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Comment by abirch | Hacker News Reader

Perpetual growth at all costs. No idea what's so bad about a mature stable product/company

It’s basically wondering why your sales aren’t going up when there are still customers to be found. Even if you saturate a market, new people are born every day, at a greater rate than they die, so one would assume you grow or fade, unless customers just like… stop buying things in a category for some reason (maybe a superior category was invented?)

The problem isn’t infinite growth in a still-growing world, it’s exactly what you posted here: Growth at all costs. The pendulum has swung too hard in favor of growth over stability. This is great for shareholders (read:everyone in America who wants to realistically retire one day) but bad for workers (read: everyone in America, regardless of whether or not they want to retire one day).

Growth will stop when nobody can buy.

"Even if you saturate a market, new people are born every day, at a greater rate than they die"

Not true.

That people are born every day, or that global population has increased?

I think the parent is saying the population for a given market.

Yes I know, and I’m purposely not giving it time because it’s a modification of the argument I’m making. As such, I’m giving him a choice between the two things I actually said and actually meant to keep the conversation on track.

If he wants to go and divide the stock market up between international and non-international companies to keep score for his own purposes, he is welcome, but it’s unrelated to the conversation he entered.

> Even if you saturate a market, new people are born every day, at a greater rate than they die, so one would assume you grow or fade, unless customers just like… stop buying things in a category for some reason

My own observation is that old people tend to spend less shit on silly things, compulsive purchases and focus on the essential. With an ageing global population I don't think one can expect infinite growth unless the category of services is focused on an older population.

Also society change and some stuff that is needed now won't be needed tomorrow. I don't think there is anything wrong with a shrinking market as long as it is gradual and slow enough that it lets people working for affected companies involved to retire and/or move.

Late-stage capitalism is addicted to ever-increasing quantities of money.

It'd be nice to imagine our society surviving our ruling classes' addiction, but I would not bet on that.

(You might read some essays by recovered addicts to get a sense of the monomania of it, and why they wouldn't about things like "mature" and "stable".)

Capitalism is a system that needs to be controlled. Setting the kitchen on fire is not late stage food preparation. Crashing a car because you drove fast on bald tires is not late stage vehicular mobility.

Yes, those sound more like "too late" stage.

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