Addictive

After a while, I couldn't stop listening, being under the impression that this book would change my perception of people and things around me entirely. After happily finishing the book, I guess Graeber is a master of suggestive rhetoric ("a case could be made that..." seems to be his favorite phrase), but that his argument doesn't entirely hold up to reality. OK, the subtitle says "A Theory", anyway. So listen for yourself.

Speaking of listening, I liked how Ragland performs the overall persuasive gesture of the text. Plus he reads the footnotes (and I haven't even noticed this prior to checking the written text). But he also does something downright outrageous for an audiobook produced in the year 2018: He genders voices of interviewees! This results in two types of voices, one testosterone-laden for men and a tender timbre for women (which doesn't apply to quotations of female authors). Hard to imagine how anyone interested in the phenomenon of bullshit jobs would approve of that. But maybe I am misjudging the target audience.

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Gute Ideen, bezweifle konkrete Zahlen

Das Buch enthält einige gute Ansätze und wenn es Bullshit Jobs gibt dann sollte man sie streichen. Die insinuierte Anzahl und die Größe des Problems kann ich nicht nachvollziehen.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

Excellent academic treatise

The title contradicts the reader’s likely assumption that this is a light and frivolous piece of writing. Fusing ethnographic data (of those who had self diagnosed as being in bullshit employment), and academic, philosophical and economic theories, David Graeber produces an astonishing and well argued description of the phenomena of worthless or at best aimless employment. However, this is not a dry piece of academic research, but also a call to arms – as he suggests, “our world is conceived from human imagination, we could just as easily imagine it differently“.
Anyone who enjoys a well argued and presented set of ideas will enjoy reading this piece of scholarship. Highly recommended.

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Loved it

Would have preferred if the narrator didn’t try to emulate feeble voices for quotes by female contributors to surveys.

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Too pessimistic

Main point that the story is missing is - regardless of the bulshitisation of jobs, we as humans, have the highest life quality in our history. Book can describe more about how bulshitisation actually benefits our society. Too pessimistic

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A great entry point to anti-capitalist ideas

A must read for anyone fed up with the ratrace. One of the most frustrating books I've ever read (well, listened to), due to its subject matter, but absolutely worth every minute.

An entry point to anti-capitalist thought that is probably much easier to sell to your friends on the fence than Marx ever will be.

I had some small issues with some viewpoints of the author, but overall it's an amazing book that I can only recommend.

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Nice ideas but questionable author

I actually enjoyed reading the book. It gave me a great new way of looking at jobs. But I think one has to be cautious with the author. Between the lines one can distinguish the author being in love with victim-culture and man-hating feminist ideas which one may or may not agree.
Obviously the author seems to live in a fairy tale world in which milk and honey flow and he genuinely wonders why any one person living in such a world would ever let themselves down to do anything they do not enjoy. My guess is that this is due to the typical ivory tower thinking of university where people are paid high salaries working their hobbies and entertaining the next generation with their fanciful ideas under the pretence of educating them. It might be fun to study and teach anthropology but I would argue that one greatly increases their risk of finding themselves in a bullshit job after graduation if they have not spend their time in university actually learning something which they can use to provide value to the world (and this won't be anthropology).

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Absolutely worth listening to. Twice.

Insight on things I always suspected. Offers a perspective on one‘s own suffering in the world of business and capitalism. Particularly scary was the quoting of the social value produced vs earnings of different jobs.
Very happy to have listened to this.
Before, I was on the sceptical pro side of universal income. The book delivers strong arguments why it is a good idea!
Heartfelt thanks to the author.

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Trifft den Nerv der Zeit unerwartet gut

Als jemand der selbst den einen oder anderen Bullshit-Job hatte, konnte ich mich mit dem Thema durchaus identifizieren. Der etwas philosophische Teil am Ende mit der Argumentation für ein universelles Grundeinkommen war etwas unausgereift und hätte besser mit dem Rest des Buches harmonisiert gehört. Aber alles in Allem, sehr unterhaltsam.

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A refreshing study of why we even bother to work

Every bit of the facts rundown in this book is, unfortunately, true. The book is a great read. What I'm not sure about is the idea that the universal basic income would make the world a substantially better place. If we didn’t have to work at all, the 80% of idiots would make the 20% of progress-loving people unbearable. It is to be feared that, once the Basic Universal Income sets in, the percentage of idiocy would surge to 99%, and I only say 99% instead of 100% because I am a notorious optimist. Nonetheless, I recommend everyone to read it and to have a hopefully meaningful discussion.

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5 Leute fanden das hilfreich