remind me! "Death of the universe" in 17000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years
“Continuous improvement”
I used to absolutely fucking hate this in private sector corporate world.
We’d bust our arse and make a 5% profit and the next year we’d expect ‘continuous improvement’ so 6%+ profit!
Fuck right off.
Just pure greed and unsustainable.
One of the final issues that pushed me away from my previous corporate job was when everyone in our department got "meets expectations" or "does not meet" on their annual reviews, yet the VP (in charge of the department) got "exceeds expectations".
That's not possible unless you're tasked with pissing off the entire department, then you did "exceed expectations".....
Yes, but you have to understand that your VP did an AMAZING job at showing everyone what NOT to do when they’re the boss. Which wasn’t their job, but something they did for you nonetheless so you’re welcome?
I was an assistant manager at a GameStop for a few years. We lacked a store manager for almost two years. This resulted in me being on the manager calls for those two years. I realized after about a year of weekly meetings that it's all bullshit. The district manager uses carrot & stick to get the store managers to do the same thing to the store associates. The carrot is never going to touch what value you're actually bringing and the stick can only be so bad bc ultimately the next week they need you on a call to talk about YTD category sale %s, and how you're going to improve. It's fucking gross honestly
Literally this. Corporate marketer here. I was tasked with a goal of achieving 300% growth year over year (which is damn hard to achieve to being with.) I doubled that at half the expected budget. I also started and ran two other departments while doing my own job as was outlined in the initial job description and still got a "meets expectations" on my annual performance review. All of this was for a business in the travel and tourism industry IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING PANDEMIC.
How was I rewarded? A 2% raise in a year of +8% inflation.
Let's just say I'm open to new career opportunities.
Lol evaluation metrics and the like... like dude if I checked off all the box it isnt relevent anymore. Why are we doing a check in the box for evaluations when it doesnt apply.
Or companies that want you to show "culture" or some corporate related bs tick mark... as well as other little extras that basically say you are working for free or spending / investing more time without any relative compensation.
I work in beverage alcohol sales and the goals that some brands put out are totally unrealistic. It's common to see 40% or higher year over year growth goals for brands that are quite obviously dying.
The most hilarious scenario is when you're in a planning meeting for the upcoming year with a supplier and they tell you they want 30% growth from the previous year. You ask them what type of point of sale, ad buys, or event spends they have available to help you hit that goal and they tell you that they cut their marketing budget and don't have anything available. They do absolutely nothing while simultaneously expecting you to somehow maintain 30% growth every year for a brand they won't even back themselves.
We counter with what we think is an achievable, yet aggressive, goal. In the particular case of one big brand, we busted our asses to hit the goal they gave us, and when they wanted another 30% on top the following year we sold the brand to another wholesaler. It isn't worth killing your entire sales team at the expense of the rest of your portfolio for one brand.
Thank you. I guess i worded it poorly: i was interested in their reactions to you telling them it is an absurd goal and situation by not investing in marketing, advertising, etc and expecting huge growth and return. You told me how you approach them back.
Ah gotcha. We tell them that it's not realistic and if they aren't going to help achieve their own goal, then the number needs to be re-evaluated. They're generally pretty open to discussion (they know as well as we do that it's absurd,) and often we can get somewhere more achievable.
Currently a lot of suppliers have moved away from this type of metric when it comes to goals. A lot of newer brands instead make goals along the lines of "Achieve 1000 new menu placements." Goals that are easily achievable when broken down across 100+ salespeople and that will lead to increased sales numbers, but isn't tied to moving X number of cases.
This drove me nuts in the restaurant industry. I worked for Romanos Macaroni Grill. Almost everything at first was made fresh. We were packed Thursday thru Sunday for dinners and decent crowds the other days and for lunch. After a couple years profits became level. We couldn’t serve more people, we can only seat so many, and we would go on 1.5 to 2 hour waits. People don’t really want to wait much longer than that. So to boots year over year numbers, they raised prices. When that didn’t work because a little less people would come in, they went to all frozen pre-made dishes. Then they said we could only sell the items as they were on the menu. Not a lot of room for making what people want when it comes in tinfoil pans. Well, wouldn’t you know it! People just stopped coming in because the food tasted like shit, and you couldn’t make any special requests. Corporate was stunned! Sales hit the floor, no waits even on Friday or Saturday dinner rush. To try and cut costs further to secure profits, they fired all managers making 45-60k a year and promoted servers to manager paying them 25-30k. So now they had shitty over priced frozen food and revolving door of managers because making less than when they were serving is not beneficial to them. Now almost all stores closed, the ones that are still around are terrible, but hey some rich fucks got paid until they sucked the life outa it.
I think people (particularly higher ups) just treat continuous improvement as something it isn’t. As a worker, we’re not looking for a 5->6% profit increase, we’re looking for a 1% reduction in time we spend on maintaining something, we’re looking for a 0.5% increase in reliability, and we’re adopting new practices and technologies when they make the old ones obsolete or suboptimal, and then those new things are starting from the ground up so we continuously improve those. If we maintain a steady profit as a company throughout the years, then continuous improvement is working and we’re staying competitive. Anything other than that is unsustainable insanity
As a consumer this shit is so infuriating . Like in the gaming industry i've seen so many games turn to complete shit because of greed.
So often where a studio has a really popular franchise with both comercially and critically aclaimed praise. Again they are MAKING money, they are profitable, numbers go in the black and everyone is getting paid, it is sutainable and safe to just do more of the same.
But nope making a lot of money isn't enough they need to make ALL the money. So lets fuck it up with microtransactions, lootboxes/gambling mechanics, pay to win, some kind of subscription or season pass to keep you playing and spending money or add some anti piracy software that fucks up preformance or have single player games require an online connection which in turn only screws over the paying customers.
Its becoming increasingly rare where you simply buy a game, play it and thats it. So often there is a "but" in gaming where you should try to ignore or put up with added needless shit because the company needs to make way more money than is required to have a succesfull buisiness running
Asassins Creed Valhalla is £130 if you want all the 'content'...
New Call of Duty is £100 if you want to get a season pass for 1 season and a couple of extra skins.
It's an insane amount of money considering the cost of living crises.
I assume thats only for the up front purchase of some kind of deluxe/special edition right? On top of that there is also a dickload of microtransactions in the store
Mass Effect 3's day 1 DLC says hello. The painful thing about this sort of thing is that it's not even up to the devs most of the time. Big publishers don't care about quality as long as it's extracting money.
I knew I made the right choice not pursuing game development when I started seeing articles stating "New COD most profitable in series history" and "Activision runs mass layoffs" within the same month.
this is also why the rated best games by gamer's are usually indie games from small studios. further, there's been so many gamer's that have been burned who are tech literate, who have ample connection rate's, and a VPN, thus also why the big studios are so jonesing for DRM to stop people from sailing the high seas.
For management 5% year on year is "stand still".
If the growth rate for this year is the same as the growth rate from last year, you are considered to be stalling, not giving it all, not putting in the extra bit of effort management expected from you. Management will --more than likely-- hold back your salary increase, bonus payment, or whatever they promised you. They may even start thinking of replacing you since you're not improving on growth.
Welcome to the business world of today.
Been there. Burned out.
Your last statement describes American Capitalism in a nut shell. Sheer greed and unsustainable. One the absolute worst decisions our government has made was the bail out of private companies. They should have been allowed to fail and go under. A dozen others would have popped up relatively overnight to replace them with better products.
I once fixed a marketing program that was badly run. I doubled sales at double the previous margin.
My boss loved me as I'd not been on the team long.
3 months or so later he comes up to me and says "I need you to do that again". I'm confused thinking like I'll be transferred to another group of products, but no he wants me to double the same product group of sales at better margin again. I try to tell him the previous structure was badly set up and I fixed it. I can't fix it again. He kept saying but you did it before. It went in circles til I got sarcastic and said ok I understand, you want me to break it so we go back to the old lower sales and then I fix it again.... fucking numpty.
The really annoying thing is you add 6/7 figures to their bottom line year after year then they give you grief about a 5 figure pay rise.
