The “useles eaters” analogy only comes into play if you plan on reducing society to the bare minimum: farmers, manufacturers, cops, what-have-you.
Exactly that "bare minimum" farmers, cops or whatever are constantly reduced in modern societies. From the other side, the number of bureaucrats, paper movers, financial advisers, influencers, IT and other useless crap grow.
There is nothing complex in any real work at all. "I'm calculating plane wings", "I'm building space rockets", "I'm making plastic from oil", even "I'm writing software to calculate plane wings" and so on will be perfectly understandable for any person. Real things have a real application, so it is easy to explain what you are doing if you could anchor in final result. Useless job needs a lot of "professional" words because there are even no real application of the result. So, useless employee have to not only describe his job with the strange words, but also think out some lie about why people need that crap he doing. There is nowhere to anchor in explanations, so they are either weird, or endless, looped like uroboros explanations.
Of course, computer programming, system administration and computer science isn't useless. That thing named IT nowdays is mostly useless. The result you could easily see literally right now. Take a look how much memory and CPU/GPU your browser eating just to show page you are reading now with simple text and some images.
Do you understand that nowdays meaning of "IT" is very far from what IT was a decade ago?
Typical conversation:
Are you IT specialist?
Hell, no way! I'm programmer, I know how hardware works.
"IT" today is modern hipster languages, bloatware frameworks, something they name "platforms", CD/CI (in Russian it named "bang-bang and into production"), rewriting for the sake of rewriting, upgrading for the sake of upgrading, and all that crap.
Result you see right now as your GB/GHz eating browser with a single long page with few distant pictures and some
curtailed text with megabytes of JS frameworks on the top.
Yeah, very confused. Programmers do less hardware than IT guys.
in Russian it named "bang-bang and into production"
Maybe that's what it is in Russia and that's why it sounds so weird to me. Here IT is all networking. There isn't necessarily any coding at all and it's separate from web design. What I call an IT guy didn't cause inefficient webpages
It’s really not as simple as that : modern farming techniques and automation made being a farmer mostly useless, as evidenced by higher crop yields and lower numbers of farmers. However it made farming equipment mechanics and engineers more useful; it made farming equipment sales managers more useful; it freed up labor to be allocated elsewhere (or in a free market sense, more incentive to do something other than farm made it profitable to do so).
But that is not what happening in reality. In reality farmers are obliged to buy seeds from "approved" sources, forced to pay for "vaccinations", forced by machinery manufacturers to vendor lock without having a right to repair and so on.
Mechanics are got rid because they can't repair vendor locked machinery, engineers can't apply their skills without tons of senseless regulations, even agronomists losing jobs, because there is nothing to manage on strictly controlled by government farm where some legislative papers dictate you what exactly you should sow and where and seeds manufacturers that force you to follow their guidelines to be allowed to buy seeds next year. You can't breed your own
varieties of plants anymore. Even fertilisers are strictly regulated. There is nothing to do for agronomist any more on a farm.
But at the same time, the army of law enforces and supervisors from government and corporate sector is growing with insane speed. Even lawyers are breeding in enormous amounts to help corporations to sue you for "unapproved" repair or keeping your own seeds.
Technology bring a lot to a farmers, and if we lived in some another world, things could be as you describe. But in our world, technology was hijacked by greedy elites obsessed with idea of total control over humanity. So, no, when farmer buy a new tractor, it is not a new regular service job for village mechanic, it is a village mechanic starvation, along with more money farmer have to spent on service and repairs, because new tractor could be repaired and serviced only on authorized corporation service station only with corporation spare parts and only as expensive modules. And farmer have to pay them full price for whole diesel high pressure fuel pump instead of a single valve piston or even just a small gasket.
complex, non-agrarian based societies are going to have complex jobs that require abstraction.
So, name such society and such job as an example. Society, obviously, must export tons of some very useful devices to other societies that will feed it in exchange, since it is a non-agrarian.
Unfortunately, all world governments and elites work very hard to eliminate useful jobs, not useless one, making harder and harder to produce something real and useful with tons of their stupid legislations, taxes, licensing and other crap, since the useless jobs does not create any value governments and elites have to feed from useful ones. Less useful jobs - less value could be milked by elites - more milking to keep the feeding - less people can afford useful jobs and so on.
So, I'm afraid you will find out exact opposite in reality - useless jobs growth with useful jobs declining.
We're building increasing layers of abstraction on top of physical production. In industry these positions wouldn't exist if they didn't increase efficiency somehow. However, as regulation increases, more and more work gets allocated to satisfy these arbitrary bureaucrats
Disagree with OPs reductionism.....life cannot be described by three words....sorry but don't simplify for the point of being angry...it's fucking annoying you know that right?
Are you not self aware or just purposefully annoying sometimes?
The solution is not to allow your anger to control you, but to find a way to no longer have the anger, this does not mean making others angry....that is a sign you aren't controlling the anger.
Self control is paramount. We can all be better at it.
