Base and Superstructure

Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology

Category: Corporate World (Page 11 of 13)

These are posts on the corporate world from the blog Base and Superstructure. The corporate world is complex. It’s confusing to anyone not involved. Corporate life has its own characteristic forms, language, jargon, and mannerisms. Neoliberalism structures our politics and thought, and so this is also a major focus of these posts. The non-profit corporate sector is its own distinct mini-world. And, in particular, spending significant time involved in corporate life engenders a special form of ennui. All of these subtopics feed off of one another. Each is critical to thinking about corporate life and its role in the United States.

automation value robot

The Value of Automation

May 18, 2020 /

Automation isn’t profitable for the companies building products and services on it. Uber claims it’ll be profitable by the end of 2020, but it’s not there yet. It lost $8.5 billion in 2019. Analysts remain skeptical. Lyft is wildly unprofitable, not even pretending it can make it by the end of this year. Grubhub and DoorDash lose money, especially on the food delivery component of their business. And investors and the tech press are putting the pressure on. WeWork – a coworking startup – might be one of the most unprofitable companies in the world.

Even the far less dicey social media world is less a goldmine than one might think. Twitter is profitable, but barely. It consistently misses its own profit forecasts. And Facebook – once wildly profitable – now suffers from narrowing profit margins.

These companies are household names, They’re darlings of the tech sector and widely emulated throughout the U.S. economy. How many executives say their businesses should be ‘more like Uber’ or ‘scrappy like WeWork or DoorDash’?

Why do CEOs model their businesses after losers?

Continue reading

rich people anti-social lighting cigar $100 bill

Are Rich People Anti-Social?

April 23, 2020 /

I’m sure you know the stereotype of the rich asshole: wealthy guy, probably a business person, cares little for other people’s needs. The world revolves around him, his ideas and his needs. He’s an anti-social guy. And sometimes he even rides it all the way to the White House.

That’s the pop culture image, but let’s talk about the social science for a bit. Social psychologists study the phenomenon. So, are rich people anti-social? Does it mean working class people are pro-social? If so, why? What does social psychology say about these things?

Continue reading

the end of forgetting

The End of Forgetting

January 16, 2020 /

I recently read Kate Eichhorn’s book The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media. In fact, I picked it up while I was at the 4S conference in New Orleans. It seemed to offer the best of science studies, namely careful analytical work around important issues in science and technology. Good stuff.

I’m curious about the effects of social media on childhood. I’ve seen plenty of evidence social media changes – and perhaps distorts – childhood. What kind of evidence? Young people carefully curating their social media profiles, grandstanding or engaging in other attention-seeking behavior online, using temporary and/or anonymous chat apps, and propagating oddly insular and distorted views about most Americans.

Continue reading

coworking space tech working

Coworking and the Precariat

January 9, 2020 /

Beware Silicon Valley and its tech dreams. But you (hopefully) already knew that. What else? Or, perhaps, what (aside from the obvious) falls under the Valley’s scope? For one, the eerily dystopian utopia of its Ted Talks and its free beer and free dinner in recently gentrified utopian spaces. And for another, the young, disaffected men currently embracing Andrew Yang‘s UBI snake oil. Any discussion of coworking spaces starts here.

But it hardly ends here. What comes next?

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 Base and Superstructure

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