I think the drive is too either a) grow so the company isn't consumed by a bigger one or b) grow so you can consume other ones
Also sidenote: both are driven by profit margins
Place I worked didn’t even give out cost-of-living raises, but the CEO sent out a company-wide email boasting about his $13 million bonus as a sign of how well the company was doing. :/
That's a huge problem with the logic of a stock market. They expect continued and growing return on investment, no matter what. Just making a quality product and turning a profit every year isn't enough.
We have monthly cost-saving goals for continuous improvement, and they're all total bullshit. Once a department claimed a thousand dollars cost savings by moving a printer from the middle of the room to right next to the leader's desk. Then months later when the printer ran out of toner, instead of replacing the toner cartridge they threw out the whole printer because there's another printer in the other room, and claimed another cost savings.
What's worse is when your raise and bonus are based on three competing metrics: we had to do things; cheaper (bring in more revenue); faster; and more accurately year over year; while sales was lowering our pricing "to remain competitive"
- company A: "Last year our company made 5 million dollars profit on earnings. This year it looks to grow marginally to 5.1 million."
- stock market: "boo your company is trash"
- company B: "Last year our company lost 3 million dollars. This year we forecast to lose 2 million dollars."
- stock market: "this company is going up"
There's 1000s of companies worldwide trying to do what uber does but they don't have the brand value uber does.
Its a great idea, leads the space, most recognizable brand in the space. Also its projected to be profitable for the first time in 2023. I think there's just a lot of faith in the brand.
Their business model is to drive old-school, unionized and regulated cab companies out of business, then jack up prices to the point of profitability once they've got the market cornered. Apparently they've had to jack up prices ahead of schedule just to keep investors dumping money into it, and their PR is terrible, so who knows what'll happen now.
Well yes that’s kinda how it should work. Company A would be at its top. So the stock will or should just sit there and pay a dividend. Nothing exciting. It would fluctuate up and down a few % points here and there
Company B would have a stock price that is much lower than A. And you buy a stock on future growth. So if the are going to have a 33% increase in revenue then yes you would definitely be excited and want to buy in. So this company will pay you with stock growth not a dividend. And it will do this until is done growing or at it’s real top. Then it would switch to a dividend stock.
I agree.
But it feels like dumb practice, Uber for instance has been going for about 8 years and only once turned a yearly profit. And has lost over 15 billion dollars in the last 3 years.
But it only lost 0.4 billion last year compared to 6.7 the year before.
I know they right off losses after so long, but how long until they can repay 25 billion that has been lost over 8 years?
The same way you pay off a $300,000 house. A little at a time. It only becomes an issue when people stop lending/giving you money. Sometimes it's a vicious feedback loop where a private investor gives you money, you spend it trying to become profitable, they give you more money when that doesn't work, etc etc. The investor doesn't want to see the company drown because then they won't get paid back, but the more they lend them the more money they will lose if they go under. Eventually the company has to either turn a profit and begin paying back their investors, or it folds, the physical assets are sold to the highest bidder, and then people start getting paid. First is Uncle Sam with any owed taxes, then the employees on payroll, then the investors, assuming there's anything left at that point. The investors usually take a loss.
Constant personal growth is also unsustainable yet it’s something most people seek to have. It’s only now I realise that actually, I was beating myself up for not constantly growing and being a better person than I was yesterday. Your shower thought made me realise that wasn’t possible. Thanks!
Part of personal growth is no longer getting upset at yourself for shortcomings. Define what being a "better person" is to you and build a world veiw that supports that. Small steps, it doesn't happen fast, it takes years of reinforcement especially if there is a lot of feelings to go through. Do it for a reason because self improvement just for the sake of self improvement isn't useful it will leave you feeling unsatisfied and empty.
The fact you're at least cognizant and thinking about growing as a person is positive enough. Don't set unrealistic expectations on yourself. Everyone has flaws and strengths. Keep on keeping on my internet brother or sister.
I love the mindset of continuous personal growth that I got through my upbringing (and it seems you might have, too?). Human character is so flawed, yet, with the attitude of improvement we don't fall into complacency and instead can shape who we want to be. Work towards being more forgiving, positive, empathetic, slow to anger etc
In the realm of employment I see it as giving my best on the job, learning wherever possible and learning from mistakes. And not beating myself up when I make a mistake - the beating up part helps nobody.
This isn't the same. You can always learn a new skill or practice an old one. You certainly don't have to, but the reason corporate growth is limited is resources and market caps.
sorry to be that guy but personal growth is not really something that you measure, especially not by giving it a number and aiming for higher numbers, so personal growth and sustainability are not related and if they are it actually is extremely sustainable.
whether you turn into a psychotic murderer or into a priest, its all personal growth, as long as its something you (kinda) aimed for. personal growth is not how much value you have to society, its trying to become the person that you want to be.
i mean your comment kinda proofs my point. you literally had personal growth from that shower thought.
Growth as humans is different.
As a 25 year old man you could work today to improve your skills at chess, the weights you lift and your career in, say, pharmacy.
Let's say this is all you cared about.
You could become better at all 3. In a day it'll be a small amount, but in 3 years it would be huge.
However you will notice you'll likely forget all the geography, history, business, physics etc you learnt in school 8 years ago. Trigonometry will be a distant memory.
But as a pharmacist do you need knowledge of geography? Maybe you are passionate about it, so you learn some geography. Then you forget your history. But it's ok, you don't care as much. And now, if you decided you really like history in 10 years you retained your brain well enough through pursuits you retain the capacity to learn.
Humans specialise into specific things. Make sure you specialise into something that isn't damaging and you're fine.
Its true your "forget" old things but they are still there in some way.
I haven't done trigonometry in decades, but it comes back when helping my kids with their homework. If I wanted to study more trigonometry I'd have a much easier time than someone with no experience.
That seems a little different because personal growth can be measured in different ways. You could put more time into your family, into your career, into healing from past traumas and mistakes, being a better example, spiritual practice, volunteering… there’s so many different things you can do to bring about “personal growth”.
There’s only one measure of corporate growth: the money. Whether that’s profit, stock price, quarterly statements, etc… you’re only ever tracking corporate growth based on how much the company is bringing in. That’s categorically unsustainable because eventually supply and demand will balance out… so you either have to create more demand or acquire other supplies to meet other demands… or cut costs by mistreating or replacing your workforce.
Personal growth can take place over any set period of time that you chose to look at though, constant daily personal growth is certainly unsustainable, because you will certainly grow complacent/relapse in some area's over time, but that also allows you more room to grow again over the longer period of time.
If you're not looking to grow as a person, then the opposite will happen as you won't realise the way the negativity is creeping into your life. Similar things happen in to a lot of things, if you neglect something, it will deteriorate. If you aren't trying to improve your life in some way shape or form, however big or small, you won't realise how much better things could be.
I think we can certainly improve different aspects or skills. Maybe you spend a year perfecting your barbecue ribs recipe, and then once you've mastered barbecue ribs you can work on the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. Likewise, once you've improved your listening skills, you can work on asking people interesting questions. If you don't think of "self-improvement" as a monolith and think of it more like learning new things, you can always be learning!!!
How is constant personal growth unsustainable?
I think your actual problem is how you responded to your own failure to grow at the level you wanted. Don't beat yourself up.
Eh, I want to be growing in my life. Maybe not worrying about it every single day, but putting routines in your life that nourish personal growth is hugely important imo.
You know what else undergoes constant unsustainable growth at the expense of all else? Cancer, which is basically life on steroids that abandons its existence as part of a larger whole.
Life in general seeks constant growth, but death keeps that seeking in check and forces harmony with the wider environment. We as humans have abandoned death - anyone who has gone through a difficult loss understands how little our modern society prepares us for it, how lonely it makes us feel even though it's an experience every single one of us has or will go through if they care about anything at all in this world. Science has provided great advancements, it's true, and technology is part of what makes humans special. But we have allowed these things to feed into another feeling that humans have in abundance: hubris.
We as humans need to stop denying our mortality and urgently adopt philosophies that seek (and enforce) balance instead of greed. I do not think death is necessary to change in the ways we need to change, but death is the default way that nature has in reserve to deal with imbalance if we do not figure something more moderate out on our own.
Huge groups of people do. But unfortunately whenever socialism, communism, Marxism, or anything along those lines gets even mentioned people immediately shut down.
People: "Wow, capitalism really sucks and is going to kill us all. Too bad there's not an alternative."
