The anthropologist David Graeber in his 2018 book "Bullshit Jobs" estimated that over half of all work performed in the west is pointless. Is the answer to the ageing population just to re-prioritize labour?

Graeber's estimate of half of all labour might not be totally accurate, but it's hard to deny that there's not at least SOME pointless bullshit jobs. I often speak to people in the public and private sectors who think that nobody would really notice if they didn't do any work, or even that the world would be a better place without them. Though bullshit jobs exist in basically all industries, there are even entire bullshit industries, like recruitment (constantly calling up workers to ask them to move company) and corporate law, both of which do not really need to exist.

With all this talk of population crisis and not enough workers, maybe the real solution instead of prolonging the pyramid scheme is just to figure out which jobs we actually need and and which kind of labour adds no value to society?