10 ms·

Growth is a mind cancer

113 points by dave-x 3y ago

MichaelRo 3y ago
>> Apple is not happy that I bought a laptop in 2015 that was so good that it is still working fine 9 years later. And it's also not happy that I bought a phone more than 4 years ago that still does all the things I need it to do. Because they need to make money. More money. Well I'm not so sure about "more" as much about "keep making". And here lays the problem in almost every business on this planet. Everyone needs money to survive and if those money are obtained by selling produce, if that produce doesn't sell, they don't survive. So what do you propose instead?
- imhoguy 3y ago
  Not trying to propose anything, but if anyone needs some evening rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Its not that apple won’t survive. People still need laptops just less than what they might like to sell a year. If operations need to shrink so be it. Lean and mean is a good thing sometimes. Most of apples really inventive projects came when the company was smaller than it is today.
  - wentin 3y ago
    Lean and mean could mean people lose their job, lead to talent churn in the job market, wasting their talent and time doing things they don't love. Keep a steady cushy job so these talent can make great product while enjoy their life is a net gain for society.
    - digging 3y ago
      > Keep a steady cushy job so these talent can make great product while enjoy their life is a net gain for society No, it's a gross gain. And probably a small one, honestly. Whereas the associated costs to society are in the billions or trillions of dollars when we measure the environmental and social effects of mandatory-growth-culture. So it's a net loss.
  - digging 3y ago
    > Most of apples really inventive projects came when the company was smaller than it is today Just want to point out that this isn't necessarily a causative effect.
- ericol 3y ago
  > So what do you propose instead? Make a product so good that people would choose to switch. I bought a Mac M1 2 years ago. I did some really shitty research when buying it - I didn't have that much money available at the time tbh, even thought at the time they were cheaper in my country (don't ask) than in the US - and went for the lower end of the MacBook Pro. That's a decision I regretted almost immediately, and then end of last year I decided to go for an M3 with better specs. With this machine, the only thing that is probably going to make me change - besides it breaking down - is probably blazing fast IA capabilities (As in, real-time LlaMA stuff, or similar). Otherwise I plan to use this machine for as long as I can keep using it. Same applies to my iPhone 13; unless I see a real need for changing it, I'm keeping it - that is if I don't decide to go back to middle tier Samsung phones that in my opinion are better than iPhones.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    This is a great example of growth, and why your long term plan is likely going to fizzle. I'll give you all your money back for you M3, and give you the M1 you have/had only at a maxed out spec. Would you take the deal? It sounds good, but progress is a thing. That AI workload you want to run, isnt going to do so hot on the m1 (it doesn't have the right floating point systems). Its likely that the current m3 will remain usable as a laptop for a few more years due to extra ram and storage, but it has a shelf life for high end workloads...
    - ericol 3y ago
      > Its likely that the current m3 will remain usable as a laptop for a few more years due to extra ram and storage, but it has a shelf life for high end workloads... Isn't that my point exactly? (Sorry if I miss explained myself, not a native speaker and I didn't quite proofread my comment either) What I want to say is, I have the feeling my M3 is going to provide good service for probably a longer time than Apple is expecting to, and the only reason that'll make me change is having the need - and the money - for a better option. And I do think one of the biggest reasons as to why I might not make the switch is due to how incredible well this machine is engineered. As I'm kind of Apple's target pop - I did buy, afterall, 2 machines from them in a very short span of time - the previous point I made plays against them. > I'll give you all your money back for you M3, and give you the M1 you have/had only at a maxed out spec. > Would you take the deal? Depends on the deal, but very likely yes. Maxed out M1's are incredible capable machines in my opinion. Thanks for your comment!
- stemlord 3y ago
  If apple didn't need constant growth it'd likely be totally fine selling devices with a 10+ year turnaround. I mean the shop on my corner has been the same for 15 years and it didn't die because of it.
  - slongfield 3y ago
    I don't know the specifics, but I'm pretty sure the shop on your corner sells things more than once a decade.
    - stemlord 3y ago
      1. Obviously Apple's market reach is wildly different-- they can still sell globally without requiring to scale indefinitely. 2. Hardware isn't their only product. Anyway, infinite growth is impossible, so the comparison to a local business is moot. Also, it should be legally required for Apple to make products that last 10+ years from an environmental standpoint.
- noahtallen 3y ago
  I don't think this is a fair take for massive businesses like Apple. When you spend $77B on stock buybacks, "money to survive" is very far out of the question. Apple does not need to have increased profit margins every single year to survive. They could be very financially successful and also more consumer friendly in many areas. They do not need to have a walled garden and locked-down messaging to survive. They do not need to make components hard to repair and impossible to upgrade to survive. They do not need to offer only 5GB of iCloud storage, or only 8GB of ram on new laptops to survive. They could be more generous and friendly to their consumers, and would probably have an even happier fanbase as a result. But it would likely not be more profitable, so they won't. The point here is that more profitable every year is not necessary for survival or for a company to be strong. It's simply a way to make shareholders very rich. That doesn't make it good for society. This is not about companies surviving. This is about companies needing to grow and grow and grow... And as the author says, there is no real end state. You keep growing until you buy out every one of your competitors? And when you have a stranglehold on the market, you can severely cut costs and reduce quality to continue growing profits without needing to find more customers. This shit really happens in a number of industries! It's not good for society. Sure, survival applies to small companies, startups, mom & pop shops. But many of these massive companies are operating at a completely different level, and "needing money to survive," is not at all what they are trying to do. They are trying to grow profits every year, to make the shareholders happy and wealthy. Not to help them or the company's employees survive. (We all know these companies are very happy to do a layoff if that's what will move the needle on profit growth.)
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    Just because Apple is trying to grow infinitely, doesn't mean they will. If they continue to do things that hobble their products, people will stop buying them and that will put a natural break on Apple's growth. Of course there is also the question of monopolistic practices, and that's where it's appropriate for governments to step in, as the Biden administration is attempting with their recent lawsuit against Apple. I sense from progressives a growing sense that shaming people, corporations, organizations, governments, is the most effective means of social change. From what I can see, it accomplishes very little.
ottaborra 3y ago
It really feels like a scaling problem than anything else. It big companies go to shit as they do most of the time it's because tackling scale is a extremely difficult problem
- lenerdenator 3y ago
