For whatever reason, it is popular to believe that growth is necessary for capitalistic businesses to succeed. I don’t know how pervasive this belief is, but I have heard it multiple times.
I’ve never understood this philosophy. As a business owner this drove me crazy because I observed, time and again, that the expenses associated with growth never realized a return. In other words, growth was not only unnecessary, it was detrimental!
In ecology there is a concept of carrying capacity, which states (briefly) that population size (the number of individuals of a given species living in an area) is limited by the availability of resources. This means population size will be constrained by local resource availability, and can only grow as big (numerous) as those resources allow.
Now, some growth is good; personal growth, musical ability, intellect, and other accumulations that don’t take up any space. Of course, money doesn’t take up space, but economic growth does have multiple other consumptive uses that drain resources.
In the end, I have seen little evidence that growth, especially in the economic sense, but also in the population size sense, is necessary for success. In fact, I see much evidence that it is harmful.
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