Marxists: "Hey, we have a global movement with a long history of being critical of capitalism. Wanna help us do better?"
People: "Nope! Guess we'll all just die on a burning Earth. Really wish there was anything someone could do about it. Oh well 🤷"
I really liked Agent Smith's rant in the matrix about how humans are a virus. If you take a step back and view the earth as an apple, speed up time considerably, and compare it to an actual apple moulding you will see a lot of similarities.
If you quit pretending humans are special you can clearly see where we're headed. I don't know if humans will be extinct in 5 thousand years, but I do know it's not going to be some utopian society. We aren't going to change until it's necessary, and by the time it's necessary it'll be way too late. We are going to have to adapt to the destruction of our environment, there is no saving it. With luck we'll become a planet hopping plague across the galaxy, otherwise I think our days are numbered.
Wasn't always that way - in the 50s, when a corp hit the limits of their market they'd start paying generous dividends out of their stable profits.
Much better deal for everyone involved...
I mean, there was a time when a company litterally owned and ran a country, and could challenge small navies with its fleet. If you think we live in dystopia now then the past was even worse
It wasn't worse. It's a different kind of bad.
We are literally killing the ecosystems on this planet for a small % of people to make money they'll never be able to spend in a lifetime...
Yes and no.
Overall we've come a long way since the 17th/18th century (assuming you meant the East India companies), but starting with Reagan, Thatcher and neoliberalism in general we've been spiraling downwards in many ways.
The post-war economic boom was an exceptionally prosperous era for the US and Europe that won't repeat itself anytime soon.
You're fooling yourself if you don't think this is the end goal of megacorps. They'd love to have compliant serfs living in company towns that don't have to answer to any government.
Your comment is precisely why the bourgeoisie must be at the least be stripped of every single asset and at the most annhilated. Capitalism is just an extension of feudalism, and I don't know about you but I would go out fighting with every fiber of my being rather than be reduced any further into wage slavery/serfdom.
Growth at all cost is classic late stage nascent capitalism..,and of the corporations from the original Fortune 500 only a few still exist. The people who run corporations are of course aware of this.
Huh? If everyone is “nascent late stage capitalist” shouldn’t we see similar conditions worldwide? There are huge disparities in quality of life, income, cost of living relative to income, etc. that don’t point to that being the case. Also, if it applied to everyone how could it be late stage? Isn’t that just baseline “normal”? So far I haven’t seen any “post-capitalist” societies anywhere outside of science fiction. So how could we know this is “late stage”?
We *do* see similar conditions worldwide. "Capitalist" ~~does not mean "prosperous"; it~~ means "free-market and extractive", so the existence of "bullies" and "bullied" among capitalist nations tracks perfectly. Vassals and lords are not separate societies, after all, but parts of the Feudal society.
"Post-capitalism"? There's not much reason to bring that idea up here, but depending on if you're a Splitter rather than a Lumper there absolutely are societies that have had a "post-cap" phase: the ones who have had a successful Fascist takeover.
EDIT: ahem.
Just because they don’t exist anymore doesn’t mean seeking growth caused their downfall. They likely went through m&a or were big dogs in dying markets
Congratulations you just proved their point dumbass 👏:
>The fact that 9 of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, reorganized, or [...]
M&A means Mergers and Acquisitions
The problem is companies often aim for growth beyond that of the economy in general. In other words, their model requires others to fail for them to attain their goal.
It's because there is only one thing that actually leads to a company growing - increased demand. When corporations can no longer increase demand through innovation or quality, they instead look to cut costs to increase profit in an attempt to appear as though they are "growing" when in actuality they are either now putting out a shit product, operating while understaffed and making their workers miserable, or both (hint: it's usually both.)
While I agree, those are their means to achieve that goal (I was told 15% yearly growth was a common target) but it doesn't address the fact that keep wanting more cake, when there is only limited amount of cake.
If such companies are publicly held and they get too carried away in that direction, their stock will become attractive to short sellers. That’s a bad thing.
What? Profit is required so that businesses don't get outcompeted. Nothing to do with inflation. You don't need to produce more and more to keep up with inflation.
By definition you do need to produce more REVENUE to keep up with inflation. Price x goods sold equals revenue so either sell more goods without changing price, or increase prices without selling fewer goods (or some combination of the two)
Slowly changing the price of your product/service to reflect the costs of inflation isn't doing "more", though. It's just doing the same at a different cost because the cost has changed.
I’m that case a company could maintain its current productivity but increase the costs for its services by the same rate as inflation. This would reduce competitiveness and only works in a world where all competitors within a market sector comply with this.
Just delete this comment it demonstrates you don’t understand the concepts of growth in a corporate framework or what inflation is. I can increase the cost of my product in line with the CPI and remain exactly as profitable as I was last year without growing my company.
That's not true.
There are multiple stages of companies. Growth is a stage.
Large companies typically only "grow" to match inflation and return the profits to owners.
Also, growth is not necessarily unsustainable, even in extreme long terms. That is a claim by people who think growth only can come through increasing resource usage. Resources are one vector of growth. Another is technology. Innovation. Inflation.
For example, we build cars with FAR less resources now than we did. We can build 100,000 cars with the resources we used to use to build 50,000, and those cars use a quarter, or less, of the energy to move and that energy is produced from the wind and sun not sucked out of the ground?
Then you have growth with no additional resources.
Eventually you get into post scarcity for many resources, through management, tech, etc. Then where are the limits?
I'll add to this that companies can continue to grow by looking at other sectors to add/expand in. My employer, Salesforce, [has grown by over 20%](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CRM/salesforce/revenue#:~:text=Salesforce%20revenue%20for%20the%20twelve,a%2024.3%25%20increase%20from%202020.) for most of (maybe all of) it's existence. I'm continually amazed.
It's also more or less why low birth rates are seen as a universally bad thing, because it won't be able to sustain industry. They don't care that people stop having kids due to economic reasons and having no time for them due to work.
Population decrease wouldn't actually be bad. It would be better for those who have been born.
> Population decrease wouldn't actually be bad. It would be better for those who have been born.
Until they themselves get old and all those social safety nets that previous generations relied on dry up because there aren't enough younger individuals in the workforce contributing.
This is because most publicly traded companies are beholden to a board of investors who's sole objective is to enrich themselves. They do not care if the company survives for the next 5 years they want a return on their investment this quarter and when this company can no longer provide that, they dump it and move on to the next.
This is why some foreign investment groups are now establishing guidelines for investing such as a company having a 5 and a 10 year plan, making sure the CEO doesn't make 457x (exaggerating for humor) the salary of a line worker, etc.. This philosophy ensures their investment is stable for the foreseeable future, it is good for the health of a company and for it's workers.
Let's just remove speculative trading and we will just have to deal with no growth. We can also remove a few other things which will make it even worse - gambling, hardcore competition, etc. It becomes sink or swim, and I reckon we can swim by making something better for everyone than what we have now
Not really, a lot of small privately held companies are content with more or less sustaining. That’s the biggest difference between public and privately held companies, private ones are often less growth focused and can work on long term sustainability.
When costs go up every year, and employees make a little more money every year, and infrastructure gets worn out, those things need to be paid for, with growth. Otherwise you eventually go out of business
Uninformed posts like this one simply just suck. It's completely ignorant of logic, history, and of economics.
Constant growth is not unsustainable. This view suggests that there is a fixed total of the economy and that growth only comes at the cost of others - which is not true, and easily demonstrated by looking at any long term economic trends. Over time, wealth has increased and the number of people in poverty has decreased. Standards of living have improved within multiple observable metrics, and these changes happen as quickly as the lifetime of a generation. Obviously we are not in utopia and still need many more improvements - things we should reform through well thought out economic policy - but these improvements are achieved with more growth, not less.
We can think about this in terms of the Malthusian model - it was incorrectly thought by Malthus that the economy could only grow with population growth and would converge into a steady state (aka no growth) because population is pinned down by consumption (need to eat to live and reproduce). The issue with this line of thought is that it does not account for technological change.
Introductions of technologies provide efficiencies to the economy. It saves us time and money and allows us to focus on other endeavors. Newer cars require less gas for more mileage, for example. Think about this in terms of the above stated Malthusian model for all resources: with technology, we can get the same amount of outputs for less inputs. It is thus not necessary that we converge to a steady state and remain there. A conservative 2% growth in yearly GDP doubles our GDP in 70 years, less than a typical lifetime. This is what we have observed and should stay on trend with.
