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More than twenty percent of working people in the West feel that what they do has no meaning at all. Yet they work themselves to death and together earn billions. Why don't we just stop doing these bullshit jobs? It's even worse: there are even people who are certain that their work contributes nothing. Sometimes their work goes against all their principles. It is work that, if it were not done, no one would miss. The world would even be a better place if it were just left undone. The phenomenon of the 'bullshit job' was put on the map by the American anthropologist David Graeber. The picture he paints explains a lot of contemporary phenomena that economists, sociologists and political scientists previously did not know what to do with. The ever-expanding bureaucracy in companies, for example, where nothing and no one becomes more effective or productive. According to Graeber, today's management culture is a new feudal system, in which top managers build their little kingdoms under the banner of efficiency. The building blocks are useless departments where people get lost. But there are (former) employees who are getting it. In government, in the business world, and at multinationals, they are breaking the bullshit taboo. Their work, they say, is completely absurd. They paint a disconcerting picture of an open-plan office in which the employee's most important task is to play along in the bullshit puppet show. How long will we continue to believe in paid work as the highest attainable goal? This is a summary of the episode 'Mijn Bullshitbaan' (2019). More future stories? Follow us here: Website: https://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/ Instagram: / vpro_tegenlicht Facebook: / vprotegenlicht Twitter: / vprotegenlicht Meet-ups: https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenl... Viewing guide: All ages, coarse language