  They have to scale, and they don't see it as a problem. Like the author says, at a certain point, you've saturated the market. Everyone who wanted M2 Macbook Pro has one, but still, the institutional shareholders come knocking, demanding more money so that retirees can move into that villa on the golf course in Florida and consume until the dementia sets in. So what do you do to keep the shareholder returns coming? You expand into new markets, or create new markets, or create new products. Thus, you grow in scale. Again, to them, this is not a problem. Most of the people involved in the actual workings of this system - executives, fund managers, financiers, etc. - are getting more money out of it than they could ever hope to spend in a lifetime. There is no downside the system produces that their wealth cannot overcome. The rest of us... well... we're annuities.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > demanding more money so that retirees can move into that villa on the golf course in Florida and consume until the dementia sets in. There are also the taxpayers that need the government pension funds to make good on investment assumptions, lest taxes have to go up. Edit: Politician A: I will remove all deferred compensation schemes, but have to increase taxes to pay the employees with money today Politician B: I will pay the employees with deferred compensation, and keep taxes lower than politician A, and let future taxpayers deal with any problems of underfunding and corruption Politician B wins every election.
    - lenerdenator 3y ago
      And politicians who keep making promises about a solvent pension fund because it's not fun for them if it's not solvent, and unions/retirees are much better at voting than the average person.
argc 3y ago
Why can't they just stay profitable, pay dividends, and not really grow?
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  I think because if you're not growing, you're dying. Or so the saying goes.
  - adamc 3y ago
    That's the mind-cancer speaking.
    - topspin 3y ago
      That's a pithy, vivid snarkonym I suppose; 10/10. The reality is that things don't exist in a vacuum: competitors exist and one of the best defenses against competitors is growth. Growth provides affordances, such as ample capital, market profile and regulatory leverage to counter competitors. Certainly one can conceive of alternative ways of surviving competitors, but it never hurts to be a thriving concern. That's hard work for all involved though, so better to simply spiral the rest of the way down and condemn competition as well: perhaps "The Market is societal metastasis". Or something. You'll get there anyhow, so best to start working on the next clever derogation now.
      - ganzuul 3y ago
        Is it a case of survival when a startup is bought by a multinational? Is the buyer a competitor?
        topspin 3y ago
        That's the buyer seeking growth, even if only to shut the bought down, yielding relative growth. Big fish eat little fish. That's the universe talking, as opposed to whatever ideology you prefer to blame. The "solution" -- should you perceive a problem with all this -- is destabilizing the large such that the small find more opportunities. Hating on growth isn't compatible with this, however: you must be capable of tolerating the small enjoying growth.
forty 3y ago
Thanks, it's always a pleasure to read my own thoughs worded better than I would have.
ssimpson 3y ago
I had a colleague who had recently become a manager ask me "so wait, people always have to be growing and advancing? What if they just got promoted and they want to do that for a while. Or they are happy with what they are doing right now?" I replied that I understood that and I feel like that is a problem everywhere. Everything has to be growing all the time and it's probably not for the better.
- RajT88 3y ago
  It's a problem for managers too. They may want employees to keep doing exactly what they are doing, but the employees themselves want "growth" in some sense. So they have to create the illusion of growth, new title, a few inconsequential responsibilities, maybe some small salary bump. You get the idea.
ralfd 3y ago
What a trivial blog post. Aside, Apple going into services is incentivizing them making durable devices which are used long-term. Without services Apple may "not be happy" that you use a 9 year old Macbook. But with services they do want a large install base, new devices and old, so they can sell Apple TV and Music and Apps.
- samantha-wiki 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on why you think it’s trivial?
  - digging 3y ago
    It's not a new idea at all or especially insightfully written. However, I'm not upset by it being posted; I still enjoyed reading it and found it was tastefully short.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    It skips over the difficult question of "how big is too big?" Easy to complain about in the abstract. Hard to answer how we restructure society to determine when a company or individual salary is too large, without allowing each company or individual make that decision for themselves.
ch4s3 3y ago
This is an incredibly myopic take and unsophisticated take. Comparing to an artisan is in some ways apt, but undercuts the argument. For an artisan the growth target may be the growth of your skills or of your vision. That's growth, and it requires you to keep producing artifacts and to do so you must have some means of funding that production. For any firm larger than perhaps a single person, you have to have some monetary growth in order to continue to exist. Eventually employees leave and new hires demand more money, equipment wares out and new equipment is expensive, your customers may demand more so you must invest in R&D. Unexpected expenses arise. A growing company can cope with change or rising costs.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  Beyond keep up with inflation and cost increases, there is no technical need for a large firm to keep on growing. There are many midsize companies that have a steady revenue and are happy with it.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    You're essentially arguing that beyond a base level need to grow you don't need to grow, so you've already conceded at least some need for growth.
- coldbrewed 3y ago
  There's still a cap on growth. Apple is running into market saturation for phones and eventually will land in a situation where the only way it can sell more phones is by selling the same consumers newer/more expensive phones. To achieve this they either need to reduce quality so devices wear out or artificially prevent prolonged use; either scenario results increased production of e-waste. Ecosystems have limits; you can't grow past the absolute maximums of supply and demand. We only have so many minerals and so many humans which means that growth has hard caps. Even if we manage to colonize the solar system the same cap will still exist on humans and minerals. Eternal growth is demonstrably false and if we ignore these bounds then we encourage companies to grow through increased generation of negative externalities.
oneepic 3y ago
To me the bottom line of life is to hold on to the fun stuff that makes you unique and happy. Other people practically hate you and pressure you to do things their way. Every time I "grew" it felt fake, performative, and aimless.
- imbnwa 3y ago
  Hard to decipher this without knowing instances of where you 'grew'
  - bittercynic 3y ago
    Looks like "grew" means "conformed more closely to mainstream ideas of success".
- digging 3y ago
  I know we're not meant to ask "did you even read TFA", so I guess I'll comment that your comment makes no sense in this context. I don't know what kind of growth you're talking about but I get the sense it's not the trillion-dollar kind...
wentin 3y ago
I think growing !== making your product last shorter. Develop a brand new market like AR VR headset is growing. Develop a new service that people need is growing. Keep growing to compensate for shrinking market for existing business, so that your employee can have a steady job and do what they love and are trained well to do, without churning in the job market is a net gain for society.
rgbrenner 3y ago