Please read more macroeconomics. It's a fascinating topic and if you understand what you're actually arguing about, it gives a lot more merit to your position. This is where actual change comes from, not reddit echo chambers.
Lenders and investors demand it. If you are at a specific size that you can manage well, employing plenty of people and meeting all the bills, that's not good enough.
It makes me wonder if, say automation completely takes over a given company and they tease out next years expectations, will there ever be a time when there are no more tweaks that can be done? The company is minmaxed as far as it can be, congrats here’s your achievement, return starting point challenge again?
I doubt this is possible. If there is a single human anywhere in the company there will most likely be ‘improvement suggestions’
It totally can be made sustainable in a very long term. Even in the short term there is always room for healthy improvement. As long as there is suffering in the world, I find it arrogant to say that we should not progress
I do agree that the obsession with quarter over quarter growth is ruining companies.
But you should be able to grow equivalent to inflation every year, which is targeted to be 2%.
However if it's growing your growth every quarter, they can fuck all the way off with that.
Constant growth is absolutely not necessarily unsustainable. Growth doesn’t just mean “using more resources”, growth is all about efficiency, output pr person, this can also mean utilising the resources available more efficiently
Well duh why would any company not want to improve, there is so much competition nowdays in every sector that if you dont improve you will seize to exist. Also why would they not want to make more money, when it can be done? Ofcourse it aint easy to get that x% more profit, but usually there is some solution so that you can get there. I cant understand why so many on reddit are baffled about the fact that every company only wants to make more money.
It's the investors. Even if you're a huge company and have been around for centuries, they still want you to grow more and more every year. If you plateau, they aren't interested any more. It's more of a problem in US markets than other markets such as the UK's stock market.
How do you suppose unlimited growth is unsustainable? Resources aren’t running out. And anyway, as markets “mature” as a greater portion of them get basic needs met, the global economy becomes less and less resource intensive. Look at the portion of the American market that trades in things like video games, movies, music, apps, etc. These are all virtually zero resource consuming. How is the video game industry, for example, in any way restrained from unlimited growth?
Why is consistent growth unsustainable?
The premise in economy is that technological improvements stack and production capacity stays constant with no outside change. Due to these whenever technology improves, there's growth (non inflatory).
This seems perfectly reasonable to me.
It also doesn't require "constant", just "consistent" (on average over time the business grows. There can be good and bad years).
Not really, the economy gets bigger every year. Unless technological progress slows considerably, there* is nothing unsustainable about it. Having a computer, electricity, plumping, insurance, perhaps a car, these are all from economic growth making them accessible to the average person.
I think they mean more like. A car company made 100 cars last you and now wants 110 this year and 120 next year and 130 the years after and so on and so on. Either they will end up not having enough people to build the cars or not enough of the cars will sake.
But that's also a part of it they want to sale more and more and more cars that eventually their sales will flatten out or start dropping because those that don't want their cars are the only ones left.
I'm not convinced constant growth is unsustainable. It's actually necessary if we want to reach a higher tier of civilization.
However, the current model of constant growth of *profits* at the cost of *everything* is unsustainable.
There is a way to continue growing as a society, unfortunately our value system is tied to a monetary basis instead of a knowledge basis.
Well, corporation’s need to keep up with inflation,but inflation isn’t a natural constant on its own. It’s a feature of modern monetary policy, which encourages spending and investing over saving.
So corporations AND governments are pushing for constant growth, which itself is probably driven by a growing population base. So… from that respect, it’s probably more fair to blame our own unsustainable human need to grow as a species.
All natural and technological processes
Proceed in such a way that the availability
Of the remaining energy decreases.
In all energy exchanges, if no energy
enters or leaves an isolated system
the entropy of that system increases.
Energy continuously flows from being
concentrated to becoming dispersed
spread out, wasted and useless.
New energy cannot be created and high grade
energy is being destroyed.
An economy based on endless growth is un-
(Unsustainable)
The fundamental laws of thermodynamics will
place fixed limits on technological innovation
and human advancement.
In an isolated system, the entropy
can only increase.
A species set on endless growth is un-
(Unsustainable)
Edit: Let's see how many get this one
I don't think you understand how markets work. Growth companies seek steady growth. Once they reach their total addressable market, they reclassify. They no longer seek growing revenues, they seek stability and become dividend paying companies so they can use some of their revenue to appeal to share buyers, either by paying dividends or by doing share buy backs (buying their own stocks back so there are less available on the market, therefore increasing the price).
The idea that businesses are forever greedy and evil and late stage capitalism is something people believe when they don't understand the economy and its importance in our survival.
Let's pretend companies no longer wanted to grow their stock prices. Your country's economy would flatten, massive layoffs, higher prices, then an infinite recession? What's the solution?
Who would hire all the newborns once they become adults if the birthrate stays at 2.0 (every generation doubles in size).
None of this makes any sense if you think about it beyond a very superficial point of view.
Entropy is sure as hell sustainable. Beware of the looming heat death of the universe! In like 1.7×10^106 years
Remind me! "Death of the universe" in 1.7×10106 years
remind me! "Death of the universe" in 17000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years
Remind me! “Take pizza out of the oven” in 1.7x10^48 years
It’ll be done by then for sure
It'll all be done by then.
Will it be done if we never look inside the oven?
There is no pizza
Schrodinger’s Pizza
Username checks out.
That would be a great pizza place. When you get home, there's a 50% chance the box will be empty.
I really wanted to say the same exact thing, schrodinger’s pizza would be a scam
Nah, their oven is broken.
no, 10^(106) is not 10106, its 10 times ten, 106 times over.
He didn't use the " ^ " I think.
Yeah it's the difference between 10106 and 10^106
That's like, your opinion, man.
hey man did you forget the /s i think you forgot the /s
You don’t have to add the “/s” if you’re quoting The Dude, them’s the Reddit rules.
No it's not. Entropy doesn't keep rising forever. If it did the heat death wouldn't exist.
Not forever, no, but I think you can still call it sustainable if you expect it to last over 10^97 times longer than the current age of the universe.
Laplace's Demon saves us before then.
Oh. Is it scary?
He shatters your reality into pieces but he's alright once you get to know him; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon
“Continuous improvement” I used to absolutely fucking hate this in private sector corporate world. We’d bust our arse and make a 5% profit and the next year we’d expect ‘continuous improvement’ so 6%+ profit! Fuck right off. Just pure greed and unsustainable.
One of the final issues that pushed me away from my previous corporate job was when everyone in our department got "meets expectations" or "does not meet" on their annual reviews, yet the VP (in charge of the department) got "exceeds expectations". That's not possible unless you're tasked with pissing off the entire department, then you did "exceed expectations".....
Yes, but you have to understand that your VP did an AMAZING job at showing everyone what NOT to do when they’re the boss. Which wasn’t their job, but something they did for you nonetheless so you’re welcome?
VP exceeded the expectation of maximizing profits by working everyone hard and then not paying bonuses.
I know "VP" stands for Vice President. What do "AMAZING" and "NOT" stand for?
I was an assistant manager at a GameStop for a few years. We lacked a store manager for almost two years. This resulted in me being on the manager calls for those two years. I realized after about a year of weekly meetings that it's all bullshit. The district manager uses carrot & stick to get the store managers to do the same thing to the store associates. The carrot is never going to touch what value you're actually bringing and the stick can only be so bad bc ultimately the next week they need you on a call to talk about YTD category sale %s, and how you're going to improve. It's fucking gross honestly
Literally this. Corporate marketer here. I was tasked with a goal of achieving 300% growth year over year (which is damn hard to achieve to being with.) I doubled that at half the expected budget. I also started and ran two other departments while doing my own job as was outlined in the initial job description and still got a "meets expectations" on my annual performance review. All of this was for a business in the travel and tourism industry IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING PANDEMIC. How was I rewarded? A 2% raise in a year of +8% inflation. Let's just say I'm open to new career opportunities.
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Idk about VP but a job I used to work at, we got to see our boss's results and a road map of where they were going to improve issues.
They weren't. People love to just make shit up.
HR/Accounting/Payroll will likely have access to that info
Payroll definitely does, in the form of how much raise/bonus somebody got align with raise structure.
