this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's true. You can create infinite bullshit jobs just to keep the population busy. And some people are even stupid enough to fall for it, saying "some employment is better than no employment" because people fundamentally think that work is the most important principle in life and people only deserve to exist as long as they're working.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

People joke about being reduced to replaceable cogs in a machine, but at least cogs are necessary for the machine to function. A lot of corporate jobs are closer to blinkenlights.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't think it's some global conspiracy, rather a natural outcome of capitalism.

Under capitalism, the only way in which a person can earn a living is by performing a job. Thus people naturally associate having a job with prosperity, and push politicians to "create more jobs". The politicians then create incentives for private companies to hire more people, without actually aligning the labor output with the needs of society. This in turn makes it profitable for capitalists to "create jobs" which don't require much in terms of capital advanced (i.e. means of production), and thus don't produce much value, because the lower output value will be offset by various government incentives.

There's another reason for bullshit jobs under capitalism, namely that of financialization of everything; capitalism necessarily maximizes the rate of profit over everything else, which means that it will create work that produces no use value at all (or even "negative use value"), but increases the rate of profit, such as imperialist military and MIC, or many finance jobs out there, or advertising/adtech, or planned obsolescence engineering, etc.

yeah the planned obsolescence / "planned bullshit production" is a big problem.

it's described here btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

the act of creating something intentionally broken so it has to be re-produced and that stimulates the economic productivity, without actually improving the world.

[–] Johanno@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah every country should have such a good social security that not working is not the end of the world.

That way people wouldn't fight innovation which takes their jobs (AI however is a overhyped thing)

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

AI however is a overhyped thing

i tend to say that AI is an immature thing, i.e. it can turn into a great thing if it's properly developed, which today by far it is not.

things that would have to change, for example, would be using only training data where the license actually allows it. another example is reducing the extreme energy usage of AI systems. another example is better theoretical background understanding, like, under what conditions does AI output stable, reliable output? what mistakes does AI make, under what circumstances do they appear and how dramatic are they?