Businesses should try to be the best, not the biggest

But you can only grow for so long. There is a limited demand for basically any good. Signal is clearly not at that level, so I am glad that they are growing, especially if they aren't sacrificing much just for growth. (Although IM isn't the best example either because more adoption makes the product better in a way that many products don't).

However look at Apple. For a large part everyone in the US who wants an iPhone has one. Sure, there are some people who can't afford the high price but that seems to be a small portion. However because Apple wants to grow they are working on making their devices less repairable and implementing trade-in programs so that people upgrade more often (and they can destroy the old ones). Is this growth evidence that they solved a problem? It seems that the problem they are really solving here is raising the stock price. And I will argue that raising Apple's stock price doesn't really help the world at all.

I think the initial growth of the iPhone was a sign of a good product. However I think this demand for continual growth is harmful to society overall.

> This person is kinda suggesting that companies should have some noble higher purpose.

Not necessarily. There's nothing inherently wrong with making money. What's wrong is never being satisfied no matter how much money you make. "Growth, where it no longer serves a purpose beyond the accumulation of more growth", "endless growth", "growth unchecked". The author doesn't say that growth itself is bad. If you're a sole proprietor, it's not necessarily bad to grow and hire employees. The question is, at what point do you stop prioritizing growth and start prioritizing other things in life — happiness, love, friendship, leisure, ethics, the environment, etc. At some point there are diminishing returns to accumulating more wealth, but there's a collective insanity that says no accumulation is too much. Society celebrates the ultra-wealthy, but to me the ultra-wealthy seem more like gluttons. Would you celebrate someone who eats constantly and weighs 500 pounds? That's not healthy.

Look at Warren Buffett. Dude doesn't even know what to do with all of his money. He only knows how to accumulate, he knows nothing else. He's pledged to give away most of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... which means he's delegating the spending of his wealth to someone else... after his death! Buffett literally has no idea how to spend the wealth he has accumulated. Doesn't that seem bizarre to you? Why does he keep accumulating?

Some people will claim that if you don't constantly strive for growth, then you're "complacent" and "lazy". But that's completely false, because financial wealth is only one aspect of life. If you only strive for financial growth, then you are one-dimensional; you're lazy and complacent about the non-financial aspects of your life.

Kinda interessting how majority seem to be from japan or german countries. And they all have very specific business. I wonder how big they are, and whether their size is somewhat constant through their history. Also, how many of them are really the same company, and not actually a batch of different companies just operating under the same name..

Like if a company operated for some time before it goes bust and some years later a different company continues the operation under the same name, but with different people, concepts, etc. would it still be regarded the same companies on that list? In certain cases continuing the tradition and a good name is worth big money and asien companies seem to have traditions around this concept.

I suspect the initial premise is incorrect.

The purpose of a company that makes widgets is to make widgets. Nothing more.

Some rent seekers realized that they could extract some of the wealth created by the company making widgets, and that they could manipulate various people involved in other enterprise to enhance and enforce their rent-seeking abilities. To that end, they have manipulated the various controls on the use of violence in our society such that they can not only continue to extra wealth from the labour of the widget-makers, but that the widget-makers are required to make more widgets and give up increasing portions of the wealth they create.

The cancer is not the company, whose purpose is not growth. The cancer is the rent seeker who sucks the life out of the company causing it to swell and fester and eventually autolyse.

Do the skin cells to contain the fat also only get larger? And what about the beer drinking muscle ?