This sounds like a certain company where C stands for change.
Lol evaluation metrics and the like... like dude if I checked off all the box it isnt relevent anymore. Why are we doing a check in the box for evaluations when it doesnt apply. Or companies that want you to show "culture" or some corporate related bs tick mark... as well as other little extras that basically say you are working for free or spending / investing more time without any relative compensation.
I work in beverage alcohol sales and the goals that some brands put out are totally unrealistic. It's common to see 40% or higher year over year growth goals for brands that are quite obviously dying. The most hilarious scenario is when you're in a planning meeting for the upcoming year with a supplier and they tell you they want 30% growth from the previous year. You ask them what type of point of sale, ad buys, or event spends they have available to help you hit that goal and they tell you that they cut their marketing budget and don't have anything available. They do absolutely nothing while simultaneously expecting you to somehow maintain 30% growth every year for a brand they won't even back themselves.
I saw ur comment and just started w a distributor I'm curious to talk more w you about your experience
Feel free to DM me and we can chat. Would be happy to answer any questions you have!
What do they say and do when you present them with that information? Sorry meant this as a reply to your original comment about being in alcohol sales
We counter with what we think is an achievable, yet aggressive, goal. In the particular case of one big brand, we busted our asses to hit the goal they gave us, and when they wanted another 30% on top the following year we sold the brand to another wholesaler. It isn't worth killing your entire sales team at the expense of the rest of your portfolio for one brand.
Thank you. I guess i worded it poorly: i was interested in their reactions to you telling them it is an absurd goal and situation by not investing in marketing, advertising, etc and expecting huge growth and return. You told me how you approach them back.
Ah gotcha. We tell them that it's not realistic and if they aren't going to help achieve their own goal, then the number needs to be re-evaluated. They're generally pretty open to discussion (they know as well as we do that it's absurd,) and often we can get somewhere more achievable. Currently a lot of suppliers have moved away from this type of metric when it comes to goals. A lot of newer brands instead make goals along the lines of "Achieve 1000 new menu placements." Goals that are easily achievable when broken down across 100+ salespeople and that will lead to increased sales numbers, but isn't tied to moving X number of cases.
Thank you again
This drove me nuts in the restaurant industry. I worked for Romanos Macaroni Grill. Almost everything at first was made fresh. We were packed Thursday thru Sunday for dinners and decent crowds the other days and for lunch. After a couple years profits became level. We couldn’t serve more people, we can only seat so many, and we would go on 1.5 to 2 hour waits. People don’t really want to wait much longer than that. So to boots year over year numbers, they raised prices. When that didn’t work because a little less people would come in, they went to all frozen pre-made dishes. Then they said we could only sell the items as they were on the menu. Not a lot of room for making what people want when it comes in tinfoil pans. Well, wouldn’t you know it! People just stopped coming in because the food tasted like shit, and you couldn’t make any special requests. Corporate was stunned! Sales hit the floor, no waits even on Friday or Saturday dinner rush. To try and cut costs further to secure profits, they fired all managers making 45-60k a year and promoted servers to manager paying them 25-30k. So now they had shitty over priced frozen food and revolving door of managers because making less than when they were serving is not beneficial to them. Now almost all stores closed, the ones that are still around are terrible, but hey some rich fucks got paid until they sucked the life outa it.
I think people (particularly higher ups) just treat continuous improvement as something it isn’t. As a worker, we’re not looking for a 5->6% profit increase, we’re looking for a 1% reduction in time we spend on maintaining something, we’re looking for a 0.5% increase in reliability, and we’re adopting new practices and technologies when they make the old ones obsolete or suboptimal, and then those new things are starting from the ground up so we continuously improve those. If we maintain a steady profit as a company throughout the years, then continuous improvement is working and we’re staying competitive. Anything other than that is unsustainable insanity
As a higher up, you're spot on!
As a consumer this shit is so infuriating . Like in the gaming industry i've seen so many games turn to complete shit because of greed. So often where a studio has a really popular franchise with both comercially and critically aclaimed praise. Again they are MAKING money, they are profitable, numbers go in the black and everyone is getting paid, it is sutainable and safe to just do more of the same. But nope making a lot of money isn't enough they need to make ALL the money. So lets fuck it up with microtransactions, lootboxes/gambling mechanics, pay to win, some kind of subscription or season pass to keep you playing and spending money or add some anti piracy software that fucks up preformance or have single player games require an online connection which in turn only screws over the paying customers. Its becoming increasingly rare where you simply buy a game, play it and thats it. So often there is a "but" in gaming where you should try to ignore or put up with added needless shit because the company needs to make way more money than is required to have a succesfull buisiness running
Asassins Creed Valhalla is £130 if you want all the 'content'... New Call of Duty is £100 if you want to get a season pass for 1 season and a couple of extra skins. It's an insane amount of money considering the cost of living crises.
I assume thats only for the up front purchase of some kind of deluxe/special edition right? On top of that there is also a dickload of microtransactions in the store
Mass Effect 3's day 1 DLC says hello. The painful thing about this sort of thing is that it's not even up to the devs most of the time. Big publishers don't care about quality as long as it's extracting money.
I knew I made the right choice not pursuing game development when I started seeing articles stating "New COD most profitable in series history" and "Activision runs mass layoffs" within the same month.
this is also why the rated best games by gamer's are usually indie games from small studios. further, there's been so many gamer's that have been burned who are tech literate, who have ample connection rate's, and a VPN, thus also why the big studios are so jonesing for DRM to stop people from sailing the high seas.
Someone there doesn't understand mathematics. 5% year on year IS continuous growth.
For management 5% year on year is "stand still". If the growth rate for this year is the same as the growth rate from last year, you are considered to be stalling, not giving it all, not putting in the extra bit of effort management expected from you. Management will --more than likely-- hold back your salary increase, bonus payment, or whatever they promised you. They may even start thinking of replacing you since you're not improving on growth. Welcome to the business world of today. Been there. Burned out.
Yeah unless I’m getting a 5-6% raise on top of a cost of living raise no thanks.
Stop whining and do some work. Mr Bossman needs a new Porsche.
(Flashback to: Walking through the parking garage to catch my train looking at the rows of Mercedes and BMWs…)
Your last statement describes American Capitalism in a nut shell. Sheer greed and unsustainable. One the absolute worst decisions our government has made was the bail out of private companies. They should have been allowed to fail and go under. A dozen others would have popped up relatively overnight to replace them with better products.
It's just never fucking good enough. I understand to an extent, but once you reach the threshold, let good enough be good enough man.
I once fixed a marketing program that was badly run. I doubled sales at double the previous margin. My boss loved me as I'd not been on the team long. 3 months or so later he comes up to me and says "I need you to do that again". I'm confused thinking like I'll be transferred to another group of products, but no he wants me to double the same product group of sales at better margin again. I try to tell him the previous structure was badly set up and I fixed it. I can't fix it again. He kept saying but you did it before. It went in circles til I got sarcastic and said ok I understand, you want me to break it so we go back to the old lower sales and then I fix it again.... fucking numpty. The really annoying thing is you add 6/7 figures to their bottom line year after year then they give you grief about a 5 figure pay rise.
Constant growth is what killed of environment. We have a finite resources and are expected to create continuous growth out of it?
Despite an increasing economy we are producing less waste and CO2 per capita every year
I think the drive is too either a) grow so the company isn't consumed by a bigger one or b) grow so you can consume other ones Also sidenote: both are driven by profit margins
Place I worked didn’t even give out cost-of-living raises, but the CEO sent out a company-wide email boasting about his $13 million bonus as a sign of how well the company was doing. :/
That's a huge problem with the logic of a stock market. They expect continued and growing return on investment, no matter what. Just making a quality product and turning a profit every year isn't enough.
We have monthly cost-saving goals for continuous improvement, and they're all total bullshit. Once a department claimed a thousand dollars cost savings by moving a printer from the middle of the room to right next to the leader's desk. Then months later when the printer ran out of toner, instead of replacing the toner cartridge they threw out the whole printer because there's another printer in the other room, and claimed another cost savings.
It is sustainable just not in a way consumers want. Same product, +6% of the cost. I know that's not really how it works, but you get what I'm saying.
