CONCEPT
The Goon
Workers whose existence is justified only because competitors employ them — lobbyists, certain corporate lawyers, telemarketers — locked in arms races whose simultaneous disarmament would cost society nothing.
Goons perform aggressive work whose social value is negative or zero — work that exists because the other side has it. Graeber distinguished goons from flunkeys by their externally directed activity: they actually do things, often vigorously. What makes the work bullshit is that all parties would be better off if no one did it. The corporate lobbyist whose work is countered by the opposing corporate lobbyist; the telemarketer whose calls are blocked by the call-blocking app; the contract lawyer drafting clauses the other side's contract lawyer will negotiate away. AI accelerates rather than resolves these arms races. The lobbyist using AI generates more sophisticated material at greater speed, requiring more sophisticated counter-material from the opposing lobbyist. Both sides hire more goons to operate the AI. The race intensifies. The waste compounds.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The goon category illuminates a structural feature of competitive markets that mainstream economics rarely acknowledges: that significant productive capacity is consumed by activities whose social value is precisely