Let's pretend the suggestions of the author were adopted by Apple in 1995. They stopped entering new markets. They have a product portfolio that generates $11B ($30B today). That portfolio includes some real winners, like the Pippin, a webtv competitor. (WebTV--another company that clearly didn't need to enter new markets because they're doing fantastic today.) Does anyone really believe this company is viable in 2024? In this scenario, Apple is dead. The author is free to change his mind about what product he wants over time... but there's something wrong with a company that changes products over time? Companies must be free to adapt to the changing preferences of customers. The alternative is corporate death.
- m0llusk 3y ago
  That is not a reasonable comparison. Apple 1995 was dead because it had products that were not selling and was running out of ideas. The problem then was not growth out of control, but a complete loss of traction.
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  Growing and adapting are two different concepts. Adapting is necessary for any company to survive, growing not necessarily.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    What? Growth is new business, its evolving old ones. If you don't know whats going to work you try more than one thing. Growth is the measure of adaptation.
  - AceJohnny2 3y ago
    Growing is the external sign that the company is successfully adapting.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I'm not sure. I'm a big plant guy and when I think about how plants adapt to new environments it's all about growth. Movement to better soil, water, or light is achieved by growing to a new location and then abandoning the old stems/leaves/etc. A plant that can't grow is about to be toast - these often bloom in a last-ditch effort to continue their genes through new plants (that will have to grow) elsewhere. It's very hard, or even impossible, to maintain a static ecosystem. Plant parts age or get mechanically damaged - the only way to replace them is growing new ones. It's obviously not a perfect analogy. But in complex natural systems stability without growth is rare.
choeger 3y ago
The thing is: Growth is the driver for increased efficiency and that is the driver for any kind of progress. Progress does not just happen out of thin air when a bold mind in their ivory tower has a great insight. Progress requires (wo-)manpower. And that power in turn needs to be freed from more mundane tasks. In other words: We, as a society, don't want Apple to become ever bigger and make ever bigger profits. We want them to continue making MacBooks and to need fewer and fewer people to make them. Because we want these people to cure cancer or drive spaceships to the outer system or develop artificial meat. Unfortunately, this simply won't happen if we take out the unsatisfiable desire for more, more, more.
- deleted 3y ago
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- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  You don't think it's possible to harness the desire for more of certain things and less of certain other things in a similar way? We collectively create the expectations under which "growth" is a meaningful thing for a company to do. We can change those expectations such that "number go up" for the company translates to more of the particular thing we want and less of the particular thing we don't. We just need a bit of incentive redesign.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    This is how it already works. We translate our desires for particular things and not others, by what we purchase or don't purchase.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      Not purchasing something is a pretty paltry way of communicating our "demand" that it not be manufactured in a harmful way. Maybe I wouldn't have bought it anyway, I should still be able to demand that it not poison my water. It's like we have the upvotes figured out but are lacking the downvote feature.
hzay 3y ago
Aswath Damodaran speaks of a life cycle for companies. In his view, companies do decline and shut down after sometime. He makes it seem like a fact of life -- if it's true, then stock markets aren't so terrible after all. The declining companies often pay good (but declining) dividends, and wind up gracefully.
- lenerdenator 3y ago
  The problem isn't that they decline, it's that they decline in a way that leaves a ton of bagholders. If you're a rank-and-file employee at the company, no amount of dividend payout on your shares (if you're lucky enough to be given any) is going to make up for the fact that the CEO has decided that he'd be able to buy a new beach house with the bonus he'd get from closing your division. Slightly enhanced earnings-per-share won't make up for the fact that you no longer have an income or benefits, and the fact that the local economy has just lost an employer. And yet, that's what will happen, because the CEO has more shares and can make that decision. We make the assumption that only a select few can possess the ability to be motivated by profits as expressed by increases in share value, and that, to an extent, is true: only a few shareholding employees have enough equity to see real benefit. That's only because we make it that way. If you spread out the shares over more employees and involved them more in these decisions, they would still be motivated: they would want higher profits for their own benefit. It'd just have to be expressed as some other store of value than stock shares, and this doesn't feed the ego of the executive class. Imagine Elon Musk being told he's now effectively a public servant to Tesla who has to play politics with a far larger group of employees if he wants to keep his job, and that he'd have a very limited equity advantage over anyone else at the company. He'd walk out the door and not come back.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    A society where no corporation could ever reduce employee count would cause a lot more problems than it solves. Of course many tech companies already give substantial equity to employees as part of their compensation. Maybe there are government policies to encourage this to be more wide spread, but I'm not sure what those policies would look like.
fra 3y ago
Ultimately this is about capital allocation and rates of return. Capital flows into the places where it can be best put to work. If you wish for your investments to yield above inflation, you're a card carrying member of the cult of growth. If Apple decides it will stop growing, it will plow 100% of its profits in share buybacks (I bet op loves those!) and work hard to squeeze costs down. This happens routinely under private equity ownership. It's not as fun as you'd think. The view expressed by the author is naive and shortsighted. Growth is required for society to function. If it doesn't come from Apple, it must come from somewhere else.
- Upvoter33 3y ago
  I agree it is shortsighted. If Apple doesn't grow, their competitors will, and soon enough they are building better things because they have more resources. But, it is irritating: sometimes you just want people to do a few things well, and not try to grow and grow and grow ...
  - ganzuul 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
  - manuelmoreale 3y ago
    Just so we clear. I’m talking about Apple as an example. Saying that if Apple doesn’t grow other will is missing the point. I’m saying the entire mindset is a cancer.
- colinng 3y ago
  The time value of money is always more than inflation. The classic simple example is that if you need food today, the money for food is worth much more today than it is worth a year from now. Therefore to ask someone to surrender money today, they have to give you more money to return it to you next year. This isn’t the same as growth (ie you’re doing a job, but next year they expect you to make 25% more sales, or else…)
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TheGRS 3y ago
I'm tired of hearing this opinion because its overly simplistic. Anyone expressing this opinion likely would praise a company for growth through innovation. They don't hate growth, they hate companies who are scrounging for additional price value without adding intrinsic value. If Apple came out with the next device/car/service that was a big value add to our lives I'm sure this opinion doesn't come back up in that instance. Growth mindset is a good thing overall. And sometimes you get growth through pretty shitty means. I can't really throw out "growth" altogether just because a lot of companies employ accountants, MBA executives, and lawyers.
