I Want to Open a Little Shop

That Mitchell and Webb Sound is one of the finest sketch series put to radio. It is the only sketch series on radio that I know of. It is as absurd as Monty Python, but bitingly grounded in reality. My favourite recurring sketch has to be the Old Lady Job Justification Hearings:

When you are summoned to the hearing, you do exactly what the name suggests: justify your job to some nice old ladies. In the above sketch, a man who works in public relations (or PR) is called before the well-meaning, elderly panel. After a brief explanation and straightforward questioning, he fails to justify his job. It dawns on him how silly it sounds out loud. At the end, one of the old ladies suggests, why not open a little shop? instead. He is reluctant at first but soon receives the idea warmly. After all, a shop is ubiquitous, useful, and simple to understand. Unlike PR.

I want to open a little shop too.

I won’t just work in the little shop. I will own it. People will come in to my shop, and they will buy things. My little shop will have things people want. When it runs out of things, I will order more things in. I will charge slightly more to the people buying the things than I paid for them. This would compensate me for the trouble of getting the things together. People would love my little shop.

I would love my little shop too.

The PR man and I have something in common. If I were summoned to an Old Lady Job Justification Hearing, I might find myself wanting to open a little shop by the end. I am a software developer. This job is pretty useful, but I wonder if I could justify it to the old ladies. Had you asked me to open up a little shop 10 years ago, I would have scoffed at the idea. Now it seems like one of many things I would prefer to do with my time.

The late David Graeber studied and wrote about this phenomenon: Bullshit Jobs. The existence of bullshit jobs flies in the face of capital’s ideals. Capitalists, investors, and business owners expect the money they put into a venture to be used wisely. The end goal is a return, or profit.

The invisible hand of the market should shape economic activity (i.e. what people do) into valuable work. It is a sensible ideal. In reality, as a business evolves, it soon develops an appendix of box tickers, flunkies, and other bullshit jobs that eat away at capital. Clearly, the people in charge would not agree to waste their money this way. It happens anyway.

How do bullshit jobs come to be? For a start, the capitalists are not completely in charge of the businesses they own. As the books and staff rolls grow, so does the bureaucracy. The owners have to employ others to manage their capital. But the people employed are not perfect and have their own self-interest.

This is known as the principal-agent problem. The Wikipedia entry for the principal-agent problem is massive, and it is well studied. It could explain why business leaders create bullshit jobs even when it goes against the interests of capital.

To understand the principal-agent problem and bullshit jobs, look at one of the five types of bullshit jobs. You will see a type called the flunky. The flunky is there to make superiors feel important.

Executives or managers, agents in the principal-agent problem, want to hire people under them. Thus, they accumulate flunkies. Managing more people looks good on a CV and makes their salary more justifiable. Capital owners, principals, may not like money being wasted on flunkies. But the principals need agents to execute their goals. And in the execution, the bullshit jobs appear.

Let’s go back to my little shop. I am the owner. Is my job there bullshit? I would not imagine so, though I might sell bullshit or frivolous things. As the owner-operator, I would be ringing up orders, managing inventory, planning the business, and performing all other duties that the shop needs to function. As a little shop, most business responsibilities would fall on me. And I would know why I do them—who else will?

Two key ingredients of the principal-agent problem are conflicting incentives and information asymmetry. I won’t have conflicting incentives as the owner of the little shop—unless I conflict with myself, which can happen. Information asymmetry sounds more technical, but it means the agents, which the principal hired, have information the principal doesn’t. That is unlikely in the little shop. I will see what my employees see in the shop, day-to-day. I might be somewhat meddlesome with them. Small business owners tend to be. But being closer to what is happening is part of the little shop’s appeal.

Thus I want to open up a little shop. The proposal is appealing to people in bullshit jobs, or who perceive their job to have little meaning. It upsets me to think about the individuals out there who feel this way about work. Yet we cannot all open up little shops. The complex and highly networked economy of today has other demands of us. And the existence of the principal-agent problem makes it difficult to prevent bullshit jobs cropping up. Even if my job is meaningful, I can still feel alienated from my work. There are numerous other problems of capitalism, to discuss another time. One day I will be summoned to my own Old Lady Job Justification hearing. Whatever judgment they render upon me, I can only hope they invite me to have a biscuit.