In a lecture by Neil Tyson DeGrasse, he made clear that there are limits to what astronomers can know and test. There is a space which encompasses all the points from which light could reach Earth before it is consumed by an expanding, dying sun. Points beyond that space seem to have no conceivable way to communicate in any way at all with Earth. Some things are probably beyond us.
In the closer, slightly homier realm of government and commerce, we may also have limits. Despite whatever theory can be applied to either government or business, it seems that we are likely to have competitive and egoistic drives to excel, to surpass, to set records. So, even if my company is doing very well and all my employees and all my stockholders and all of the people all of them love, support and care about are happy, healthy and wealthy, somebody somewhere is going to want to surpass the previous record holders, or their dad or their predecessor or their own previous personal best. So, we will probably have drives to expand as long as we have the same brains and biology as we do now.
In modern life, there are two ways that expansion takes place besides the more basic military conquest, which is getting more and more scrutiny as a waste and a pestilence. One sort of expansion is more income/sales/customers. Whatever clothes, food, methods of travel, books, movies, etc. that you use, somebody is going to what to persuade you to buy and maybe invest in alternatives.
Still, I may be quite wrong. I am learning to try to test some of my ideas using Google. I just Googled "businesses unwilling to expand" and got nearly 23 million hits. The 4th one, relating to the British Isles, says:
Even with George Osborne's call to action for UK businesses to take exports to a new level of £1 trillion by 2020, research has revealed that the majority of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are happy with their success levels and have no ambition to increase their size.
SMEs, which include limited companies and sole traders, have often been called the engine room of the UK economy; however, the poll by accountancy firm Baker Tilly revealed that 96% do not wish to expand. The poll also highlighted that 84% of SMEs were unwilling to take on any more borrowing to fund growth.
The other push that seems it cannot go on forever is advertising. It is unlikely that my business will acquire you as a customer if you have never heard of it. I may pay an advertising and media company to interrupt your dinner, your phone call, your face to face conversation with your neighbor or your mate with a little information about my marvelous company. I am already interrupting your searches on the internet. I have an ad on your ereader that disappears when you begin using it. Would you mind terribly if we delayed its disappearance another 10 seconds?
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
