Research on socially useful or useless job (like Dur/van Lent recently or Graeber bullshit jobs) use self-reported measures (workers’ response to the statement "My job is useful to society"). I´m searching for research projects that try to find a more objective measure or ranking (e.g. 80,000 hours - potential for direct contribution).
For clarification, are you asking for a way to measure whether a job really is socially useful or useless, Heiko Weckmueller?
I'm not familiar with any specific theories, but the first goal would be to think of some kind of definition for "socially useful" and ensure that it's objective. Then we can see if there are any ways to measure that usefulness. The approach might be to say that a job, or I should say profession, is useful if it significantly contributes to GDP. But even measuring this impact is very difficult.
In the field of "technoecology" that I've been trying to develop, I focus largely on energetics. Basically, a society (anthroposystem) draws in energy from the outside environment, with a certain efficiency. This idea is summarized through EROI (energy returned on energy invested). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
Using this approach, we could say that a profession is useful if its removal would reduce EROI. With this notion in mind, I would suggest looking into industrial ecology.
I'm not sure how one would measure whether or not a job is really socially useful or useless, if I understand the question right. Usefulness is a cultural and individual construct--it's idiosyncratic, so it would be very hard, likely impossible, to come up with an objective measure of this. The question of usefulness is always going to be one of "useful from whose perspective?" I think my job as a professor is useful to society; there are plenty of people in the US who think college professors are a detriment to society. Who is right and how would you "objectively" answer that question?
J. W. Traphagan, wouldn't the impact on growth and stability on the anthropsystem, which is closely related to EROI, be such a measure? I would argue that if your industry of "professing" disappeared, EROI would drop considerably. If the shoe repair industry disappeared, I doubt EROI would change much.
Why is growth an inherent good? That is a cultural position not an objective fact.
Without economic growth, especially when there's population growth, you have a Malthusian problem. Basically, when you're at carrying capacity, you have suffering. Improvements to EROI increases carrying capacity.
That assumes that population growth is inevitable. It's not. The idea that everything should always be growing is cultural, not natural. It is certainly possible to arrange human society in different ways from what we happen to have now. So one might be able to come up with a measure of usefulness within a particular context. However, that's even a problem. If one views freedom of ideas as a negative, then having professing disappear would be a good thing from that perspective. And "professing" isn't really a job--it's a collection of different jobs. Engineering professors don't do the same thing that anthropology professors do, or theology professors, or philosophy professors, etc. I don't view theology as having any benefit to society, but you might see theology as being quite useful. So which is the "objective" perspective on theology professors?
Thank you J. W. Traphagan and Daniel Goldman for helpful comments.
> That assumes that population growth is inevitable. It's not. The idea that everything should always be growing is cultural, not natural.
Actually, J. W. Traphagan, that's what does happen. When we have zero population growth, bad things generally happen. You end up with a great deal of suffering. Take a look at Japan. I mention that in one of my pop-sci type articles. https://medium.com/@dgoldman0/will-global-population-start-to-shrink-5308c77cf52e
Moreover, it's inherent in the entropic aspect of evolution: Preprint The Progression of Life: Before, Now, and In the Future; Her...
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