For those that don't know, this is the same David Graeber [1] who wrote "Debt: The first 5000 years" [2].
"Debt" is a pretty great book, and I recommend others read it. At least, I found it illuminating to the popular concept of debt, the historical idea, and its ramifications.
I thought it was a great and edifying book, but towards the end he did the same thing as in this article. He went off preaching half baked ideas about morality like a hippy.
His list of bullshit jobs here is so slippery it undermines his basic point. If private equity and all the corporate lawyers vanished there would be serious ramifications. Nothing capital intensive would get done, unless you instituted fiat capital allocation, but we know that doesn't work. And what's not bullshit about modern doctoring and nursing? 90% of the time they're treating lifestyle ailments for which the treatments don't actually do very much. What's not bullshit about being a teacher of tenth graders who can barely read?
I would like to see the categorization of capital-intensive projects, because I wonder if most (not all, but most) of the value of such intensive uses of capital today are related more to financialization than actual leveraging of the sum total knowledge and effort of the species towards a more comfortable future. From my limited vantage point, I think what is happening is not just an alteration of time preferences (time horizon) for capital-intensive projects, but an aversion that leads to an alteration of the "risk horizon" as well.
Where is our generation's Hoover Dam? Or Manhattan Project? Or reaching further back in time, where is our Age of Exploration if you are into more private venture-backed efforts? For every LHC or Tesla, we have dozens of regional wars, hundreds of make-work programs, thousands of financial engineering projects at various Global Fortune 1000 syndicates, and millions of highly-leveraged real estate speculative ventures around the world. Our state-of-art in residential shelter have major subsystems that are still largely recognizable to someone from a century and a half ago; where is the work on cheap aerogel SIPs, more self-maintaining homes, lower energy footprint communities? Why are we generating a giant pile of waste BTUs from air conditioners and not recapturing that back into our water heaters? There appears to be a large disconnect between what we as a civilization know and what we deploy (my personal theory is this has something to do with available energy).
It is not clear to me that all those PE and corporate attorneys are actually allocating capital in the furtherance of general comfort for all, but rather instead they appear to be mini-max'ing for their interests at the relative expense of slowing our current state of advancement. Adam Smith had some warnings about a dominant capital-holding class overriding the "invisible hand" (which my first time through TWoN decades ago I didn't appreciate, and I still have my doubts), and I wonder if he wasn't on to something.
Is it really so difficult to allocate capital that just about every city needs skyscrapers full of finance people? I'm asking that as a completely legitimate question - I really have no idea of how much work is required to give my small business a line of credit.
For most of history there were not big companies allocating capital, and for most of history it was nearly impossible for most people to obtain capital to start or grow their own business.
Put another way--the modern financial system was created for a reason. The author supposes that it was a big conspiracy theory to give us all shitty jobs, but in counter I would point out that it has likely never been easier for people to start or grow businesses than it is today.
Well, that's not necessarily true (at least, in my case). I can't walk down to the local bank and be approved for a small amount of capital without providing equal collateral. Even with a strong business plan. I have to show quite a bit of history of revenue and cash flow for a minimal credit line.
On the other hand, it's relatively easy for me to ask a bunch of my friends to each lend me $10,000. And, that is more because of the cumulative result of decades and decades of productivity increases in addition to a society that values electronics and computers and the internet. Those factors give these software engineer friends the extra discretionary money to lend to me. It's not because of the magic of the financial system.
The author is saying that there's a huge excess of capital and productivity that could theoretically 'pay' for other types of work. But, instead, we as a society, decide to funnel most of our excess to people who push around accounts ledgers, ruminate on legal logic, generate sales ads, and do other sorts of 'educated' busy work.
One reason the modern financial system is so huge and complex is that so many of its features have been extended to individuals.
I, a rather average middle-aged dude, maintain 4 bank accounts, 6 lines of credit, 4 investment accounts, and 4 lines of insurance [1]. Think of the complexity involved in providing those services to me--now multiply by tens of millions of other people. This does not even get into the financial instruments of businesses and governments, which are far more complex.
The end result of all this complexity is that individuals like your friends can accumulate and access large sums of money to lend to you to start a business. Most new business financing does not come from banks, it comes from individuals, families, or alternate financial businesses like angel funds, venture capital, hedge funds, etc.
It's not that hard to imagine what will be like if there's no financial institution and corporate lawyers. The first is that the dollar you own will not be real money -- we have to go back to gold standard (even this requires certain level of financial institution to support). Also, say good by to bond and stock, or mortgage or student loan. or cheap airline tickets.
I always find it like magic that you can just give somebody some money and then receive some bits of information that claims you own X% of certain company, without the need to actually know anything about said company(although it's not recommended to do so). Just think about if you have to design a system that can align other people's interest so they work for you WITHOUT you actively managing anything. How can it be possible?
"Debt" is a pretty great book, and I recommend others read it. At least, I found it illuminating to the popular concept of debt, the historical idea, and its ramifications.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years