not. Maybe the position of CEO is a bullshit job that sucks away money.

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2 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

It's really more about wasteful jobs than what we often hear coined "shit jobs".

Warren Buffet and many of the mutual fund managers have been complaining at shareholder meetings for years about wasteful executive compensation.

It's about the only job where you can get shit canned for incompetence, but then walk away with so much money, you never have worry about working again.

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4 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

A few thoughts about "bullshit jobs" from experience, as I think I once did a bullshit job back in my youth. Or maybe more than one.
Typical signs of bullshit jobs in my opinion.
1. They typically target young people, often out of school, who are looking for their first job. Since, young people haven't had the experience of working, and knowing when to tell somebody to just piss off, particularly authority figures, they often make easy targets. Plus they are eager to start working.
2. Typically, the company with the bullshit job doesn't give a damn about its customers. Nor does it give a damn about making a good product. It's all about marketing and blowing smoke up peoples asses to move product. High pressure sales tactics are usually present.
3. Typically bullshit jobs will be associated with bullshit companies. Typically a strong sign of a bullshit company is when it has high customer and employee turnover. Typically, management will try to blame employees for high customer turnover, when you know really the problem is management and the company's business strategy. 
4. Low pay is typical, if it isn't some kind of straight commission arrangement.

Hmmm...

 

I have worked an assortment of jobs over the past forty years.  In my youth, I worked at the fish plant, getting salmon cut up, glazed, and frozen for transport - difficult job with long hours, but one that had to be done.   Probably not a BS job, though it sure seemed like a shit job much of the time.

 

Later, I bounced around various short term oil field and construction jobs. Hard work, often dangerous, but probably not BS,  There were, after all specific things that needed accomplished/built that affected society.

 

Since those days, with a few digressions, it's been most delivering: people, pizza, and mail.  Delivering people was a 'van service' aimed mostly at people with medical issues (usually Alzheimer's patients).  Probably not BS.  Delivering pizza, well, I did make a fair pile greenbacks doing that, and folks do need to eat...but it might be a bit borderline on the BS scale.  Same argument can be made for those in the kitchens and waiting tables.  Management, though?  In my experience, largely a bunch of worthless self-serving criminals.  And delivering mail - yes, 80% of what passes through USPS is junk.  But that other 20% - those are things that people want or need.  So, not a BS job, though I do wonder about the management.

 

That said, given the utterly wretched feeling and catastrophic sense of worthlessness that comes with unemployment/idleness, even a BS job would beat collecting an unemployment check or the 'universal basic income' thing.

 

 

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1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

That said, given the utterly wretched feeling and catastrophic sense of worthlessness that comes with unemployment/idleness, even a BS job would beat collecting an unemployment check or the 'universal basic income' thing.

I think by now you now by the things I've written over the years that I'm a full employment hawk. And part of the reason is because I think having a decent job is essential to a persons mental health and self worth. Obviously, the financial component is important to.

The problem here is when people think they have little choice to but to take a "BS Job", in the terms I described it, because there is nothing else, You'd hope we could avoid the situation where people believe they have to take those jobs. But, of course, that often depends on the state of the business cycle and whether you have a bunch numbskulls preaching nonsense. 

Also, drawing unemployment might be better if it gives you more time to search or a better job than a BS job. As you know, job searching is both time consuming and costly. 

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40 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think by now you now by the things I've written over the years that I'm a full employment hawk. And part of the reason is because I think having a decent job is essential to a persons mental health and self worth. Obviously, the financial component is important to.

The problem here is when people think they have little choice to but to take a "BS Job", in the terms I described it, because there is nothing else, You'd hope we could avoid the situation where people believe they have to take those jobs. But, of course, that often depends on the state of the business cycle and whether you have a bunch numbskulls preaching nonsense. 

Also, drawing unemployment might be better if it gives you more time to search or a better job than a BS job. As you know, job searching is both time consuming and costly. 

point taken.

In my younger days, the local economy was highly seasonal - the trend for many people was 'work your butt off during the summer (at fishing/construction) then kick back and collect unemployment during the winter (maybe supplemented with a BS job on the side).  Put bluntly, a large number of jobs vanished each fall, but returned in the spring.  

