• Real estate agents are a scourge on humanity, and conveniently one that can be scrubbed from it with the latest technology or, failing that, a good Excel spreadsheet.
• As AI and robotics threaten to eliminate all of our jobs, I propose we at least start with the bottom of the barrel.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

If ever there was a profession to be automated out of existence, surely there are no arguments over which it should be.

Real estate agents, those merchants of debt, rank as the among the most despised and untrustworthy of all occupations.

It’s not that all real estate agents are terrible. I’m sure some are just plain incompetent.

But in Australia, a country that fetishes property like no other, it is also a role that holds an inordinate amount of power over where, how and in what condition we all live.

Yet few of us, from second-class renters to haughty homeowners, have many kind words for our local cheap suit. Whether you have black mould spreading above your bed, or are trying to kick and claw your way onto the real estate ladder, Australia’s property sector is a jungle filled with a particularly venomous breed of snakes.

Which is baffling considering what selling or renting out a property in Australia actually entails. Imagine the job for a moment, which is akin to pamphleting the local farmer’s market in the morning and then taking the afternoon off.

Step one, notify people there’s a home to live in and then… well, watch as a thousand people offer up vast fortunes for the honour to buy or rent it.

Hardly rocket science. Until you start diversifying your services. Tricks like underquoting by six-figure sums, or deceiving and even intimidating clients — stories familiar to anyone who has anything to do with the industry.

Yet, while the majority of the country has to beg for a pay rise, these glorified Gumtree ads pat themselves on the back as their commissions grow fatter with each weekend.

The fact is, property sells itself in pretty much any corner of this country. Never has that been more apparent than right now, when people will quite literally pay you $1 million more than what you’re asking for, sometimes before they’ve even seen the damn thing.

Hell, the fact that Facebook Marketplace hasn’t obliterated agents already is beyond me, and an indictment on the myth of efficient markets.

So while they delude themselves that they’re shooting the lights out year after year, I say we hurry up the Californian tech nerds to bring in the robots and take their jobs.

But it wouldn’t be fair to stop there.

Given the merits of AI, or at least those promised by tech evangelists, there are certainly plenty of jobs that run the risk of fading into history.

While you might not handover your kids or your heart surgery to Optimus Prime or R2D2 instead of a qualified teacher or nurse, most occupations aren’t as sacred.

There are so many bad drivers on the roads, for example, that self-driving cars have been universally accepted as if they could only be be an improvement. If it means long-haul truckers don’t have to ingest large quantities of methamphetamines just to do their job, so be it.

Heck, even journalists are about five years from being scarified on the tech altar as programs begin to churn out articles. Some might say good riddance. I won’t argue.

But as I’m snuffed out in this professional survival of the fittest, I’m dragging a few other jobs into the abyss with me.

Parking inspectors, telemarketers, self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’. All gone.
Anyone in public relations or middle management. No exceptions.
Bureaucrats and lobbyists and consultants. Sack the lot of them.
We don’t even have to replace any of them. If these particular jobs disappeared tomorrow, you’d find the sun still rises.

It’s hardly a select few either. The late, great thinker David Graeber had plenty of brilliant ideas, but none more of this time than his article, turned years-long thesis, turned book, ‘Bullshit Jobs’.

He found that most people admit, quietly or otherwise, their job could be eliminated without it having any impact whatsoever on the business they’re in or the society of which they form a part. Extraordinary stuff.

This, in a capitalist system where our inherent value is based on the value we create, where apparently the vast majority of us aren’t worth a damn thing. Go figure.

So what are we creating? A bunch of false justifications for jobs that frankly shouldn’t exist, Graeber explains — hence the ‘bullshit’ element of it all.

In the midst of all of that, the middle men, the go-betweens, the messengers and the proxies are surely the most unnecessary of the outright dispensable. Yet even in this elite group, it is the poxy real estate agents who reign supreme.

Graber sums it up pretty well in an interview he did with Vox three years ago:

“We’ve created a whole class of flunkies that essentially exist to improve the lives of actual rich people. Rich people throw money at people who are paid to sit around, add to their glory, and learn to see the world from [their] perspective.”

Graeber was talking about whoever sits at the top of the hill. In America that might be the executive class, but here, in Australia, it is definitively those who own property.

Residential property is after all the centre of power in Australia, responsible for the majority of household wealth and, valued at $8.1 trillion, worth four times the entire Australian economy.

In our own vulgar example, our flunkies are our politicians, our property managers, and yes, especially our real estate agents — an entire class of people that exist largely to improve the lives of real estate investors.

The sooner we make an app to replace them all, truly the better off we will all be.

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