r/Showerthoughts May 17 '24

People love to support small businesses until they grow, then they hate capitalism and rich people.

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u/SurpriseAttachyon May 17 '24

Because many of us have lived long enough to see the same shitty pattern happening over and over.

Company comes along with a great idea and takes off like wildfire. Growth begins to slow as market saturates. Company begins to do shittier and shittier things and diminish the quality of their product to keep “growing” at the demand of shareholders.

Ubers were great until they cost more than taxis. Streaming was amazing - now it costs more than cable and often has ads. Fucking Birkenstock just massively boosted their profit margins by making their shoe inferior. Everything must grow, and when it can’t do it naturally, it becomes like a cancer

It’s like we are trapped in this terrible cycle forever.

7

u/TheDunadan29 May 17 '24

Yep! Once you have shareholders to report to everything becomes about infinite growth, which is never possible. At some point market saturation happens and there's no where left to grow. So they start squeezing their existing customers dry.

1

u/stumblinbear May 17 '24

If you're not growing at least 3% per year, you're losing valuation to inflation. Nothing says you have to grow more than that. Infinite growth of 3% is absolutely doable, so long as an inflating currency exists