I think many people have some intuition that work can be separated between “real work“ (farming, say, or building trains) and “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, salespeople, lawyers, bureaucrats, DEI strategists). “Bullshit jobs” by David Graeber is a more intellectualized framing of the same intuition. Many people believe that middlemen are entirely useless, and we can get rid of (almost) all middleman jobs, RETVRN to people doing real work, and society would be much better off.

Like many populist intuitions, this intuition is completely backwards. Middlemen are extremely important! Coordination problems are real problems, and the bottlenecks to global wealth and flourishing.

The post goes into details for why.

Boy did this set off my pendant side!

> “middlemen” (e.g. accounting, salespeople, lawyers, bureaucrats, DEI strategists).

I wouldn't call any of those positions "middlemen", though. A middleman is an entity that sits between a producer and a purchaser and takes a cut, usually by connecting the two. None of the examples listed are that.