This blog post from Manuel Moreale pulled on some threads in my mind, as I find myself sharing this general perspective more and more of late. Frustration with the way that perpetual growth is the only respected sign of success.

In fact, it just reminded me of when I first learnt the actual definition of a recession (two successive quarters of negative growth), and my initial shock at how growth isn’t even enough for some people, unless it’s even more growth than before.

(In turn, remembering this has reminded me that I still want to read Number Go Up by Zeke Faux).

It resonates with my King Size Canary ‘fighting to be the biggest’ parable, and a little bit more with my intense discomfort when something doesn’t add up, yet everyone keeps acting like things are fine. Like being gaslit by world economic strategy.

But, as Manuel writes, public companies can’t stop. “If they’re not growing enough it means they’re failing”.

If they’re not growing enough, stock goes down and that’s no good. Because remember, there’s no finish line here. They can’t just be happy with their size. They can’t be happy with the idea of employing thousands of smart people and creating amazing products. No, they have to keep growing. And sooner or later, this mind cancer becomes malignant.

One final reminder / thought thread that his post pulled on for me, is when I first learned the term ‘lifestyle business’ and thought how aspirational the idea sounded.

The definition I was given being that, a lifestyle business is one that comfortably sustains its owners and employees, and affords them to live and enjoy their desired modest lifestyles. Only later did I learn that this was mostly meant as a slur in the mid 2000s, when everyone was going crazy for Web 2.0 user metrics and Venture Capital funded growth.

There are plenty more threads along this line of thinking but that’ll do for this post. Plus, I can’t quite remember all the references I’ve heard and read about the fallacy of perpetual growth… saying that this final referenced did also just spring to mind (and thankfully so, as I forgot to post it when I first came across it):

Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist.

David Attenborough, Speaking at the RSA President’s Lecture

OK. One last, last one:

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

Greta Thunberg