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I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy. I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones. The problem with cancerous cells is that the body stops recycling them and so then they grow unchecked. Modern companies are more like skin cells, they need to grow new capabilities and shed old ones as the environment changes. If they don't then they will die, the same way I will die if my body stops growing new cells to replace the old one. Saying a company purpose is merely growth is nonsense, different companies have different purposes, mostly they want to survive which involves both growth and decay.


>I find it reductionist to the point it loses it's meaning. Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones.

That objection is already covered in the very title used by HN (" If the purpose of a company is merely growth"). It's also covered extensively in the article.

And your counter-analogy is wrong anyway: the whole human body is not "constantly growing" (it does this only or mostly for its first 2 decades, about the same time we stop getting any taller).

It's constantly renewing (in your words: "I shed old skin cells so need new ones"), which is different from growing (even if we say that we have to "grow" new cells - we also have to grow new plants to keep a farm going, but that doesn't mean that the farm itself has to grow - much less to endelessly try to find new profit avenues. It's the latter sense the article uses).

>If they don't then they will die, the same way I will die if my body stops growing new cells to replace the old one.

Which is neither here nor there, since "growing new cells" to replace old ones is not the same as growth in the commonly understood sense and the one used in the article. In the "growing new sells" sense, businesses without a "growth-above-everything" mission still "grow" (renew) lots of things: their stock, ocassionally introduce new products, find new customers, and so on.

And of course the examples the author gives of companies without "growth", have survived more (e.g. the Japanese companies operating for centuries), than companies that get gigantic and whose purpose is to maximize shareholder profit...


I can assure you there are plenty of people growing well beyond their first 2 decades.


And one way that happens is covered in the article: through cancer. The other is obesity. Both make the article's point.


I was not commenting on the article, I was commenting on your claim.


As far as I know we don't grow any new fat cells, it's just that the ones we do have get larger.


There is a maximum size after which individual cells will split. It becomes harder to regain your old shape because when you lose weight the existing cells shrink but never shed, so you can end up with new cells you can’t get rid of.


For the tiny minority of people who lift for hypertrophy, they do gain new myonuclei. That's probably the only real exception though


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


>> Actually the whole human body is constantly growing, not just cancers. I'm am growing new skin cells as we speak, approximately every x3 weeks I shed old skin cells so need new ones.

That's growth at a replacement rate. Cancer grows at the expense of, and with no regard for the cells around it.

Any investor with an "exit strategy" is similarly looking to exploit, not sustain.

That's not to say all growth is bad. People grow to adulthood. Similarly there is a natural size for a company. Beyond that growth is harmful.

Edit: replacement to avoid obsolescence is what engineering or product development does. Growth at companies is monitored by finance. Skin cells... Cancer.


The human body is regrowing, to repair and replace the dying parts. But after reaching it's endgame (around mid-tweenties) it's not growing in size or complexity. Companies and cancer are different in that regard. Cancer is growing without aim and purpose for the host. Companies are similar, though not in all cases. Small companies need to grow to a point were they are safe to survive any little problem. Big companies sometimes reach a point of stability, and maintain their size for a long time. But in other times they grow and grow and grow without any real aim, just for the aim of growing and doing something.

The result is that you have companies playing on many fields, delivering low quality for the customer, but often still impacting the market because of their sheer size and market-power on other fields. It is indeed disputable whether this behaviour is really justified and good on for the customer, or more harmful.


> I'm not the biggest fan of this analogy.

Personally I find it very fitting and apt analogy for a lot of modern business practices. If the goal is growth only for the purpose of growth then that's pretty comparable to cancer.

Possibly even down to the ultimate consequences: Usually it's not the cancer itself that kills people, what's killing them is being starved by the cancer as they can't keep up supplying their body, and aggressive cancer, with enough nutrients.

Imho this analogy holds similarly true for businesses that have as their main focus perpetual growth, just like an economic system that's based on perpetual growth, while being stuck in a place where resources are actually finite and as such can't even realistically sustain perpetual growth.


completely agree


Actually your skin cell analogy is a good one, in that companies should also be constantly recycled by the market.

One of the major problems in the modern west, especially the US, is that when crises have hit we’ve conflated helping “the people” with saving their employer. Imagine how differently things would look today if in 2008 there has been no bailouts for corporations, only direct aid to affected individuals.