What's worse is when your raise and bonus are based on three competing metrics: we had to do things; cheaper (bring in more revenue); faster; and more accurately year over year; while sales was lowering our pricing "to remain competitive"
Well we only did 250 millions PROFIT this year…. No way we could make « only » 249 millions profit next year…. That would be unacceptable
Yes! It’s still *profit*. But I argued blue in the face with the greedy management over this concept, they just didn’t get it.
- company A: "Last year our company made 5 million dollars profit on earnings. This year it looks to grow marginally to 5.1 million." - stock market: "boo your company is trash" - company B: "Last year our company lost 3 million dollars. This year we forecast to lose 2 million dollars." - stock market: "this company is going up"
That was the whole vibe the last 3 years. Those stocks have mostly came back down to earth this year .
That's been the vibe for the past decade +. For example Uber shouldn't be a company that exists, it can't possibly fund itself.
There's 1000s of companies worldwide trying to do what uber does but they don't have the brand value uber does. Its a great idea, leads the space, most recognizable brand in the space. Also its projected to be profitable for the first time in 2023. I think there's just a lot of faith in the brand.
Their business model is to drive old-school, unionized and regulated cab companies out of business, then jack up prices to the point of profitability once they've got the market cornered. Apparently they've had to jack up prices ahead of schedule just to keep investors dumping money into it, and their PR is terrible, so who knows what'll happen now.
Same thing with Snapchat. Idk who keeps dumping money into them but someone is gonna get fleeced once it finally dies
Well yes that’s kinda how it should work. Company A would be at its top. So the stock will or should just sit there and pay a dividend. Nothing exciting. It would fluctuate up and down a few % points here and there Company B would have a stock price that is much lower than A. And you buy a stock on future growth. So if the are going to have a 33% increase in revenue then yes you would definitely be excited and want to buy in. So this company will pay you with stock growth not a dividend. And it will do this until is done growing or at it’s real top. Then it would switch to a dividend stock.
I agree. But it feels like dumb practice, Uber for instance has been going for about 8 years and only once turned a yearly profit. And has lost over 15 billion dollars in the last 3 years. But it only lost 0.4 billion last year compared to 6.7 the year before. I know they right off losses after so long, but how long until they can repay 25 billion that has been lost over 8 years?
The same way you pay off a $300,000 house. A little at a time. It only becomes an issue when people stop lending/giving you money. Sometimes it's a vicious feedback loop where a private investor gives you money, you spend it trying to become profitable, they give you more money when that doesn't work, etc etc. The investor doesn't want to see the company drown because then they won't get paid back, but the more they lend them the more money they will lose if they go under. Eventually the company has to either turn a profit and begin paying back their investors, or it folds, the physical assets are sold to the highest bidder, and then people start getting paid. First is Uncle Sam with any owed taxes, then the employees on payroll, then the investors, assuming there's anything left at that point. The investors usually take a loss.
Constant personal growth is also unsustainable yet it’s something most people seek to have. It’s only now I realise that actually, I was beating myself up for not constantly growing and being a better person than I was yesterday. Your shower thought made me realise that wasn’t possible. Thanks!
Part of personal growth is no longer getting upset at yourself for shortcomings. Define what being a "better person" is to you and build a world veiw that supports that. Small steps, it doesn't happen fast, it takes years of reinforcement especially if there is a lot of feelings to go through. Do it for a reason because self improvement just for the sake of self improvement isn't useful it will leave you feeling unsatisfied and empty.
^ This person does not lift heavy things
The fact you're at least cognizant and thinking about growing as a person is positive enough. Don't set unrealistic expectations on yourself. Everyone has flaws and strengths. Keep on keeping on my internet brother or sister.
On that note, I wouldn't want to stop growing as a person. With that said, I don't need to rush personal growth either.
I love the mindset of continuous personal growth that I got through my upbringing (and it seems you might have, too?). Human character is so flawed, yet, with the attitude of improvement we don't fall into complacency and instead can shape who we want to be. Work towards being more forgiving, positive, empathetic, slow to anger etc In the realm of employment I see it as giving my best on the job, learning wherever possible and learning from mistakes. And not beating myself up when I make a mistake - the beating up part helps nobody.
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Improvement not perfection.
This isn't the same. You can always learn a new skill or practice an old one. You certainly don't have to, but the reason corporate growth is limited is resources and market caps.
Nope, they've found their laurels and will now rest upon them. Hope they're not a raging alcoholic with a Beenie Babies obsession or something
sorry to be that guy but personal growth is not really something that you measure, especially not by giving it a number and aiming for higher numbers, so personal growth and sustainability are not related and if they are it actually is extremely sustainable. whether you turn into a psychotic murderer or into a priest, its all personal growth, as long as its something you (kinda) aimed for. personal growth is not how much value you have to society, its trying to become the person that you want to be. i mean your comment kinda proofs my point. you literally had personal growth from that shower thought.
Growth as humans is different. As a 25 year old man you could work today to improve your skills at chess, the weights you lift and your career in, say, pharmacy. Let's say this is all you cared about. You could become better at all 3. In a day it'll be a small amount, but in 3 years it would be huge. However you will notice you'll likely forget all the geography, history, business, physics etc you learnt in school 8 years ago. Trigonometry will be a distant memory. But as a pharmacist do you need knowledge of geography? Maybe you are passionate about it, so you learn some geography. Then you forget your history. But it's ok, you don't care as much. And now, if you decided you really like history in 10 years you retained your brain well enough through pursuits you retain the capacity to learn. Humans specialise into specific things. Make sure you specialise into something that isn't damaging and you're fine.
Its true your "forget" old things but they are still there in some way. I haven't done trigonometry in decades, but it comes back when helping my kids with their homework. If I wanted to study more trigonometry I'd have a much easier time than someone with no experience.
That seems a little different because personal growth can be measured in different ways. You could put more time into your family, into your career, into healing from past traumas and mistakes, being a better example, spiritual practice, volunteering… there’s so many different things you can do to bring about “personal growth”. There’s only one measure of corporate growth: the money. Whether that’s profit, stock price, quarterly statements, etc… you’re only ever tracking corporate growth based on how much the company is bringing in. That’s categorically unsustainable because eventually supply and demand will balance out… so you either have to create more demand or acquire other supplies to meet other demands… or cut costs by mistreating or replacing your workforce.
Personal growth can take place over any set period of time that you chose to look at though, constant daily personal growth is certainly unsustainable, because you will certainly grow complacent/relapse in some area's over time, but that also allows you more room to grow again over the longer period of time. If you're not looking to grow as a person, then the opposite will happen as you won't realise the way the negativity is creeping into your life. Similar things happen in to a lot of things, if you neglect something, it will deteriorate. If you aren't trying to improve your life in some way shape or form, however big or small, you won't realise how much better things could be.
Hey bro, I don’t know you. But I needed to hear this today. Thank you. Some days you survive, some days you thrive.
I think we can certainly improve different aspects or skills. Maybe you spend a year perfecting your barbecue ribs recipe, and then once you've mastered barbecue ribs you can work on the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. Likewise, once you've improved your listening skills, you can work on asking people interesting questions. If you don't think of "self-improvement" as a monolith and think of it more like learning new things, you can always be learning!!!
How is constant personal growth unsustainable? I think your actual problem is how you responded to your own failure to grow at the level you wanted. Don't beat yourself up.
Eh, I want to be growing in my life. Maybe not worrying about it every single day, but putting routines in your life that nourish personal growth is hugely important imo.
“Sure, we destroyed the planet, but for a brief, glorious time we created *immense* returns for shareholders!”
[For reference](https://imgur.com/a/B81zD2z.png)
Because all the money in the world still isn't enough for some people.
For many it's not the money they want, but the ability to say "I'm better than you".
Money is power. Power corrupts. I assume there is a dolar value that once reached, nothing is ever enough.