Exactly that "bare minimum" farmers, cops or whatever are constantly reduced in modern societies. From the other side, the number of bureaucrats, paper movers, financial advisers, influencers, IT and other useless crap grow.
There is nothing complex in any real work at all. "I'm calculating plane wings", "I'm building space rockets", "I'm making plastic from oil", even "I'm writing software to calculate plane wings" and so on will be perfectly understandable for any person. Real things have a real application, so it is easy to explain what you are doing if you could anchor in final result. Useless job needs a lot of "professional" words because there are even no real application of the result. So, useless employee have to not only describe his job with the strange words, but also think out some lie about why people need that crap he doing. There is nowhere to anchor in explanations, so they are either weird, or endless, looped like uroboros explanations.
By that standard IT isn't useless
Of course, computer programming, system administration and computer science isn't useless. That thing named IT nowdays is mostly useless. The result you could easily see literally right now. Take a look how much memory and CPU/GPU your browser eating just to show page you are reading now with simple text and some images.
You're just confused about what IT is. System administration and anything having to with networking is IT
Do you understand that nowdays meaning of "IT" is very far from what IT was a decade ago?
Typical conversation:
"IT" today is modern hipster languages, bloatware frameworks, something they name "platforms", CD/CI (in Russian it named "bang-bang and into production"), rewriting for the sake of rewriting, upgrading for the sake of upgrading, and all that crap.
Result you see right now as your GB/GHz eating browser with a single long page with few distant pictures and some curtailed text with megabytes of JS frameworks on the top.
Yeah, very confused. Programmers do less hardware than IT guys.
Maybe that's what it is in Russia and that's why it sounds so weird to me. Here IT is all networking. There isn't necessarily any coding at all and it's separate from web design. What I call an IT guy didn't cause inefficient webpages
May be you mean "anykey guys" under IT? What IT guys do with hardware? Move it and connect with cables?
And did you noticed, that right now you stated exactly what I told earlier - programmers are not IT guys.
What do you mean under networking? Does writing networking code fall under your IT?
How coding and web design is not "Information Technology"?
Are coders different from programmers?
Excellent observation
But that is not what happening in reality. In reality farmers are obliged to buy seeds from "approved" sources, forced to pay for "vaccinations", forced by machinery manufacturers to vendor lock without having a right to repair and so on. Mechanics are got rid because they can't repair vendor locked machinery, engineers can't apply their skills without tons of senseless regulations, even agronomists losing jobs, because there is nothing to manage on strictly controlled by government farm where some legislative papers dictate you what exactly you should sow and where and seeds manufacturers that force you to follow their guidelines to be allowed to buy seeds next year. You can't breed your own varieties of plants anymore. Even fertilisers are strictly regulated. There is nothing to do for agronomist any more on a farm.
But at the same time, the army of law enforces and supervisors from government and corporate sector is growing with insane speed. Even lawyers are breeding in enormous amounts to help corporations to sue you for "unapproved" repair or keeping your own seeds.
Technology bring a lot to a farmers, and if we lived in some another world, things could be as you describe. But in our world, technology was hijacked by greedy elites obsessed with idea of total control over humanity. So, no, when farmer buy a new tractor, it is not a new regular service job for village mechanic, it is a village mechanic starvation, along with more money farmer have to spent on service and repairs, because new tractor could be repaired and serviced only on authorized corporation service station only with corporation spare parts and only as expensive modules. And farmer have to pay them full price for whole diesel high pressure fuel pump instead of a single valve piston or even just a small gasket.
So, name such society and such job as an example. Society, obviously, must export tons of some very useful devices to other societies that will feed it in exchange, since it is a non-agrarian.
Do you understand, that it is the same jobs? :) Useful only to sell as much unneded crap as possible to the customer.
So you can't explain your job
Unfortunately, all world governments and elites work very hard to eliminate useful jobs, not useless one, making harder and harder to produce something real and useful with tons of their stupid legislations, taxes, licensing and other crap, since the useless jobs does not create any value governments and elites have to feed from useful ones. Less useful jobs - less value could be milked by elites - more milking to keep the feeding - less people can afford useful jobs and so on.
So, I'm afraid you will find out exact opposite in reality - useless jobs growth with useful jobs declining.
Bingo. If you fired every Fortune 500 employee with a social security number ending in an even number, these companies would not miss a beat.
We're building increasing layers of abstraction on top of physical production. In industry these positions wouldn't exist if they didn't increase efficiency somehow. However, as regulation increases, more and more work gets allocated to satisfy these arbitrary bureaucrats
Disagree with OPs reductionism.....life cannot be described by three words....sorry but don't simplify for the point of being angry...it's fucking annoying you know that right?
Are you not self aware or just purposefully annoying sometimes?
The solution is not to allow your anger to control you, but to find a way to no longer have the anger, this does not mean making others angry....that is a sign you aren't controlling the anger.
Self control is paramount. We can all be better at it.