I agreed heartily with most of this book but it was oh. so. repetitive. Many (most?) people work “bullshit” jobs that could be automated, streamlined, or eliminated altogether; however, because they need the paycheck (or because middle managers need a certain minimum number of people underneath them), they find themselves trying desperately to look busy or otherwise justify their positions while despairing over the fact that what they do makes no meaningful contribution to the world. Meanwhile, people who work real, needed jobs (teachers, sanitation workers, caretakers) are deliberately undervalued and looked down upon despite fulfilling arguably more necessary and beneficial roles in society. This book would have been stronger without many of the first-person accounts that crowd the pages; any one would have been enough to illustrate Graeber’s point but he always includes multiple sources, and the accumulation of complaints from people trapped in dead-end jobs weighs upon you as you read. The book is a takedown of capitalism, which is supposed to produce hyper-efficiency but instead rewards bureaucracy (the more intricate your system, the more you can pass money around); it also lays bare the hypocrisy of pretending that if you aren’t working hard and long, you shouldn’t be paid, which forces workers into 40-hour work weeks doing work that could take them one tenth the time. The last chapter proposes a universal basic income, which after reading about all the nonsensical things people get paid for (and all the really vital work for which people don’t get paid), honestly seems like the only logical and fair way forward.