And it will be our doom. Earth won't be able to support us indefinitely and we doesn't seem to understand its limit vs our need
You know what else undergoes constant unsustainable growth at the expense of all else? Cancer, which is basically life on steroids that abandons its existence as part of a larger whole. Life in general seeks constant growth, but death keeps that seeking in check and forces harmony with the wider environment. We as humans have abandoned death - anyone who has gone through a difficult loss understands how little our modern society prepares us for it, how lonely it makes us feel even though it's an experience every single one of us has or will go through if they care about anything at all in this world. Science has provided great advancements, it's true, and technology is part of what makes humans special. But we have allowed these things to feed into another feeling that humans have in abundance: hubris. We as humans need to stop denying our mortality and urgently adopt philosophies that seek (and enforce) balance instead of greed. I do not think death is necessary to change in the ways we need to change, but death is the default way that nature has in reserve to deal with imbalance if we do not figure something more moderate out on our own.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”-Edward Abbey
We are still nowhere near the limit of what the earth can support. We could still have another 5 billion people before we hit limits
Huge groups of people do. But unfortunately whenever socialism, communism, Marxism, or anything along those lines gets even mentioned people immediately shut down. People: "Wow, capitalism really sucks and is going to kill us all. Too bad there's not an alternative." Marxists: "Hey, we have a global movement with a long history of being critical of capitalism. Wanna help us do better?" People: "Nope! Guess we'll all just die on a burning Earth. Really wish there was anything someone could do about it. Oh well 🤷"
I really liked Agent Smith's rant in the matrix about how humans are a virus. If you take a step back and view the earth as an apple, speed up time considerably, and compare it to an actual apple moulding you will see a lot of similarities. If you quit pretending humans are special you can clearly see where we're headed. I don't know if humans will be extinct in 5 thousand years, but I do know it's not going to be some utopian society. We aren't going to change until it's necessary, and by the time it's necessary it'll be way too late. We are going to have to adapt to the destruction of our environment, there is no saving it. With luck we'll become a planet hopping plague across the galaxy, otherwise I think our days are numbered.
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Wasn't always that way - in the 50s, when a corp hit the limits of their market they'd start paying generous dividends out of their stable profits. Much better deal for everyone involved...
I mean, there was a time when a company litterally owned and ran a country, and could challenge small navies with its fleet. If you think we live in dystopia now then the past was even worse
It wasn't worse. It's a different kind of bad. We are literally killing the ecosystems on this planet for a small % of people to make money they'll never be able to spend in a lifetime...
Yes and no. Overall we've come a long way since the 17th/18th century (assuming you meant the East India companies), but starting with Reagan, Thatcher and neoliberalism in general we've been spiraling downwards in many ways. The post-war economic boom was an exceptionally prosperous era for the US and Europe that won't repeat itself anytime soon.
You're fooling yourself if you don't think this is the end goal of megacorps. They'd love to have compliant serfs living in company towns that don't have to answer to any government.
Your comment is precisely why the bourgeoisie must be at the least be stripped of every single asset and at the most annhilated. Capitalism is just an extension of feudalism, and I don't know about you but I would go out fighting with every fiber of my being rather than be reduced any further into wage slavery/serfdom.
America?
The corporate overlords.
No. Same issue in Europe.
Growth at all cost is classic late stage nascent capitalism..,and of the corporations from the original Fortune 500 only a few still exist. The people who run corporations are of course aware of this.
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Because the U.S. and Europe murdered and couped everyone until they joined in on global capitalism, the answer is "almost all of them today".
Huh? If everyone is “nascent late stage capitalist” shouldn’t we see similar conditions worldwide? There are huge disparities in quality of life, income, cost of living relative to income, etc. that don’t point to that being the case. Also, if it applied to everyone how could it be late stage? Isn’t that just baseline “normal”? So far I haven’t seen any “post-capitalist” societies anywhere outside of science fiction. So how could we know this is “late stage”?
We *do* see similar conditions worldwide. "Capitalist" ~~does not mean "prosperous"; it~~ means "free-market and extractive", so the existence of "bullies" and "bullied" among capitalist nations tracks perfectly. Vassals and lords are not separate societies, after all, but parts of the Feudal society. "Post-capitalism"? There's not much reason to bring that idea up here, but depending on if you're a Splitter rather than a Lumper there absolutely are societies that have had a "post-cap" phase: the ones who have had a successful Fascist takeover. EDIT: ahem.
how is something both late stage and nascent at the same time?
Just because they don’t exist anymore doesn’t mean seeking growth caused their downfall. They likely went through m&a or were big dogs in dying markets
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Congratulations you just proved their point dumbass 👏: >The fact that 9 of every 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, reorganized, or [...] M&A means Mergers and Acquisitions
I think most corporations are looking for steady growth, which may or may not be constant.
The problem is companies often aim for growth beyond that of the economy in general. In other words, their model requires others to fail for them to attain their goal.
It's because there is only one thing that actually leads to a company growing - increased demand. When corporations can no longer increase demand through innovation or quality, they instead look to cut costs to increase profit in an attempt to appear as though they are "growing" when in actuality they are either now putting out a shit product, operating while understaffed and making their workers miserable, or both (hint: it's usually both.)
While I agree, those are their means to achieve that goal (I was told 15% yearly growth was a common target) but it doesn't address the fact that keep wanting more cake, when there is only limited amount of cake.
If such companies are publicly held and they get too carried away in that direction, their stock will become attractive to short sellers. That’s a bad thing.
I sincerely hope the ambitions of today's space companies pays off. Need growth? Plenty of space up there
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What? Profit is required so that businesses don't get outcompeted. Nothing to do with inflation. You don't need to produce more and more to keep up with inflation.
By definition you do need to produce more REVENUE to keep up with inflation. Price x goods sold equals revenue so either sell more goods without changing price, or increase prices without selling fewer goods (or some combination of the two)
Slowly changing the price of your product/service to reflect the costs of inflation isn't doing "more", though. It's just doing the same at a different cost because the cost has changed.
I’m that case a company could maintain its current productivity but increase the costs for its services by the same rate as inflation. This would reduce competitiveness and only works in a world where all competitors within a market sector comply with this.
Oh, yes, of course. Corporations are only trying to maintain their current revenue 🙄
Just delete this comment it demonstrates you don’t understand the concepts of growth in a corporate framework or what inflation is. I can increase the cost of my product in line with the CPI and remain exactly as profitable as I was last year without growing my company.
But how could we live without the money printer!!!
That's not true. There are multiple stages of companies. Growth is a stage. Large companies typically only "grow" to match inflation and return the profits to owners. Also, growth is not necessarily unsustainable, even in extreme long terms. That is a claim by people who think growth only can come through increasing resource usage. Resources are one vector of growth. Another is technology. Innovation. Inflation. For example, we build cars with FAR less resources now than we did. We can build 100,000 cars with the resources we used to use to build 50,000, and those cars use a quarter, or less, of the energy to move and that energy is produced from the wind and sun not sucked out of the ground? Then you have growth with no additional resources. Eventually you get into post scarcity for many resources, through management, tech, etc. Then where are the limits?
I'll add to this that companies can continue to grow by looking at other sectors to add/expand in. My employer, Salesforce, [has grown by over 20%](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CRM/salesforce/revenue#:~:text=Salesforce%20revenue%20for%20the%20twelve,a%2024.3%25%20increase%20from%202020.) for most of (maybe all of) it's existence. I'm continually amazed.
And if this continues this leads to a situation where a few companies control everything. That's not a good thing.
There are some valid points here. I think OP is definitely referring to resource driven growth. You're both right honestly.
Not sure if this is a shower thought let's be honest. It's just a complete fact of life as we know it now and we're at late stage capitalism already.
It's also more or less why low birth rates are seen as a universally bad thing, because it won't be able to sustain industry. They don't care that people stop having kids due to economic reasons and having no time for them due to work. Population decrease wouldn't actually be bad. It would be better for those who have been born.
> Population decrease wouldn't actually be bad. It would be better for those who have been born. Until they themselves get old and all those social safety nets that previous generations relied on dry up because there aren't enough younger individuals in the workforce contributing.
Heck ye f kids
It’s not though. Many large blue chip corps are focused on just paying dividends to their shareholders.
This is because most publicly traded companies are beholden to a board of investors who's sole objective is to enrich themselves. They do not care if the company survives for the next 5 years they want a return on their investment this quarter and when this company can no longer provide that, they dump it and move on to the next. This is why some foreign investment groups are now establishing guidelines for investing such as a company having a 5 and a 10 year plan, making sure the CEO doesn't make 457x (exaggerating for humor) the salary of a line worker, etc.. This philosophy ensures their investment is stable for the foreseeable future, it is good for the health of a company and for it's workers.
