Edit: This question attracted way more interest than I hoped for! I will need some time to go through the comments in the next days, thanks for your efforts everyone. One thing I could grasp from the answers already - it seems to be complicated. There is no one fits all answer.

Under capitalism, it seems companies always need to grow bigger. Why can’t they just say, okay, we have 100 employees and produce a nice product for a specific market and that’s fine?

Or is this only a US megacorp thing where they need to grow to satisfy their shareholders?

Let’s ignore that most of the times the small companies get bought by the large ones.

    • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      14 hours ago

      In Eisenstein’s estimation, the solution is a transition to a gift economy. And the process starts with:

      • Negative-interest currencies
      • Elimination of Economic Rents, and Compensation for Depletion of the Commons.
      • Internalization of Social and Environmental Costs
      • Economic and Monetary Localization
      • The Social Dividend
      • Economic Degrowth
      • Gift Culture and P2P Economics

      (That list is from the section titles of Chapter 17 which kindof serves as a “summary” of the rest of the book. He lists very specific policies in service to all of these points.)

      Most of these are things that would require legislation to make happen, but Eisenstein is optimistic. Or at least was in 2011 when he wrote the book. (Not his only book, but I haven’t read any others by him. I probably should, however.)