don’t even think capitalism requires infinite growth. It’s just how we built it. Not even since the beginning.
Eh… It’s kinda baked into a system of competition modified via supply and demand. If there’s not enough demand to initiate the growth of supply then you enter into a recession. Competition forces companies to invest in their avenues of growth so they don’t get cornered out of their market, which means they have to invest more into the company than other companies year over year.
In the beginning stages of capitalism competition is great for building markets, but towards the latter stages of capitalism, especially in fields with high fungibility, competition becomes destructive. Once this destructive competition becomes the norm the only escape for companies to remain profitable and continue growing is to monopolize, conglimorize, or ironically become heavily regulated.
It’s this idea that the money you make from investment should grow exponentially. This demand from professional stock traders that they be able to sell for obscene profits. The company must grow, and those profits must grow, or the shareholders will all sell in a panic and abandon them, and even a profitable company may go under.
It’s not really an option for companies to stagnate, not only because they legally have to make as much profit as possible for shareholders, but because the nature of competition in the market will eventually force them to go under, or more likely be bought up by the competition.
It doesn’t HAVE to be more profit next year than last year, we just made it that way over time.
It’s kinda always been that way, at least since the emergence of business done on a national scale. A lot of the reason Federalism became popularized was because businesses required unified regulation across state lines. Just look at the economic history of railroads and oil tycoons and you’ll see the same scenarios were undergoing today on a smaller scale.
Eh… It’s kinda baked into a system of competition modified via supply and demand. If there’s not enough demand to initiate the growth of supply then you enter into a recession. Competition forces companies to invest in their avenues of growth so they don’t get cornered out of their market, which means they have to invest more into the company than other companies year over year.
In the beginning stages of capitalism competition is great for building markets, but towards the latter stages of capitalism, especially in fields with high fungibility, competition becomes destructive. Once this destructive competition becomes the norm the only escape for companies to remain profitable and continue growing is to monopolize, conglimorize, or ironically become heavily regulated.
It’s not really an option for companies to stagnate, not only because they legally have to make as much profit as possible for shareholders, but because the nature of competition in the market will eventually force them to go under, or more likely be bought up by the competition.
It’s kinda always been that way, at least since the emergence of business done on a national scale. A lot of the reason Federalism became popularized was because businesses required unified regulation across state lines. Just look at the economic history of railroads and oil tycoons and you’ll see the same scenarios were undergoing today on a smaller scale.