Submitted 1 month ago by gigachad@piefed.social to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Under capitalism, it seems companies always need to grow bigger. Why can’t they just say, okay, we have 100 employees and produce a nice product for a specific market and that’s fine?
Or is this only a US megacorp thing where they need to grow to satisfy their shareholders?
Let’s ignore that most of the times the small companies get bought by the large ones.
Note that even if by all practical terms a business isn’t growing, then it’s still growing.
Part of the whole deal is that there’s an intent for the money supply to change for a roughly 2% inflation. In an oversimplified sense, the idea self be that everything gets 2% more expensive, everyone gets 2% raises, and investments at least generate 2% returns.
We’ve basically decided that we need to trick ourselves into feeling progress by making “standing still” look like growth. So if someone had flat income year over year, they actually lost in real terms.
Assume you’re saving X amount of money each month for your retirement.
Your options for storing that money is either:
Assuming you go for option 3, would you choose to invest in a company with zero growth meaning your retirement fund won’t grow, or would you choose a company that is constantly growing?
Nobody would choose to invest in a company with zero growth or which doesn’t return money back in the form of dividends.
You’re objectively better off investing in companies that grow since those are the companies that will grow your investment.
Some companies do not pursue further growth, usually because they are not confident they can. They use/harvest their profit stream to repay shareholders. A confident company can spend its cashflow on growth because it expects an ROI for doing so, and so even higher future cashflow.
We want strong markers the problem is wages, wealth distribution, uber rich billionaires who want to enslave us for an AI god or some dumb shit idfk
As a co-owner to a business, we grow because sometimes the funds from what we're already selling slow so we branch out in other directions to cover it. An answer for small businesses at least.
Ape brain usually goes “big = good” and therefore “bigger = better”. And since a bunch of other peoples ape brains have thought this before you, then now if you have a tiny business, it’s very likely that your only options are to either get trampled by giants or try and become one of them.
guy@piefed.social 1 month ago
Depends, but to meet demand seems reasonable?
Imagine you invent something splendid and life-changing. You have your company with a 100 employees but you can’t satisfy the market so you expand.
Like with the safety match.