When Things Become Too Big To NOT Fail

Something that I am often bothered by regarding economics is the obsession with a growing economy, a growing business, whatever the term can be applied to. But I always have to wonder: how much can an economy grow? Whenever something real grows, it has to do so by creating additional aspects and/or mass with available materials. Organic life uses nutritional input for chemical energy and chemical "building blocks;" a structure needs wood, steel, concrete, or some such material of choice to be built; a mess gets larger as more things are tossed into it. However, there are usually limits of some sort on growth, such as a limitation on nutritional availability, the possibility of a structure collapsing under its own weight, or a mess getting so large that the area it occupies can no longer be traversed. These limits are usually dealt with to some degree, though; an organic system will limit it's growth based on environmental factors, a building is designed to account for forces acting upon it, and even a mess can be cleaned up to at least keep a route available to pass through. There is an equilibrium level, at which a given system can balance its available resources and conditions to keep from becoming to large to function or sustain itself. But do you ever hear about such balance in the growth of economies? And perhaps more importantly, does a bigger economy necessarily mean a better economy?

I found a nice, concise definition of economic growth with a brief analysis of the concept here. There is something about the second portion that strikes me, though. They mention that "the growth of an economy is thought of not only as an increase in productive capacity but also as an improvement in the quality of life to the people of that economy." I can't help but think that the two are not proportionally related. Considering that various US corporations have recorded record profits for the last three years, while the unemployment rate in the US has been at its highest since 1983. However, it looks like both trends are starting to reverse, lending more to the possibility that the two are inversely related in the country in modern times. Considering that part of economic growth is increased production and provision of services, while the highest rate of production is often attained with automatic systems (which are also usually cheaper in the long run), perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising. But since economic growth partially relies on having someone to buy what gets produced, and people without jobs often can't fill that role, such trends are non-sustainable. The basic rule of having a source to continue building from is violated, and it begins to collapse.

The constant work of large corporations to expand their business and increase profits is doomed to fail at some point- perhaps especially when they seem to be "too big to fail." If they have expanded to the point where there is no one else to sell their product to, and they keep spending to try and attract new buyers, they begin suffering a net loss of capital. Instead of deciding at some point that they can work to maintain their current consumer base and smartly manage profits and development, to obtain some sort of equilibrium state, they just keep trying to expand and make more money than there may be to gain. If they took the time to try and balance things, to create that equilibrium state, they could grow at a more organic and reasonable rate, or even downsize in such a way that it doesn't ruin the lives of workers or dedicated clientele.

What expands on this even more, is how companies that have gotten too big have the capacity to directly effect politics with lobbyists and sizable political funding, another expenditure that by all means should accelerate net loss of capital. The corporations that participate in such activities tend to be protecting their own interests, in the process holding up political processing of more culturally relevant and possibly more important legislation. But sometimes, such lobbying can be genuinely destructive. Big Oil lobby members are the biggest spenders when it comes to the practice, some also helped fund the Tea Party. Considering the environmental and cultural impacts that oil drilling is known to have, I don't think that term is too strong in this context. But for something a little more horrible, there is actually a lobby against labor rights in China... I... I don't really know what to say to that, actually. I mean, I know that businesses disliked the way unions in the past made it so that they actually had to create safe working conditions and provide livable wages and the like, but this seems a bit ridiculous. I thought we were past the point of purposely making the lives of others miserable just to make a qui- okay never mind, they never did make it past that. And the fact that they have to power to actually affect this boggles me a bit. Especially since, when you think about it, the money that companies probably put into this could probably have gone toward any of the changes that would have been effected through political means, and they would have suffered minimal monetary maladies.

Besides all of this, there is just too much disconnect when a company gets as large as this. At least if there were a number of smaller businesses filling the role of such a large company, there would probably be a greater degree of concern for fellow workers, and better association with the customers that would allow them to affect things at higher levels of a company's operations by simply talking to someone working in a store they are visiting. But that isn't something that would be likely to happen too soon- "too big to fail" often entails "no room left"... going back to the mess analogy that I made earlier.

Perhaps what needs to happen is for these corporations that have a stranglehold on particular sections of the economy to collapse. There would be a long recovery, and probably some measure of fallout. But, it would hopefully allow for smaller operations to take the place of what was, probably staffed by former employees with extensive experience and skill. And hopefully, in the process, there would be a new independence of market development and political procedure, without a conglomerate dictating events and guiding them from behind the scenes.