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…not only is the social value of work usually in inverse proportion to its economic value (the more one’s work benefits others, the less one is likely to be paid for it), but many people have come to accept this situation as morally right…

When someone describes his job as pointless or worthless, he is necessarily operating within some sort of tacit theory of value: an idea of what would be a worthwhile occupation, and therefore what is not.

…the very existence of bullshit jobs raises certain problems for any labor theory of value.

…saying all value comes from work is obviously not the same thing as saying that all work produces value.

…value itself is a constant political argument. No one is ever quite sure what it is.

Just as commodities have economic ‘value’ because the can be compared precisely with other commodities, ‘values’ are valuable because they cannot be compared with anything. They are each considered unique, incommensurable – in a word, priceless.

…the belief that what ultimately motivates human beings has always been… the pursuit of wealth, power, comforts and pleasure, has always and must always be complemented by a doctrine of work as self-sacrifice, as valuable precisely because it is the place of misery, sadism, emptiness, and despair.

So the more automation proceeds, the more it should be obvious that actual value emerges from the caring element of work.

Feedback is vital not because it tells us about our own value but because it tells us whether we are reaching the people we need to reach.

The value we bring doesn’t just come from the information we’ve mastered. It also comes from who we are.