The Goon
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 AI Story
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 zero, and which exist only because of the prisoner's-dilemma logic of competitive antagonism. AI does not solve this dilemma. It supplies more powerful weapons to all combatants.
Graeber's analysis of goons connects to broader political-economic critiques. Industries like advertising, derivatives trading, and certain forms of corporate litigation may produce private value (for the firms employing the goons) while producing negative social value (for the broader population whose attention is captured, whose markets are destabilized, whose disputes are extended). The persistence of these industries despite their negative externalities reflects the political power of those who profit from them.
The AI test for goon work is uncomfortable. The technology that could eliminate goon positions — by making the underlying activities pointless — is instead being deployed to amplify them. AI-generated lobbying materials, AI-personalized telemarketing, AI-drafted contractual obstruction. The arms race accelerates because no party can unilaterally disarm without competitive disadvantage.
Origin
Graeber developed the goon category to capture jobs that workers could justify only in negative terms — 'I do this because if I didn't, the other side would have an advantage.' The reasoning is internally coherent at the firm level and absurd at the social level. Coordinated disarmament would benefit everyone, but no individual firm can initiate it.
Key Ideas
Mutual self-justification. Goon work is rational only as response to other goons; eliminate one side and the other becomes pointless.
Negative social value. Many goon industries actively harm the broader public while producing private returns for their employers.
AI as accelerator. The technology supplies all combatants with better weapons, intensifying rather than resolving the arms race.
Coordination failure. Eliminating goon work requires collective action that competitive markets cannot generate.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, Chapter 2
- Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants (Knopf, 2016)
- Roger McNamee, Zucked (Penguin Press, 2019)