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  You don’t have to guess what I’d likely think. You can just ask. I hate growth for growth sake. I hate growth when it pushes companies to do shitty things. I don’t hate growth in general. I hate it when it’s the only driving force. Growth mindset is a bit good thing overall. We might disagree on that. As a byproduct of other drivers, like innovation, sure, I’m cool with that.
  - TheGRS 3y ago
    I still think its overly simplistic. One man's growth for growth sake is another man's innovation to gain some unrealized value. I'm not a huge fan of penny-pinching either, but there is good in finding alternative paths for your expenses. Sometimes its crappy for the end product, sometimes you save a million dollars a year by printing stamps instead of buying them. And a company should be expected to defend its business practices in court, but sometimes they're scummy practices that the general public disagrees with. But I find it difficult to separate these just on the idea of growth being a bad mindset. Lack of ethics or quality mindset might be the better thing to go after here, since that seems to be where most of the disagreeable actions come from.
    - manuelmoreale 3y ago
      Of course is overly simplistic. It’s a rant. I’m not trying to propose an alternative here because I’m not an idiot and I know there aren’t any. It’s human nature. If one stops doing it someone else will take their place. I just hate the state of the world in this specific context. And again, I don’t have anything against growth itself. Growth is a byproduct. I have an issue when growth becomes a motivating force. Because it pushes well intentioned people in wrong directions. The entire enshittification of the web is a testament of that. There was a time when companies, local ones, were happy to have reached a steady state. You make a product people want, you’re earning more than you’re spending, you’re employing a bunch of people and that’s fine. That entire concept seems to be forgotten because of this silly growth at all cost mindset. That’s what bothers me.
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factually 3y ago
Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a talk by Al Bartlett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY
QuadrupleA 3y ago
Totally agree. Surprised there's so much hate of this idea in the comments here. Doesn't anyone here value building things to last, contentment, quality, and having enough?
- jahewson 3y ago
  Sure but the anti-growth thing is a classic naive zero-sum fallacy. OP certainly thinks fondly of things built to last, and that’s admirable - but you should question the extent to which they actually value them. Let’s say OP is 30 and will buy one $3000 laptop per decade until age 70. If OP truly values things that last then they should be willing to pay at least $16000 today for a laptop with a 40 year lifespan. But that’s obviously silly! In reality OP values things that last to some extent but is willing to trade it off (newer, faster, lighter, cheaper) - they will undoubtedly choose to replace their laptop in the next 40 years. The same with quality, I can almost always offer you a higher-quality product - but at a certain point you will not be willing to pay for it.
  - manuelmoreale 3y ago
    I’m not expressing an anti growth mindset. Maybe it’s just me being an awful writer/communicator. Which is quite possible. I’m against growing just for the sake of growing. I’m 35 btw, so your example is not too wrong. I do value things that last. And again, I don’t have issues with price increases. And if you price me out, so be it. But if you price me out because you want to make more and more money then I’d argue that’s a shitty way to run a business.
AceJohnny2 3y ago
In a capitalist, competitive market, growth is the signal that a company is successfully adapting. "Grow or die" isn't just a rallying cry, it is a tough lesson learned from decades (centuries!) of running businesses. I agree with the author's sentiment, that such growth has a cancerous end-game, but it's important to understand that this mindset is the result of systemic pressures. It's as inevitable as the Tragedy of the Commons (1833!), but even more complicated to address. Game Theory is an exceptionally useful lens to analyze these systematic behaviors. If a company isn't growing, that means they're not adapting to the market. That leaves the opportunity open for a competitor, who will take over. Then the "ethical" original is dead, and you're left with a "cancerous growth" actor, again.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
The hedonic treadmill principle isn’t just a personal thing. It passes through the machinery of business to be amplified and expressed in an absolutely massive way. All characteristics of businesses are those of the humans that make them up. It’s in our nature to want more. The author is asking humans to stop being human.
MarcoZavala 3y ago
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tomweingarten 3y ago
https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enough/ https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enou... The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responded – “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough.”
nutrie 3y ago
This is very simple. We grow the companies, not the other way around. It's a symptom, not a cause.
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  Don’t disagree with that
rifty 3y ago
Expecting growth along a single metric like dollars while staying product-offering static is a problem once most of the energy/production/scale optimizations have been implemented. It seems fine that we should expect innovation companies to grow, as in progress, to produce new product classes and improve old ones. I personally don't hope every company is destined to become primarily a stagnant service company. Although I'm pretty sure the pressure to grow doesn't solely come from the outside-in perspective. It feels like internal politics, incentives, and the individuals desires to make their mark results in a shift in priorities in otherwise settled product lines as well. At this point it feels right to switch from calling it growth, to neutrally 'drive'. Assuming some sense of drive not only is useful, but is an necessary feature of humans producing... then if priorities are not oriented directly towards maximizing usability or the quality of product for the end user, it will result in a product being reasonably propelled away from maintaining those. And so it seems to me, it is the priorities not the existence of drive or growth that is the issue to be focused on. I feel trying to establish a culture without drive would be net counter productive.
- ganzuul 3y ago
  A lot of information is lost in the conversion process to money. It's a remarkably dumb way to measure progress.
ZeoVII 3y ago
Universal Paperclips comes to mind.... part of the issue is that companies peruse the goal of infinite growth, yet this stands in contrast and contradiction to the economic maxim of "wants are unlimited, but resources are finite". this relentless chase is fueled and exacerbated by the culture of "disposable" and made worse with planned obsolescence,pushing us to replace products faster than ever. We need to find ways to balance this, in order to achieve sustainable progress.
ZebrasEat 3y ago
I’ve always wondered if you can design a business plan to encompass the birth, growth, and death of a company with full transparency. It wouldn’t work as a public company, but it seems it should be possible to go after one specific goal and have everyone participating know what the end game is. Some finite wealth at the end of it. You could push whatever idea you want to a limit, then let someone else carry it further in the same way when the OG company dies.
opyate 3y ago
Title ought to have been "Endless growth is a mind cancer". When your profits aren't up 20% for the tenth year in a row, you cut costs somewhere, and it's always the workforce that suffers most, due to layoffs. Other things suffer too, like product quality (maybe using cheaper materials maybe built-in obsolescence).

