I think this idea of the bullshit jobs, and the implicit removal of them, has corollaries with what was posted here recently: "How to get business ideas - remove steps" [1]
The trouble is, as was pointed out in the article, is that removing steps means removing a person from their source of income and in a lot of cases also their identity and social network. So how do you remove bullshit jobs without causing a massive collective existential threat?
It's definitely an interesting topic. One of the reasons Toyota had a deep tradition of avoiding layoffs was so that people would feel safer helping remove waste from the system.
One way to look at it: idle people with decaying skills and self esteem are just another kind of waste. So if your first step is to eliminate some particular sort of bullshit work, the second step could be to find some non-bullshit way to employ the people who no longer are doing anything.
Thinking broadly, that shouldn't be hard. After all, we could afford to pay people to do bullshit, so we'll be even better off if we pay those people to do something productive. But the current way we account for things often makes it tricky in specific cases.
The trouble is, as was pointed out in the article, is that removing steps means removing a person from their source of income and in a lot of cases also their identity and social network. So how do you remove bullshit jobs without causing a massive collective existential threat?
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826338