To me, “too big to fail” is when we’ve turned companies cancerous.


The same wrong incentives apply to individuals. It’d be better just not to tax people’s wages and also not bail failing companies or careers out, but let people and business find their own balance.


I'm not sure which careers you think have been bailed out. Politicians talk about saving certain professions (e.g. coal miners), but those bailouts end up being for the company.

Do you have a different example?


I replied to a comment that wanted the government to demand money from innocent people to bail out people with obsolete careers, and the comment meant this was virtuous vs bailing corporations out, while in fact demanding money to bail out inefficiency is not virtuous regardless.

It’s better not to demand money from people and instead let them be free - the money you don’t tax will end up being spent on more goods and services, like how the average Swiss lives better than the average Norwegian, even if CH has no ports or natural resources, but instead has economic freedom


Sustainability does often not necessitate bullying, exploitation, massive wealth extraction or large economic risks.

Bullying/exploitation is something you are forced to do when you are backed into a corner and there is no way out. Still, fast growing companies and enormously large corporations do it on a regular basis.

Wealth extraction is something you can do when there is enough for everyone. Smaller communities, such as families, small businesses and so on understand this very well. But parasitic behavior is apparently accepted in larger communities as it can hide behind abstract notions of hierarchy and ideology.

Taking large risks is something you can do when you are punching up or when you charter into unknown territory, truly innovate things. Just because a business uses software doesn't make it innovative though.


The analogy is apt.

You’re not growing, if you were your energy consumption would raise in proportion. Your adult body is in a dynamic steady state.


Yes – until you bring the stock market and investors into the picture. Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…


Are you suggesting that the stock market and investors are carcinogens?


Yes, and they are killing the host.


And the legal environment is carcinogenic, too.


> Oftentimes, companies will have a legal obligation to their stockholders to (attempt to) maximise profit…

Can you point me to an example of a company that has a legal obligation "to (attempt to) maximise profit"?

I suspect that, in fact, the legal obligations of any company include (but are not limited to) increasing profit whilst taking into account many other factors.


Maximizing profit is a good thing.


Why? The only answer I see is that you make more money. But it is well understood that money doesn't lead to happiness.

What if your company was making enough money that you could pay everyone worked there generous salaries and your customers are happy. If you product is complete I don't see the need to add more. Why not let everyone work half time, and continue to deliver an excellent and focused product. Slowly adding features and integrations only as they make sense.

What we see instead by companies aiming to maximize profit is that they keep adding stuff that no one wants, hiring more people and squeezing every cent out of their customers. Sure, they make more money for a while but if you give me those two options I would much rather work half the hours and pay my employees more with happy customers.


In a perfectly competitive market, it leads to optimal allocation of resources - i.e. capital and human labour is used a way that is most beneficial to consumers.

The less competitive the market is, the less this is true But profit maximization = good should be the baseline.

I'm really confused that sometimes HN is full of libertarian comments but sometimes it suddenly turns to populist left. Mainstream economics is underrepresented on the internet despite it being most correct (imho obviously).


We could add more people to share the happiness.


We could but at some point having 10x more people then you need working half a day a week doesn't seem optimal. Maybe it could work but it seems that there is some sort of workforce size that makes sense for a given amount of work.

I think that something like a universal basic income makes more sense here than to force a company to grow, possibly harming its product just to employ more people.


>universal basic income

Its fake news similar to FTL.


In the same way explosion is a good thing, if confined within and channeled by an internal combustion engine. Outside, usually not so much.


Not so much? The profit-driven economic progress over the last century is astonishing.


It is - that's because regulators managed to mostly keep the market smoothly running. Controlled combustion, not explosion and not choking the engine.


Sometimes, other times only if you ignore externalities


Assuming “profit” in the philosophical sense, yes. But human values are not Mammon.


It’s a virtuous cycle which allows anyone to spend part of their wage investing and one day retire.


In many cases, growth is evidence that you've solved a problem in a way people find compelling. Look at Signal. I think its growth is a really positive development.


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.


It's true. At some point marginal incentives tilt away from problem solving and towards something else.


That, or they just hired an effecitve "growth hacker".

That metric has been successfully gamed in startup sphere over the past decade.




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