Japan has so many of these depressingly useless jobs - drive past any quiet street construction site at night and you'll see 3-5 people whose sole job it is to wave a light stick. The job isn't needed at all, the guy who does it makes peanuts, but that's what drives up labor force participation.

Not exactly true. You'll see a weird mechanical contraption shaped like a person waving the stick.

After living in a number of countries where construction works usually involve two or three people making loud mess for days I'm astonished how things work in Japan: a team of people shows up quietly, does the job efficiently and then disappears. You won't even notice them. There's a big-ish construction (they have heavy machines and dug up a big hole in the ground) going on nearby and I never heard any noise. And they're going with it really fast.

Even in Tokyo you see a lot of humans doing that, not only robots.

These jobs are everywhere.

* vertical parking where a guy is there just to wave a flag and press a button

* private parking where another guy just tells cars exiting when to stop

* people handing out fliers and shouting advertisements

It's very clear for an outside observer that these are just filler jobs...

I saw both, men and machines waving glowing sticks. There is also usually a guy who makes sure that no pedestrians are endangered by construction driveways.

I'm not sure whether I'd call these jobs "useless" though. Sure, putting up warning signs would probably produce a similar safety level with lower costs, but somehow I feel better cared for if a human does the job.

Often construction entrances need a banksman to help delivery lorries reverse out safely & manage the traffice on the road to make space. That’s not something you can really automate at the moment & in the grand scheme of things not running over unfortunate pedestrians / reversing into things on the road is probably a net economic benefit :)

(Which is not to say that a lot of these jobs decribed up-thread aren’t make-work, but this particular one probably isn’t.)

Hooking up a motion sensor to a light bar or some flashing lights and noise makers also works. And is airly common around blind exits in city's.

Alternatively you can send one person out to do that as nessisarily.

I guess it depends on the prefecture and the type of construction site - the guys I've seen were always humans, no machine can copy that bored face...

There are a lot of safety personnel in larger London construction sites as well. I've seen men basically acting as barriers while their mate does work above a footpath.

Also there are always people directing traffic in and out of a site, washing down every truck that leaves so there is no mud on the road, etc.

I would assume it is more a case of construction in a large city is more difficult logistically as there are stricter standards for noise, mess and pollution.

It was always my assumption that these type of jobs were on a rota. It would be pretty bad to make someone work the "human barrier/traffic light" job 52 weeks a year.

The people I mentioned above work at night, when the construction site is completely inactive. They're just living lights.

(Edit: I replied to the wrong poster or some similar mistake.) Disregard

How can you argue against the author's immeasureable words/phrases like "very high", "low", "laziness", or "idleness", especially considering that you are relying on anecdotal evidence yourself?

I have seen a bunch of tall trees Georgia, but my friend from California says they are small; which of us is correct?

Who cares when the answer yields no useful, quantifiable information...

> How can you argue against the author's immeasureable words/phrases like "very high", "low", "laziness", or "idleness"

That's not what's happening at all. Taneq is saying nothing about the relative nature of those words. They are arguing that the author is making an inference in the wrong direction.

> especially considering that you are relying on anecdotal evidence yourself

Talking about cultural roles is the opposite of an anecdote.

Yeah, I agree. I think I made a mistake.

I edited my post. I am not sure what my original post was referring to... embarassing. :)