 

That said, remain unemployed for to long searching for that worthwhile job, and you have a fair shot of becoming effectively unemployable - employers might start wondering, with justification, about things like reliability and motivation.

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57 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

That said, given the utterly wretched feeling and catastrophic sense of worthlessness that comes with unemployment/idleness, even a BS job would beat collecting an unemployment check or the 'universal basic income' thing.



It's a whole other subject but this is something that we as a society really need to do away with coz there's a pretty good chance that with growing automation we're simply not gonna have employment for vast swathes of people so a mode of living where we're not idle and don't feel worthless just coz we're not actively working to collect money is gonna have to come into being.

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4 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

That said, remain unemployed for to long searching for that worthwhile job, and you have a fair shot of becoming effectively unemployable - employers might start wondering, with justification, about things like reliability and motivation.

While being true, I'd also point out that, depending on what kind of job you've been unemployed from, and what kind of job you're applying for may preclude you from being hired anyway, as employers aren't keen on hiring people they know to be overqualified for the job.

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fair bit of “consumer protection” legislation is simply meat for plaintiffs attorneys.

depends on the statute, i suppose.  down my way, the local medical malpractice, new home warranty, products liability, consumer anti-discrimination, and related statutes tend to immunize broad ranges of conduct, impede court access with pre-filing exhaustion and notice requirements, and establish other boons to defendants, in derogation of traditional tort rights.

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5 hours ago, polishgenius said:



It's a whole other subject but this is something that we as a society really need to do away with coz there's a pretty good chance that with growing automation we're simply not gonna have employment for vast swathes of people so a mode of living where we're not idle and don't feel worthless just coz we're not actively working to collect money is gonna have to come into being.

to be blunt, at the risk of thread derailment:

'idle hands are the devils workshop.'  And those on basic universal income would be the devils workers.  Best BS jobs of some sort that would keep these people occupied rather than time for mischief. Otherwise, it's a potential end to civilization. 

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6 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think by now you now by the things I've written over the years that I'm a full employment hawk. And part of the reason is because I think having a decent job is essential to a persons mental health and self worth. Obviously, the financial component is important to.

The problem here is when people think they have little choice to but to take a "BS Job", in the terms I described it, because there is nothing else, You'd hope we could avoid the situation where people believe they have to take those jobs. But, of course, that often depends on the state of the business cycle and whether you have a bunch numbskulls preaching nonsense. 

Also, drawing unemployment might be better if it gives you more time to search or a better job than a BS job. As you know, job searching is both time consuming and costly. 

A few things. You say a decent job. There's a large segment of the populace that have only access to shit jobs. Ever heard of the people that want to win the Lottery so that they can quit their jobs? Do these sound like people that love working for the sake of working? The higher up the food chain a person is, the more they think that work is the greatest thing in existence. Simply because that person is treated better at work and they have more control. It's a form of privilege.

Different personality types enjoy work more than others.

People suffering with physical and mental health problems may not enjoy work or may suffer difficulties in accomplishing it. But, they can get disability right? It's not nearly that simple. You can be half disabled or a quarter disabled. There won't be any give in the system to help you. If you can find a way to earn 1300 a month you can get Medicaid, but then you have to find a way to live on 1300  per month.

Work doesn't necessarily need to vanish, nor does it necessarily have to be 40 hours per week. It could be 30 for example, and give more people on the sidelines a chance. Also, people could volunteer. It's quite different, as it is not compulsory. 

 

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1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

to be blunt, at the risk of thread derailment:

'idle hands are the devils workshop.'  And those on basic universal income would be the devils workers.  Best BS jobs of some sort that would keep these people occupied rather than time for mischief. Otherwise, it's a potential end to civilization. 


To be equally blunt, fuck that shit. The idea that people who aren't having to slave away at shitty jobs to put food on the table cannot possibly do anything but turn to crime is the kind of needlessly aggressive shaming tactic that is part of causes people struggling to find work extra stress.

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