Ridiculous Work

Why do more and more people believe they are engaged in meaningless work? In the spring of 2013, anthropologist David Graeber (1961–2020) posed this question in a provocative essay titled "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs." It went viral. Since then, people around the world continue to discuss the answer to this question.
Graeber wrote a book exploring one of the most frustrating and profound moral problems of modern society — the transformation of labor into tedious, boring, and unnecessary nonsense. How many people feel that their work provides no benefit? Why do employers think they can pay less for socially useful professions and more for useless work? Why, as a result of technological progress, do we work no less, but more? Where is there more useless work — in the public or private sector? And how can we stop the bullshitting of the economy?
Graeber shows what the historical, social, and political reasons are for the spread of bullshit jobs. Drifting from feudalism to managerial culture, from the origins of bureaucracy to the development of the quaternary sector, from Thomas Carlyle to John Maynard Keynes and André Gorz, Graeber's research demonstrates how our attitude toward work has developed and how it can be changed. This book is for anyone who wants to believe that work should have meaning.