The problem is capitalism (not that communism is a better answer - it has even greater faults).

I run two small businesses. A small business only needs to bring in enough money to pay everybody a salary, including the owners. It can sell the same amount of widgets year after year and as long as the price of the widgets keep up with inflation, everything is fine.

Your locally owned restaurants, hardware stores, produce markets, auto garage, florist, landscapers, doctors, realtors, and so on do this all the time.

Now take a corporation. The company is owned by zillions of stockholders who do not work at the company and contribute nothing to the production of products. And they expect each share of stock to increase in value every year.

That means the corporation needs to do more than keep up with inflation, it needs to sell more and more and more and more product every quarter - or do something else to make the stockholders happy. Why? If the stock isn't constantly growing in value, the stockholders will 'jump ship' and put their money elsewhere.

So the corporation is faced with an unattainable goal, at least here on Earth. Perpetual growth.

That stock has to increase in value, so keeping a product that brings in only the same amount of money year after year is not an asset, as it is in a small business, but a liability to the corporation.

Companies reach a saturation point in their growth. How many widgets can you sell? So they do things like bring out new models to make the old ones obsolete, acquire new companies they feel have growth potential, do what they can to kill competition, and so on. But eventually that reaches a saturation point as well. Sales are going to level off, stockholders will jump ship and the debt will increase.

It happened with Parker Guitars, when USA Music bought them. It would happen to Norton Music if Gibson bought me out.

What's the solution? I have no idea.

I do know that a consumer based society with corporations that need perpetual growth is unsustainable. Most companies will grow to a point where they no longer can sell more and more and more, and will either figure out a way to deal with it (unlikely) or fade away. Gibson is still trying to figure out ways to stay alive when most people have as many guitars as they can afford and the music industry is moving away from the guitar dominance it once had.

At least that's the way I see it.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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