David Graeber talks about this in his book Bullshit Jobs, which has been discussed here previously. He makes the distinction that a bullshit job is one where both the employer and the employed must both pretend that the job is useful even though both of them know that it is not.

Under this definition, a lot of dirty or otherwise maligned jobs are still essential to society (including stall cleaning, depending on your perspective of how essential having horses is) and are thus not bullshit jobs, but a lot of others (rubber stampers, make workers, flunkies) are bullshit jobs.

I think a better framework to think about this is 'Bullshit Businesses', not bullshit jobs. A lot of companies only exist to make the owners/investors rich, provide little to no value to the world, and/or rely on dirt cheap labor for the economics to work. Think spammy call centers, Walmart, amazon warehouses, etc...

If people were not in desperate need of a paycheck and were able to negotiate/hold out for better jobs, or spend more time on career training, then a lot of the business would not exist, or would be forced to treat their employees better.

I don’t think I’ve said all jobs will be rockstar you’re the boss type of jobs, but there are certainly a huge amount of inefficiencies in lots of business. I think asking people if they feel like their work is needed or could be automated away is probably the only gauge one might have until actually removing them or trying to automate it. I agree it’s not a perfect metric but it’s got to be correct within some boundary, right? I think that’s the bigger question here, as well if people are qualified to judge (which I would hope since it’s their job). I actually think we need more “horseshit jobs” (great phrase and pun btw I’m going to steal this) in America where in the last 20 years we’ve pushed a lot of them to China and others, such as recycling.

I think the problem with asking people this question is that most don’t understand automation, almost all are biased toward themselves, and employees frequently think their job is stupid given their imperfect information.

I remember years ago I was talking with a friend of a friend who worked for a small 3-4 person software company. In the same conversation ve said ver job was bullshit because the software was written years ago by the two owners, who did nothing now, leaving all customer service to the friend of friend. So the argument was that ve should be paid more since ve creates all the value. So the argument was that the owners had bullshit jobs. There was a counter argument that small bugs had to be fixed, not by owners, but by the friend of friend who thought vis job was bullshit because the owner should fix it since the owner knows the software well.

I think it’s hard to get a straight answer because of this limited perspective as well as the natural falseness in responses to “is your job bullshit and we’ll pay you UBI so you can do something cool?” Or “is your job bullshit and we’ll fire you?”

You mean there are tasks that need to be done, not jobs.

In the case of horse shit, for sure it is better if someone cleans it, but that someone can also be the person that trains or rides the horse.

There isn't an intrinsic need for a job that performs only that task.

I agree, but think it’s not a very important distinction. Certainly the owner could muck the stall and perform that job. But most owners of horses don’t like to do that and pay someone.

So I think a job is just a task that involves payment. It doesn’t change the argument. Someone has to do the task. If you give the horse owner UBI to free up more time, it’s unlikely to be spent shoveling horse manure.