since that's basically what they are. Oh, and people who write mission statements. All cheerleaders.
The premise of the bullshit job is that it's there to make the guys at the top feel powerful. It's why cost cutting is done on the backs of the people who actually create the products and services, and never on the bullshitters. The bullshitters are the new courtiers, the ladies in waiting, the clean and coiffed useless people who make the kings feel better about the accident of birth that put them where they are. The peasants are a grubby lot, hard work meaning there's not a good manicure among them, so they're expendable.
Then when they complain that their miserly dole is running out, you blame them for having the wrong education, as if the right education without the right parentage would ever qualify them for a bullshit job.
It's quite a racket.
Graeber hit a nerve when he came out with that book because people doing bullshit jobs know they're doing bullshit jobs and most of them are miserable, they would much prefer to do something useful but doing something useful doesn't pay.
It's why his UBI solution is really the appropriate one. People who are miserable in bullshit jobs could afford to quit them earlier, making way for fresh faced young things who might buy into the corporate glam for a few years, until they realize it's bullshit. Freed bullshitters would get bored and start making pottery or custom shoes or gourmet street food and that would improve everybody's lives. Staying in the bullshit jobs until the corporate expiration date of 55 serves no one. The time for the UBI is now.
ETA: I should fess up here, I had the parentage and upbringing that qualified me for bullshit jobs and I tried one or two when I got desperate, but I could never stomach them, so I ended up being a nurse. My parents thought it was a comedown in life, but they had to admit it came in very handy during their final years.
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