Originally Posted by Planobilly
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Corporate America has only one requirement. That is to make money for their shareholders. <...>

And perpetual growth in a system where that isn't possible.

Perhaps everything doesn't need to be corporate.

Private businesses need to make money, too. Enough money to pay the employees, and have enough left over for the owner. Increases that match the rate of inflation are important. Anything more is good, but not mandatory.

A corporation generally has 49% of the owners that are not participating in the corporation. They expect a return on their investment that continually increases. If the increase matches the rate of inflation, there is no sense holding the stock. If the increase is less than the rate of a savings account, why hold the stock?

So a corporation is locked into a more, more, more syndrome, if it doesn't do that, it goes under. A corporation needs perpetual growth, which is not possible in a closed system like planet Earth. Karl Marx knew this, but history proved that his attempt at a solution was not the answer.

If you take out a loan to finance your business, it's possible to pay the loan off. If you use stockholders, the loan never gets paid off, and the interest payments grow constantly.

An item like a DAW starts out, and every year there are improvements, which makes the profit the 49% who don't work at the company happy. But then the product matures, and there isn't much, or anything left to make the existing owners of the product worthy of their money. What to do?

With mechanical things, you can shorten the life cycle with parts that will last so long, but not too long before they need to be replaced. With fashion, they make what you own in your closet so "last year" requiring you to buy new clothes before the old ones wear out. There are plenty of other ways that result in planned obsolescence.

Well, you can't do that with software, so if you can't offer something new that the customer thinks is worth his/her hard-earned money, the trend is to rent the product instead of sell it. We call that a subscription service.

When the company turns to subscription, there is no need to improve the product, you just need to fork over more money for what you thought you already owned.

If not, the corporation goes belly-up. Perhaps the guy who invented Cakewalk, could have kept it, instead of selling it to a corporation that needs perpetual growth.

So what is the solution for that? I don't know. Sell it to a small company who can exist on the reduced sales of new customers? Have the corporation invent something new, unrelated and innovative enough to keep the perpetual growth of the stockholders interests happy while keeping the mature product for help but not the main focus?

I know that once it gets to the rental stage, instead of the ownership stage, I lose interest in it. I have no moral obligation to keep a corporation alive that isn't delivering something worthy of the money to me.

Some people buy their car some people lease, some people buy their house, some people rent. I'm the buy type for things that are important to me. I bought my guitars, saxophones, and other musical instruments, along with my house and car.

On the other hand, companies like PG Music have done a good job keeping the product alive by offering new, innovative features to the software. I remember the days of 3 instruments, no user styles, no intros or endings, a quantized, limited drum grid, and only 24 built-in styles.

This is all thinking out loud, so I reserve the right to change my mind as I think about it more, and get more information.


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