I’m deeply cautious of the argument that modern capitalism is reliant on an ever increasing population. I think this perceived requirement is the result of eff

I’m deeply cautious of the argument that modern capitalism is reliant on an ever increasing population. I think this perceived requirement is the result of efforts to undermine or corrupt capitalism to preserve the interests of incumbents at the expense of innovation. Innovators are always starting at zero and have literally a world of opportunity ahead of them irrespective of whether the world population is growing or declining. Apple’s growth and value creation was never about chasing user numbers as the first order priority. Instead they built an ecosystem where they delivered value to a small user base and then got that user base to buy into more product categories and services. Those users also evangelise to others more than most. That delivered massive growth that has been buffered against age/population demographics. Alas Apple seems to be getting into maintaining value over doing real innovation now so maybe their decline is coming, but it’s interesting how the Japanese tech world has not been able to break out of the old ways of doing things and largely doesn’t seem to have learned from the advances in User eXperience that we’ve made in the past couple of decades. As for PlayStation and Nintendo, true for now but that space is about to move to VR. Enter Meta and Apple but also DJI with interest VR headset control of their drones. I don’t see the Japanese with a credible response to these impending shifts either.