Bullshit Jobs and Parkinson's Law

In 1930, as the Great Depression settled in to stay, John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay called “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”. He predicted that by 2030 the technical problems of production would be solved, and that the standard of living in wealthy countries would have risen so dramatically that people would work no more than fifteen hours per week. Humanity’s ancient struggle with scarcity would be essentially over; the challenge would be figuring out what to do with all the leisure. Keynes’ reasoning was straightforward. Productive capacity had been growing for 150 years, and if it continued growing at a similar rate, there would soon be more than enough to go around with minimal effort. He turned out to be right about production and wrong about work: we produce vastly more per person than in 1930, but work roughly as many hours. The question is, “Why?” The answer is that productivity gains were not distributed as leisure; they were captured as profit. The share of…