113 points by dave-x 3y ago

>> Apple is not happy that I bought a laptop in 2015 that was so good that it is still working fine 9 years later. And it's also not happy that I bought a phone more than 4 years ago that still does all the things I need it to do. Because they need to make money. More money. Well I'm not so sure about "more" as much about "keep making". And here lays the problem in almost every business on this planet. Everyone needs money to survive and if those money are obtained by selling produce, if that produce doesn't sell, they don't survive. So what do you propose instead?

imhoguy 3y ago
Not trying to propose anything, but if anyone needs some evening rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Its not that apple won’t survive. People still need laptops just less than what they might like to sell a year. If operations need to shrink so be it. Lean and mean is a good thing sometimes. Most of apples really inventive projects came when the company was smaller than it is today.
- wentin 3y ago
  Lean and mean could mean people lose their job, lead to talent churn in the job market, wasting their talent and time doing things they don't love. Keep a steady cushy job so these talent can make great product while enjoy their life is a net gain for society.
  - digging 3y ago
    > Keep a steady cushy job so these talent can make great product while enjoy their life is a net gain for society No, it's a gross gain. And probably a small one, honestly. Whereas the associated costs to society are in the billions or trillions of dollars when we measure the environmental and social effects of mandatory-growth-culture. So it's a net loss.
- digging 3y ago
  > Most of apples really inventive projects came when the company was smaller than it is today Just want to point out that this isn't necessarily a causative effect.
ericol 3y ago
> So what do you propose instead? Make a product so good that people would choose to switch. I bought a Mac M1 2 years ago. I did some really shitty research when buying it - I didn't have that much money available at the time tbh, even thought at the time they were cheaper in my country (don't ask) than in the US - and went for the lower end of the MacBook Pro. That's a decision I regretted almost immediately, and then end of last year I decided to go for an M3 with better specs. With this machine, the only thing that is probably going to make me change - besides it breaking down - is probably blazing fast IA capabilities (As in, real-time LlaMA stuff, or similar). Otherwise I plan to use this machine for as long as I can keep using it. Same applies to my iPhone 13; unless I see a real need for changing it, I'm keeping it - that is if I don't decide to go back to middle tier Samsung phones that in my opinion are better than iPhones.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  This is a great example of growth, and why your long term plan is likely going to fizzle. I'll give you all your money back for you M3, and give you the M1 you have/had only at a maxed out spec. Would you take the deal? It sounds good, but progress is a thing. That AI workload you want to run, isnt going to do so hot on the m1 (it doesn't have the right floating point systems). Its likely that the current m3 will remain usable as a laptop for a few more years due to extra ram and storage, but it has a shelf life for high end workloads...
  - ericol 3y ago
    > Its likely that the current m3 will remain usable as a laptop for a few more years due to extra ram and storage, but it has a shelf life for high end workloads... Isn't that my point exactly? (Sorry if I miss explained myself, not a native speaker and I didn't quite proofread my comment either) What I want to say is, I have the feeling my M3 is going to provide good service for probably a longer time than Apple is expecting to, and the only reason that'll make me change is having the need - and the money - for a better option. And I do think one of the biggest reasons as to why I might not make the switch is due to how incredible well this machine is engineered. As I'm kind of Apple's target pop - I did buy, afterall, 2 machines from them in a very short span of time - the previous point I made plays against them. > I'll give you all your money back for you M3, and give you the M1 you have/had only at a maxed out spec. > Would you take the deal? Depends on the deal, but very likely yes. Maxed out M1's are incredible capable machines in my opinion. Thanks for your comment!
stemlord 3y ago
If apple didn't need constant growth it'd likely be totally fine selling devices with a 10+ year turnaround. I mean the shop on my corner has been the same for 15 years and it didn't die because of it.
- slongfield 3y ago
  I don't know the specifics, but I'm pretty sure the shop on your corner sells things more than once a decade.
  - stemlord 3y ago
    1. Obviously Apple's market reach is wildly different-- they can still sell globally without requiring to scale indefinitely. 2. Hardware isn't their only product. Anyway, infinite growth is impossible, so the comparison to a local business is moot. Also, it should be legally required for Apple to make products that last 10+ years from an environmental standpoint.
noahtallen 3y ago
I don't think this is a fair take for massive businesses like Apple. When you spend $77B on stock buybacks, "money to survive" is very far out of the question. Apple does not need to have increased profit margins every single year to survive. They could be very financially successful and also more consumer friendly in many areas. They do not need to have a walled garden and locked-down messaging to survive. They do not need to make components hard to repair and impossible to upgrade to survive. They do not need to offer only 5GB of iCloud storage, or only 8GB of ram on new laptops to survive. They could be more generous and friendly to their consumers, and would probably have an even happier fanbase as a result. But it would likely not be more profitable, so they won't. The point here is that more profitable every year is not necessary for survival or for a company to be strong. It's simply a way to make shareholders very rich. That doesn't make it good for society. This is not about companies surviving. This is about companies needing to grow and grow and grow... And as the author says, there is no real end state. You keep growing until you buy out every one of your competitors? And when you have a stranglehold on the market, you can severely cut costs and reduce quality to continue growing profits without needing to find more customers. This shit really happens in a number of industries! It's not good for society. Sure, survival applies to small companies, startups, mom & pop shops. But many of these massive companies are operating at a completely different level, and "needing money to survive," is not at all what they are trying to do. They are trying to grow profits every year, to make the shareholders happy and wealthy. Not to help them or the company's employees survive. (We all know these companies are very happy to do a layoff if that's what will move the needle on profit growth.)
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Just because Apple is trying to grow infinitely, doesn't mean they will. If they continue to do things that hobble their products, people will stop buying them and that will put a natural break on Apple's growth. Of course there is also the question of monopolistic practices, and that's where it's appropriate for governments to step in, as the Biden administration is attempting with their recent lawsuit against Apple. I sense from progressives a growing sense that shaming people, corporations, organizations, governments, is the most effective means of social change. From what I can see, it accomplishes very little.