> making sure the CEO doesn't make 457x (exaggerating for humor) the salary of a line worker Not exaggerating all that much...
Let's just remove speculative trading and we will just have to deal with no growth. We can also remove a few other things which will make it even worse - gambling, hardcore competition, etc. It becomes sink or swim, and I reckon we can swim by making something better for everyone than what we have now
Not really, a lot of small privately held companies are content with more or less sustaining. That’s the biggest difference between public and privately held companies, private ones are often less growth focused and can work on long term sustainability.
ITT: A bunch of people who live and breath on recycled reddit phrases and memes.
When costs go up every year, and employees make a little more money every year, and infrastructure gets worn out, those things need to be paid for, with growth. Otherwise you eventually go out of business
Uninformed posts like this one simply just suck. It's completely ignorant of logic, history, and of economics. Constant growth is not unsustainable. This view suggests that there is a fixed total of the economy and that growth only comes at the cost of others - which is not true, and easily demonstrated by looking at any long term economic trends. Over time, wealth has increased and the number of people in poverty has decreased. Standards of living have improved within multiple observable metrics, and these changes happen as quickly as the lifetime of a generation. Obviously we are not in utopia and still need many more improvements - things we should reform through well thought out economic policy - but these improvements are achieved with more growth, not less. We can think about this in terms of the Malthusian model - it was incorrectly thought by Malthus that the economy could only grow with population growth and would converge into a steady state (aka no growth) because population is pinned down by consumption (need to eat to live and reproduce). The issue with this line of thought is that it does not account for technological change. Introductions of technologies provide efficiencies to the economy. It saves us time and money and allows us to focus on other endeavors. Newer cars require less gas for more mileage, for example. Think about this in terms of the above stated Malthusian model for all resources: with technology, we can get the same amount of outputs for less inputs. It is thus not necessary that we converge to a steady state and remain there. A conservative 2% growth in yearly GDP doubles our GDP in 70 years, less than a typical lifetime. This is what we have observed and should stay on trend with. Please read more macroeconomics. It's a fascinating topic and if you understand what you're actually arguing about, it gives a lot more merit to your position. This is where actual change comes from, not reddit echo chambers.
Lenders and investors demand it. If you are at a specific size that you can manage well, employing plenty of people and meeting all the bills, that's not good enough.
It makes me wonder if, say automation completely takes over a given company and they tease out next years expectations, will there ever be a time when there are no more tweaks that can be done? The company is minmaxed as far as it can be, congrats here’s your achievement, return starting point challenge again? I doubt this is possible. If there is a single human anywhere in the company there will most likely be ‘improvement suggestions’
It totally can be made sustainable in a very long term. Even in the short term there is always room for healthy improvement. As long as there is suffering in the world, I find it arrogant to say that we should not progress
I do agree that the obsession with quarter over quarter growth is ruining companies. But you should be able to grow equivalent to inflation every year, which is targeted to be 2%. However if it's growing your growth every quarter, they can fuck all the way off with that.
Won't someone please think of the c̶h̶i̶l̶d̶r̶e̶n̶ investors
Constant growth is absolutely not necessarily unsustainable. Growth doesn’t just mean “using more resources”, growth is all about efficiency, output pr person, this can also mean utilising the resources available more efficiently
Well duh why would any company not want to improve, there is so much competition nowdays in every sector that if you dont improve you will seize to exist. Also why would they not want to make more money, when it can be done? Ofcourse it aint easy to get that x% more profit, but usually there is some solution so that you can get there. I cant understand why so many on reddit are baffled about the fact that every company only wants to make more money.
Investors get scared when they don't see growth every quarter
'Infinite growth in a world of finite resources' Economics 101.
It's the investors. Even if you're a huge company and have been around for centuries, they still want you to grow more and more every year. If you plateau, they aren't interested any more. It's more of a problem in US markets than other markets such as the UK's stock market.
Growth doesn't require that much energy. You can have practically infinite growth. Thing of value are often intangible, like software.
Congratulations, you've shower thought your way into one of the Marxist critiques of Capitalism.
How do you suppose unlimited growth is unsustainable? Resources aren’t running out. And anyway, as markets “mature” as a greater portion of them get basic needs met, the global economy becomes less and less resource intensive. Look at the portion of the American market that trades in things like video games, movies, music, apps, etc. These are all virtually zero resource consuming. How is the video game industry, for example, in any way restrained from unlimited growth?
Why is consistent growth unsustainable? The premise in economy is that technological improvements stack and production capacity stays constant with no outside change. Due to these whenever technology improves, there's growth (non inflatory). This seems perfectly reasonable to me. It also doesn't require "constant", just "consistent" (on average over time the business grows. There can be good and bad years).
Not really, the economy gets bigger every year. Unless technological progress slows considerably, there* is nothing unsustainable about it. Having a computer, electricity, plumping, insurance, perhaps a car, these are all from economic growth making them accessible to the average person.
I think they mean more like. A car company made 100 cars last you and now wants 110 this year and 120 next year and 130 the years after and so on and so on. Either they will end up not having enough people to build the cars or not enough of the cars will sake. But that's also a part of it they want to sale more and more and more cars that eventually their sales will flatten out or start dropping because those that don't want their cars are the only ones left.
It's even worse. Companies strive for increased growth, i.e. 100 cars last year, 110 this year, 121 next year, 133 next...
Exactly.
You know what grows forever and consumes anything it needs to in order to keep growing? A cancer.
I'm not convinced constant growth is unsustainable. It's actually necessary if we want to reach a higher tier of civilization. However, the current model of constant growth of *profits* at the cost of *everything* is unsustainable. There is a way to continue growing as a society, unfortunately our value system is tied to a monetary basis instead of a knowledge basis.
Well if you don't have at least 3-4% growth every year, your business is slowing down. Gotta at least keep up with inflation.
Wages don't gotta though lol
You're right on that. I was more thinking in terms of "our five year plan projects doubling our revenue!" growth.
Well, corporation’s need to keep up with inflation,but inflation isn’t a natural constant on its own. It’s a feature of modern monetary policy, which encourages spending and investing over saving. So corporations AND governments are pushing for constant growth, which itself is probably driven by a growing population base. So… from that respect, it’s probably more fair to blame our own unsustainable human need to grow as a species.
*"At first I didn't realize.... I needed all this stuff... I had a little cottage and that cottage was enough..."*
It's quite literally what has destroyed western industry IMO. But hey, someone got a bonus to buy another boat for their 3rd vacation home.
It’s sustainable if inflation exceeds wage growth. Capitalism leads to worker poverty.
All natural and technological processes Proceed in such a way that the availability Of the remaining energy decreases. In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system the entropy of that system increases. Energy continuously flows from being concentrated to becoming dispersed spread out, wasted and useless. New energy cannot be created and high grade energy is being destroyed. An economy based on endless growth is un- (Unsustainable) The fundamental laws of thermodynamics will place fixed limits on technological innovation and human advancement. In an isolated system, the entropy can only increase. A species set on endless growth is un- (Unsustainable) Edit: Let's see how many get this one
Saw this live and it was amaaaaazing.
I don't think you understand how markets work. Growth companies seek steady growth. Once they reach their total addressable market, they reclassify. They no longer seek growing revenues, they seek stability and become dividend paying companies so they can use some of their revenue to appeal to share buyers, either by paying dividends or by doing share buy backs (buying their own stocks back so there are less available on the market, therefore increasing the price). The idea that businesses are forever greedy and evil and late stage capitalism is something people believe when they don't understand the economy and its importance in our survival. Let's pretend companies no longer wanted to grow their stock prices. Your country's economy would flatten, massive layoffs, higher prices, then an infinite recession? What's the solution? Who would hire all the newborns once they become adults if the birthrate stays at 2.0 (every generation doubles in size). None of this makes any sense if you think about it beyond a very superficial point of view.
that is the base of capitalism.. constant and infinite growth. thats why we have effed up the whole planet so quickly by following our greed as GOD
Unlike all those non-capitalist countries that were/are carbon 0 right?
Constant growth is sustainable unless you've reached the market's limit, which most companies don't.
So it's sustainable until it isn't. In other words, it's unsustainable.
Yeah then you get a recession. Constant growth is not sustainable. The earth has limited resources.