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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

> Fundamental issue is the expectation that all public companies must keep growing and show profits quarter after quarter, year after year. This is obviously unsustainable.

Hey, feel free to invest your retirement savings in a company that doesn't grow profits year after year, I'm sure you'll do great!

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>invest your retirement savings

We would need to rework the whole system if we threw out the "constant growth" method of running a company. If we take care of the people so they don't have to worry about saving for retirement, it's possible to redesign the economy in this way and our goals as a society.

You obviously can't change one major axiom of the US economy without revisiting the remaining axioms!

No idea why this is getting downvoted.

Hacker News is full of capitalists and libertarians who hate any mention of alternative economic systems.

Not all companies exist solely as an investment vehicle.

They are literally government sanctioned investment vehicles. If they don't return profits to their owners, they are non-profits/charities, not corporations.

Sure, but would you invest your retirement savings in one that doesn't?

And yet people don't "invest" into blatant pyramid schemes.

Sustainability is more important than growth.

Many do and many don't grow profits but rather sustain profits year after year, and they do great.

> and they do great

Yep, their value never changes, which means that if you invested your savings in them, you'd get no returns.

Tell me, where do you invest your retirement savings?

The value of a business is not, or should not entirely be, measured by its return on investment. You are making the GP's point for them. That some continue growth, and that's where we choose to invest, doesn't mean all should or that it is beneficial that all do.

> The value of a business is not, or should not entirely be, measured by its return on investment.

No, it is the opposite. The return on investment is measured by the value of the business.

But I'm not getting your point, are you suggesting that Google should be a charity?

Would you invest your retirement savings on a charity that will return 0%?

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