ottaborra 3y ago

It really feels like a scaling problem than anything else. It big companies go to shit as they do most of the time it's because tackling scale is a extremely difficult problem

lenerdenator 3y ago
They have to scale, and they don't see it as a problem. Like the author says, at a certain point, you've saturated the market. Everyone who wanted M2 Macbook Pro has one, but still, the institutional shareholders come knocking, demanding more money so that retirees can move into that villa on the golf course in Florida and consume until the dementia sets in. So what do you do to keep the shareholder returns coming? You expand into new markets, or create new markets, or create new products. Thus, you grow in scale. Again, to them, this is not a problem. Most of the people involved in the actual workings of this system - executives, fund managers, financiers, etc. - are getting more money out of it than they could ever hope to spend in a lifetime. There is no downside the system produces that their wealth cannot overcome. The rest of us... well... we're annuities.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > demanding more money so that retirees can move into that villa on the golf course in Florida and consume until the dementia sets in. There are also the taxpayers that need the government pension funds to make good on investment assumptions, lest taxes have to go up. Edit: Politician A: I will remove all deferred compensation schemes, but have to increase taxes to pay the employees with money today Politician B: I will pay the employees with deferred compensation, and keep taxes lower than politician A, and let future taxpayers deal with any problems of underfunding and corruption Politician B wins every election.
  - lenerdenator 3y ago
    And politicians who keep making promises about a solvent pension fund because it's not fun for them if it's not solvent, and unions/retirees are much better at voting than the average person.

argc 3y ago

Why can't they just stay profitable, pay dividends, and not really grow?

CaptainFever 3y ago
I think because if you're not growing, you're dying. Or so the saying goes.
- adamc 3y ago
  That's the mind-cancer speaking.
  - topspin 3y ago
    That's a pithy, vivid snarkonym I suppose; 10/10. The reality is that things don't exist in a vacuum: competitors exist and one of the best defenses against competitors is growth. Growth provides affordances, such as ample capital, market profile and regulatory leverage to counter competitors. Certainly one can conceive of alternative ways of surviving competitors, but it never hurts to be a thriving concern. That's hard work for all involved though, so better to simply spiral the rest of the way down and condemn competition as well: perhaps "The Market is societal metastasis". Or something. You'll get there anyhow, so best to start working on the next clever derogation now.
    - ganzuul 3y ago
      Is it a case of survival when a startup is bought by a multinational? Is the buyer a competitor?
      - topspin 3y ago
        That's the buyer seeking growth, even if only to shut the bought down, yielding relative growth. Big fish eat little fish. That's the universe talking, as opposed to whatever ideology you prefer to blame. The "solution" -- should you perceive a problem with all this -- is destabilizing the large such that the small find more opportunities. Hating on growth isn't compatible with this, however: you must be capable of tolerating the small enjoying growth.

forty 3y ago

Thanks, it's always a pleasure to read my own thoughs worded better than I would have.

ssimpson 3y ago

I had a colleague who had recently become a manager ask me "so wait, people always have to be growing and advancing? What if they just got promoted and they want to do that for a while. Or they are happy with what they are doing right now?" I replied that I understood that and I feel like that is a problem everywhere. Everything has to be growing all the time and it's probably not for the better.

RajT88 3y ago
It's a problem for managers too. They may want employees to keep doing exactly what they are doing, but the employees themselves want "growth" in some sense. So they have to create the illusion of growth, new title, a few inconsequential responsibilities, maybe some small salary bump. You get the idea.

ralfd 3y ago

What a trivial blog post. Aside, Apple going into services is incentivizing them making durable devices which are used long-term. Without services Apple may "not be happy" that you use a 9 year old Macbook. But with services they do want a large install base, new devices and old, so they can sell Apple TV and Music and Apps.

samantha-wiki 3y ago
Can you elaborate on why you think it’s trivial?
- digging 3y ago
  It's not a new idea at all or especially insightfully written. However, I'm not upset by it being posted; I still enjoyed reading it and found it was tastefully short.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  It skips over the difficult question of "how big is too big?" Easy to complain about in the abstract. Hard to answer how we restructure society to determine when a company or individual salary is too large, without allowing each company or individual make that decision for themselves.

ch4s3 3y ago

This is an incredibly myopic take and unsophisticated take. Comparing to an artisan is in some ways apt, but undercuts the argument. For an artisan the growth target may be the growth of your skills or of your vision. That's growth, and it requires you to keep producing artifacts and to do so you must have some means of funding that production. For any firm larger than perhaps a single person, you have to have some monetary growth in order to continue to exist. Eventually employees leave and new hires demand more money, equipment wares out and new equipment is expensive, your customers may demand more so you must invest in R&D. Unexpected expenses arise. A growing company can cope with change or rising costs.

oxfordmale 3y ago
Beyond keep up with inflation and cost increases, there is no technical need for a large firm to keep on growing. There are many midsize companies that have a steady revenue and are happy with it.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  You're essentially arguing that beyond a base level need to grow you don't need to grow, so you've already conceded at least some need for growth.
coldbrewed 3y ago
There's still a cap on growth. Apple is running into market saturation for phones and eventually will land in a situation where the only way it can sell more phones is by selling the same consumers newer/more expensive phones. To achieve this they either need to reduce quality so devices wear out or artificially prevent prolonged use; either scenario results increased production of e-waste. Ecosystems have limits; you can't grow past the absolute maximums of supply and demand. We only have so many minerals and so many humans which means that growth has hard caps. Even if we manage to colonize the solar system the same cap will still exist on humans and minerals. Eternal growth is demonstrably false and if we ignore these bounds then we encourage companies to grow through increased generation of negative externalities.

oneepic 3y ago

To me the bottom line of life is to hold on to the fun stuff that makes you unique and happy. Other people practically hate you and pressure you to do things their way. Every time I "grew" it felt fake, performative, and aimless.

imbnwa 3y ago
Hard to decipher this without knowing instances of where you 'grew'
- bittercynic 3y ago
  Looks like "grew" means "conformed more closely to mainstream ideas of success".
digging 3y ago
I know we're not meant to ask "did you even read TFA", so I guess I'll comment that your comment makes no sense in this context. I don't know what kind of growth you're talking about but I get the sense it's not the trillion-dollar kind...

wentin 3y ago

I think growing !== making your product last shorter. Develop a brand new market like AR VR headset is growing. Develop a new service that people need is growing. Keep growing to compensate for shrinking market for existing business, so that your employee can have a steady job and do what they love and are trained well to do, without churning in the job market is a net gain for society.

