Growth capitalism is a deranged fantasy for lunatics.
Year 1, your business makes a million dollars in profit. Great start!
Year 2, you make another million. Oh no! Your business is failing because you didn't make more than last year!
Okay, say year 2 you make $2 mil. Now you're profitable!
Then year 3 you make $3 mil. Oh no! Your business is failing! But wait, you made more money than last year right? Sure, but you didn't make ENOUGH more than last year so actually your business is actively tanking! Time to sell off shares and dismantle it for parts! You should have made $4 mil in profit to be profitable, you fool!
If you're not making more money every year by an ever-increasing exponent, the business is failing!
Absolute degenerate LUNACY
leftists have gotta be a bit more diligent about understanding the economic system we are criticizing. because while yes, irrational greed and lust for growth permeate capitalism wholly, there are structural material explanations for this behavior as well that illuminate more contradictions within the system as a whole which will give you a more grounded foundation to participate in conversation
businesses do not seek constant growth because of surface level ideological notions that are irrational - they seek constant growth because the international financial system of capital punishes entities that do not behave this way.
take for example the entire tech industry in America. it emerges at a time where banks are granting loans with extremely low interest rates. this allowed companies like Uber, Doordash, Facebook, etc to emerge as market disrupters operating at a loss. essentially, banks and venture capitalists gave money to tech industrialists for free (well on loan, but you can’t collect if the venture fails), speculating that these industrialists could use that money during an economic boom cycle to establish infrastructure that may or may not have value in the future. it’s like a bet. all of these companies failed to be profitable at the beginning. but, when a billion people then use Facebook, advertisers see a market and a relationship between two industrial sectors began, now data collection, AdSense, and similar services are a multi billion dollar industry. or Uber - they took loans to operate at a loss in their formative years, charging incredibly low prices for private transport that undercut the existing taxi industry. they were not profitable nor did they have a path toward being profitable UNTIL they were able to secure a significant enough share of the taxi ride market that they were a competitor (using loan-backed funding to subsidize low prices to secure that position) . and then, once they have enough recognition and market capture, they change the pricing structure toward one that actually produces a profit. this is done after taxi companies go bankrupt and consumers have no other choice, securing Uber’s future profits.
back to constant growth. the reason a business is in need of exponential profit is because they require investment. they need revenue to operate, but also an initial amount of cash to establish their existence. it costs money upfront to make a company. a loan from a bank, selling shares to investors, etc.
NOW. inflation is a constant financial force with time, and this is the motivator - every year, the exchange value of $1 is worth less and less. using money as Power, quite literally $1,000,000 in 2015 is More Powerful than $1,000,000 in 2024. inflation, interest rates, and banking regulations are determined by the government. Loans are determined by banks, and investors buy stock depending on how liquid they are (cash flow). these are the tools of government and capital in their control of the proletarian and petty bourgeois classes. this entire scheme serves to clamp down on entities that try to find a niche in the market and serve it in a static way, for example - publicly funded services. see where I am going?
so, when periods of economic depression occur such as the one we are all in presently, the government increases interest rates and banks become more withholding about loans. this is why tech laid everyone off last fall, they no longer have the milk coming in to support the fat. they are encouraged to focus solely on profitability. the time to collect has come and we are seeing if investor speculation works in their favor or not. this explains layoffs, enshittification of web services, etc. banks and the government have signaled that the time for experimentation and speculation is over, and that raw value must be realized.
in America, coupled with 501(c) laws, this serves to terminate entities that serve a market while paying their employees fairly and not really making a profit. taxes, inflation, and loans are the sword the powerful use to cut down co-ops and worker owned enterprises. In this way, the government has monopolized the concept of a service that does not generate a profit. they have structurally eliminated the ability for entities that are not the government to do this. or at least, rendered it almost impossible.
it’s not just mouth breathing upper middle class folks being greedy, or an evil cabal of venture capitalists looking for profit. it IS those things, but there is an actual system at play enforcing this structure and it’s extremely important to be aware of it, otherwise you aren’t going to be able to effectively critique and combat it. otherwise, you’re just shouting at a cloud about greedy men. and that’s not going to produce a just revolution, just a force that seeks retribution.
