David Graeber: Essential vs. bullsh** jobs

Brut America

"There really seems to be this idea that people who are putting their lives on the line for the sake of all of us, shouldn't be compensated with money because they're not doing it for money."

Transcript

00:00We're going to be encouraged when this is all over to think it was just a dream.

00:03You know, we had this very strange thing. It has nothing to do with reality.

00:07Now we're waking up and going back to normal. But actually, no, normal was the dream.

00:12This was, this is reality. You know, we realize what people are really taking care of us,

00:16what we are, as human beings, as fragile, fragile, biological entities,

00:21who will die unless we take care of each other. You know, what an economy is,

00:28is the way that we take care of each other, the way that we keep each other alive.

00:32And we do that by caring for each other and caring for our environment. And if we don't do that,

00:36we're in big trouble very fast. So I think a lot of things can no longer be taken for granted.

00:42Whereas, you know, the people who are really supposed to be producing value,

00:45I mean, there's all these concepts of production value,

00:48really, you need to be reexamined, you know, real value is that which keeps us alive.

01:19Our compensation is insane. Our standards are insane. There really seems to be this idea

01:35that people who are putting their lives on the line, literally putting their lives on the line,

01:41for the sake of all of us, shouldn't be compensated

01:46with money, because they're not doing it for money. Whereas people who are just doing it

01:50for money, should get lots of money. It's quite crazy. And I hope that we will stop this,

01:58because in a way, you could say we've just received the world's greatest wake up call.

02:15A lot of the people wrote to me, but they're both jobs are doing things like,

02:30you know, preparing the cartoons on the PowerPoints, or, you know,

02:33for the PowerPoint presentations that like executives show in their, you know, meetings

02:39with each other, which are like these medieval tournaments where they all sort of show off and

02:42do battle or, you know, writing for the in house magazines with every single corporation has to

02:48have their own journal where they talk about how amazing the this or that executive is,

02:54because it's very gratifying if you're an executive to have a whole maplossi magazine

02:58where they talk about you and the stuff that happened in real life. So you just hire people

03:01to do it. So we're actually destroying the planet to feed the egos of narcissistic individuals.

03:08You think about all the people who have to drive to work to sit there so he can say,

03:12I have 300 people working under me, you know, doing all the think about the carbon that is

03:17heating those buildings that are put up the infrastructure that surrounds these gigantic

03:21eco projects. And that's destroying our planet in the most literal sense. So I think we have

03:30a unique opportunity to realize just how silly all that stuff is and just cut it out.

03:38So many people I know are when they're working from home,

03:49find this a situation where they can, it's almost impossible to not deny how much they actually do.

03:55I refer to works in insurance, you know, he, I asked him, Okay, so how much do you really work

04:01a day? It's about 15 minutes. You know, he says, Well, there's two half hour meetings,

04:06they're basically bullshit, but I kind of have to do it to show the flag. And I still have to do

04:10that. But you know, I basically worked an hour a week. I mean, the hour he does a week is something

04:17worth doing. But it's insane to have people like drive to work or take public transport to work,

04:23sit there in a heated building, and then come back, just so that his boss can sit there and

04:30say, look at my empire, you know, which is basically what's going on. We need to rethink

04:34what an economy is to focus on what's really important to us. And that would mean not going

04:42back to sleep. Can we do that? I don't know. There's going to be huge pressure on us to get

04:49back to work that work is should be a value in itself, regardless of what that work does. And

04:54there needs to be a movement to resist that, to take the knowledge that we now have of what reality

05:00is really like and and and save ourselves from the incredible destructive path that our species

05:07has taken. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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