rgbrenner 3y ago

Let's pretend the suggestions of the author were adopted by Apple in 1995. They stopped entering new markets. They have a product portfolio that generates $11B ($30B today). That portfolio includes some real winners, like the Pippin, a webtv competitor. (WebTV--another company that clearly didn't need to enter new markets because they're doing fantastic today.) Does anyone really believe this company is viable in 2024? In this scenario, Apple is dead. The author is free to change his mind about what product he wants over time... but there's something wrong with a company that changes products over time? Companies must be free to adapt to the changing preferences of customers. The alternative is corporate death.

m0llusk 3y ago
That is not a reasonable comparison. Apple 1995 was dead because it had products that were not selling and was running out of ideas. The problem then was not growth out of control, but a complete loss of traction.
oxfordmale 3y ago
Growing and adapting are two different concepts. Adapting is necessary for any company to survive, growing not necessarily.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  What? Growth is new business, its evolving old ones. If you don't know whats going to work you try more than one thing. Growth is the measure of adaptation.
- AceJohnny2 3y ago
  Growing is the external sign that the company is successfully adapting.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I'm not sure. I'm a big plant guy and when I think about how plants adapt to new environments it's all about growth. Movement to better soil, water, or light is achieved by growing to a new location and then abandoning the old stems/leaves/etc. A plant that can't grow is about to be toast - these often bloom in a last-ditch effort to continue their genes through new plants (that will have to grow) elsewhere. It's very hard, or even impossible, to maintain a static ecosystem. Plant parts age or get mechanically damaged - the only way to replace them is growing new ones. It's obviously not a perfect analogy. But in complex natural systems stability without growth is rare.

choeger 3y ago

The thing is: Growth is the driver for increased efficiency and that is the driver for any kind of progress. Progress does not just happen out of thin air when a bold mind in their ivory tower has a great insight. Progress requires (wo-)manpower. And that power in turn needs to be freed from more mundane tasks. In other words: We, as a society, don't want Apple to become ever bigger and make ever bigger profits. We want them to continue making MacBooks and to need fewer and fewer people to make them. Because we want these people to cure cancer or drive spaceships to the outer system or develop artificial meat. Unfortunately, this simply won't happen if we take out the unsatisfiable desire for more, more, more.

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__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
You don't think it's possible to harness the desire for more of certain things and less of certain other things in a similar way? We collectively create the expectations under which "growth" is a meaningful thing for a company to do. We can change those expectations such that "number go up" for the company translates to more of the particular thing we want and less of the particular thing we don't. We just need a bit of incentive redesign.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  This is how it already works. We translate our desires for particular things and not others, by what we purchase or don't purchase.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Not purchasing something is a pretty paltry way of communicating our "demand" that it not be manufactured in a harmful way. Maybe I wouldn't have bought it anyway, I should still be able to demand that it not poison my water. It's like we have the upvotes figured out but are lacking the downvote feature.

hzay 3y ago

Aswath Damodaran speaks of a life cycle for companies. In his view, companies do decline and shut down after sometime. He makes it seem like a fact of life -- if it's true, then stock markets aren't so terrible after all. The declining companies often pay good (but declining) dividends, and wind up gracefully.

lenerdenator 3y ago
The problem isn't that they decline, it's that they decline in a way that leaves a ton of bagholders. If you're a rank-and-file employee at the company, no amount of dividend payout on your shares (if you're lucky enough to be given any) is going to make up for the fact that the CEO has decided that he'd be able to buy a new beach house with the bonus he'd get from closing your division. Slightly enhanced earnings-per-share won't make up for the fact that you no longer have an income or benefits, and the fact that the local economy has just lost an employer. And yet, that's what will happen, because the CEO has more shares and can make that decision. We make the assumption that only a select few can possess the ability to be motivated by profits as expressed by increases in share value, and that, to an extent, is true: only a few shareholding employees have enough equity to see real benefit. That's only because we make it that way. If you spread out the shares over more employees and involved them more in these decisions, they would still be motivated: they would want higher profits for their own benefit. It'd just have to be expressed as some other store of value than stock shares, and this doesn't feed the ego of the executive class. Imagine Elon Musk being told he's now effectively a public servant to Tesla who has to play politics with a far larger group of employees if he wants to keep his job, and that he'd have a very limited equity advantage over anyone else at the company. He'd walk out the door and not come back.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  A society where no corporation could ever reduce employee count would cause a lot more problems than it solves. Of course many tech companies already give substantial equity to employees as part of their compensation. Maybe there are government policies to encourage this to be more wide spread, but I'm not sure what those policies would look like.

fra 3y ago

Ultimately this is about capital allocation and rates of return. Capital flows into the places where it can be best put to work. If you wish for your investments to yield above inflation, you're a card carrying member of the cult of growth. If Apple decides it will stop growing, it will plow 100% of its profits in share buybacks (I bet op loves those!) and work hard to squeeze costs down. This happens routinely under private equity ownership. It's not as fun as you'd think. The view expressed by the author is naive and shortsighted. Growth is required for society to function. If it doesn't come from Apple, it must come from somewhere else.

Upvoter33 3y ago
I agree it is shortsighted. If Apple doesn't grow, their competitors will, and soon enough they are building better things because they have more resources. But, it is irritating: sometimes you just want people to do a few things well, and not try to grow and grow and grow ...
- ganzuul 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  Just so we clear. I’m talking about Apple as an example. Saying that if Apple doesn’t grow other will is missing the point. I’m saying the entire mindset is a cancer.
colinng 3y ago
The time value of money is always more than inflation. The classic simple example is that if you need food today, the money for food is worth much more today than it is worth a year from now. Therefore to ask someone to surrender money today, they have to give you more money to return it to you next year. This isn’t the same as growth (ie you’re doing a job, but next year they expect you to make 25% more sales, or else…)
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TheGRS 3y ago

I'm tired of hearing this opinion because its overly simplistic. Anyone expressing this opinion likely would praise a company for growth through innovation. They don't hate growth, they hate companies who are scrounging for additional price value without adding intrinsic value. If Apple came out with the next device/car/service that was a big value add to our lives I'm sure this opinion doesn't come back up in that instance. Growth mindset is a good thing overall. And sometimes you get growth through pretty shitty means. I can't really throw out "growth" altogether just because a lot of companies employ accountants, MBA executives, and lawyers.

manuelmoreale 3y ago
You don’t have to guess what I’d likely think. You can just ask. I hate growth for growth sake. I hate growth when it pushes companies to do shitty things. I don’t hate growth in general. I hate it when it’s the only driving force. Growth mindset is a bit good thing overall. We might disagree on that. As a byproduct of other drivers, like innovation, sure, I’m cool with that.
- TheGRS 3y ago
  I still think its overly simplistic. One man's growth for growth sake is another man's innovation to gain some unrealized value. I'm not a huge fan of penny-pinching either, but there is good in finding alternative paths for your expenses. Sometimes its crappy for the end product, sometimes you save a million dollars a year by printing stamps instead of buying them. And a company should be expected to defend its business practices in court, but sometimes they're scummy practices that the general public disagrees with. But I find it difficult to separate these just on the idea of growth being a bad mindset. Lack of ethics or quality mindset might be the better thing to go after here, since that seems to be where most of the disagreeable actions come from.
  - manuelmoreale 3y ago
    Of course is overly simplistic. It’s a rant. I’m not trying to propose an alternative here because I’m not an idiot and I know there aren’t any. It’s human nature. If one stops doing it someone else will take their place. I just hate the state of the world in this specific context. And again, I don’t have anything against growth itself. Growth is a byproduct. I have an issue when growth becomes a motivating force. Because it pushes well intentioned people in wrong directions. The entire enshittification of the web is a testament of that. There was a time when companies, local ones, were happy to have reached a steady state. You make a product people want, you’re earning more than you’re spending, you’re employing a bunch of people and that’s fine. That entire concept seems to be forgotten because of this silly growth at all cost mindset. That’s what bothers me.

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factually 3y ago

Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a talk by Al Bartlett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY

QuadrupleA 3y ago

Totally agree. Surprised there's so much hate of this idea in the comments here. Doesn't anyone here value building things to last, contentment, quality, and having enough?

jahewson 3y ago
Sure but the anti-growth thing is a classic naive zero-sum fallacy. OP certainly thinks fondly of things built to last, and that’s admirable - but you should question the extent to which they actually value them. Let’s say OP is 30 and will buy one $3000 laptop per decade until age 70. If OP truly values things that last then they should be willing to pay at least $16000 today for a laptop with a 40 year lifespan. But that’s obviously silly! In reality OP values things that last to some extent but is willing to trade it off (newer, faster, lighter, cheaper) - they will undoubtedly choose to replace their laptop in the next 40 years. The same with quality, I can almost always offer you a higher-quality product - but at a certain point you will not be willing to pay for it.
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  I’m not expressing an anti growth mindset. Maybe it’s just me being an awful writer/communicator. Which is quite possible. I’m against growing just for the sake of growing. I’m 35 btw, so your example is not too wrong. I do value things that last. And again, I don’t have issues with price increases. And if you price me out, so be it. But if you price me out because you want to make more and more money then I’d argue that’s a shitty way to run a business.

AceJohnny2 3y ago

In a capitalist, competitive market, growth is the signal that a company is successfully adapting. "Grow or die" isn't just a rallying cry, it is a tough lesson learned from decades (centuries!) of running businesses. I agree with the author's sentiment, that such growth has a cancerous end-game, but it's important to understand that this mindset is the result of systemic pressures. It's as inevitable as the Tragedy of the Commons (1833!), but even more complicated to address. Game Theory is an exceptionally useful lens to analyze these systematic behaviors. If a company isn't growing, that means they're not adapting to the market. That leaves the opportunity open for a competitor, who will take over. Then the "ethical" original is dead, and you're left with a "cancerous growth" actor, again.

IAmGraydon 3y ago

The hedonic treadmill principle isn’t just a personal thing. It passes through the machinery of business to be amplified and expressed in an absolutely massive way. All characteristics of businesses are those of the humans that make them up. It’s in our nature to want more. The author is asking humans to stop being human.

MarcoZavala 3y ago

[dead]

tomweingarten 3y ago

https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enough/ https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enou... The late novelist Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responded – “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough.”

nutrie 3y ago

This is very simple. We grow the companies, not the other way around. It's a symptom, not a cause.

manuelmoreale 3y ago
Don’t disagree with that

rifty 3y ago

Expecting growth along a single metric like dollars while staying product-offering static is a problem once most of the energy/production/scale optimizations have been implemented. It seems fine that we should expect innovation companies to grow, as in progress, to produce new product classes and improve old ones. I personally don't hope every company is destined to become primarily a stagnant service company. Although I'm pretty sure the pressure to grow doesn't solely come from the outside-in perspective. It feels like internal politics, incentives, and the individuals desires to make their mark results in a shift in priorities in otherwise settled product lines as well. At this point it feels right to switch from calling it growth, to neutrally 'drive'. Assuming some sense of drive not only is useful, but is an necessary feature of humans producing... then if priorities are not oriented directly towards maximizing usability or the quality of product for the end user, it will result in a product being reasonably propelled away from maintaining those. And so it seems to me, it is the priorities not the existence of drive or growth that is the issue to be focused on. I feel trying to establish a culture without drive would be net counter productive.

ganzuul 3y ago
A lot of information is lost in the conversion process to money. It's a remarkably dumb way to measure progress.

ZeoVII 3y ago

Universal Paperclips comes to mind.... part of the issue is that companies peruse the goal of infinite growth, yet this stands in contrast and contradiction to the economic maxim of "wants are unlimited, but resources are finite". this relentless chase is fueled and exacerbated by the culture of "disposable" and made worse with planned obsolescence,pushing us to replace products faster than ever. We need to find ways to balance this, in order to achieve sustainable progress.

ZebrasEat 3y ago

I’ve always wondered if you can design a business plan to encompass the birth, growth, and death of a company with full transparency. It wouldn’t work as a public company, but it seems it should be possible to go after one specific goal and have everyone participating know what the end game is. Some finite wealth at the end of it. You could push whatever idea you want to a limit, then let someone else carry it further in the same way when the OG company dies.

opyate 3y ago

Title ought to have been "Endless growth is a mind cancer". When your profits aren't up 20% for the tenth year in a row, you cut costs somewhere, and it's always the workforce that suffers most, due to layoffs. Other things suffer too, like product quality (maybe using cheaper materials maybe built-in obsolescence).