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Is that bad though? Think about it. If you're paying all your bills, all your wages, and you have a strong product that people enjoy, and you're able to compet

Is that bad though? Think about it. If you're paying all your bills, all your wages, and you have a strong product that people enjoy, and you're able to compete in the market - maybe not gaining any ground, but at least not losing any either - why change? Of course I moderately understand the market pressures at work, but at some point in the human civilization journey we'll have to be content with something instead of chasing clouds all the time.

throwaway894345 4mo ago
Exponential growth can’t last forever, and I do worry about what will happen when the gravy train stops. Maybe we can figure out interstellar travel before it does so the limiting factor becomes “the galaxy” rather than “our planet”.
- idiotsecant 4mo ago
  I think impending demographic collapse might give us a peek at that sooner than you'd think
  - mplewis 4mo ago
    Clarify exactly what you mean by "demographic collapse."
    - idiotsecant 4mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
      - saghm 4mo ago
        > In the aftermath of World War I, birth rates in the United States and many European countries fell below replacement level. This prompted concern about population decline.[8] The recovery of the birth rate in most Western countries around 1940 that produced the "baby boom", with annual growth rates in the 1.0 – 1.5% range, and which peaked during the period 1962–1968 at 2.1% per year,[13] temporarily dispelled prior concerns about population decline, and the world was once again fearful of overpopulation. After 1968, the global population growth rate started a long decline. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has reported that in the year 2023 it had dropped to about 0.9%,[13] less than half of its peak between 1962 and 1968. Although still growing, the UN predicts that global population will level out around 2084,[81] and some sources predict the start of a decline before then. In other words, the last time everyone got worked up over this, the trend reversed itself too hard within a few decades, and then reversed itself again. Meanwhile, over half a century after the "decline" started, we have over twice as many people as we had when it started, and the earliest projections for when growth will stop is another half century from now. I think there are a lot bigger problems we'll need to reckon with before then, and if we manage to remain stable by then, it seems like we have good precedent for reversing it fairly quickly.
        hcurtiss 4mo ago
        I'm not so sure that global population growth tells the right story vis-à-vis declining birth rates in western countries.
        saghm 4mo ago
        Well, they were directly asked what they meant and replied with a link to a giant Wikipedia article. If they had a more specific point to make, they're being weirdly cagey about it.
        teiferer 4mo ago
        As long as everybody is nationalist (not to say racist) and keeps borders closed to protect the homeland, those differences matter. Realizing that one thing people get worked up about (immigration) is a solution to the other thing they get worked up about (not enough kids!!1) would be a great insight.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Yes, but no one is really complaining about "not enough kids." They are complaining about not enough kids of their preferred skin tone. So they see immigration as an exacerbation.
        saghm 4mo ago
        I can't help but agree here. "Declining birth rate in the western world" just comes across as a dog-whistle to me. I guess I kind of only alluded to this myself with my response that they were being "weirdly cagey", and I wish I had been more direct like you were willing to, so thank you for this
        idiotsecant 4mo ago
        [flagged]
- asdff 4mo ago
  Not everything is in the exponential growth model. Most small businesses in your town for example. Margins might afford an upper middle class lifestyle for the owner and that is a good enough business model for this company to last decades, even pass down through the family.
  - throwaway894345 4mo ago
    On the micro level, I agree. On the macro level, I don't know how viable those businesses will be when the wider economy is no longer growing exponentially (and frankly that may well be the least of all concerns).
    - asdff 4mo ago
      Well, they exist in places where the regional economy contracted significantly as well. They will be fine. They aren't so beholden to the wider economy as their customer base is local and they serve a need that has kept them in business for decades already, even with how many eras now of outsourcing and globalization and online shopping and all these other touted death blows that have been weathered all the same by these businesses.
      - throwaway894345 4mo ago
        > Well, they exist in places where the regional economy contracted significantly as well. They will be fine. This is a non sequitur. If the economy contracts and 99% of these businesses go under, 1% may well remain (“they exist…”) but that does not mean that all is well (“they will be fine”). > They aren't so beholden to the wider economy as their customer base is local The local economy in most of America is highly coupled with larger corporations. Either the large corporations are the major employers or the large corporations are the major customers for the area’s employers. Even if it’s not that, everything is tightly coupled to the banking system, as we learned in 2008.
  - mrhottakes 4mo ago
    Don't worry, private equity is working diligently to make sure that can't happen anymore.
jagraff 4mo ago
> at some point in the human civilization journey we'll have to be content with something instead of chasing clouds all the time. Surely we're not even close to this point though? I can think of a lot of things that would be incredibly good for humanity to have, and which are achievable with enough economic growth, but which we are currently very far from because our economy does not have the necessary productive capacity (for example, enough solar/wind/nuclear/renewable power to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels)
- jon-wood 4mo ago
  I mean sure, but marginally better/more profitable file storage isn’t any of that, and artificially juicing the share value doesn’t actually make any difference to the real economy it just makes some people who like gambling on made up numbers happier for a bit.
- mplewis 4mo ago
  What does any of that have to do with Dropbox?
  - saghm 4mo ago
    If we stop chasing clouds, we'll have to go back to local offline storage!
  - whiplash451 4mo ago
    The point is that we should be directing our energy in a direction that’s net useful for human kind which should translate into growth. Dropbox is not one of those because there are many viable alternatives.
RigelKentaurus 4mo ago
It's not necessarily bad, but in tech, not actively growing is tantamount to shrinking. Organic customer churn and attrition means that you're just a few years away from irrelevance. If DBX wants to stay a stable tech company, it should figure out a way to go private.
- brendoelfrendo 4mo ago
  Yeah but in a market where the current suppliers are satisfying demand, I feel like the churn just means your customers will go across the metaphorical street to the other guy, and you likewise have the opportunity to bring in someone from a competitor. So you still, of course, need to invest in marketing and retention, but as a means to maintain stability, not to grow forever. The cloud storage market feels pretty mature, so customers are going to be constantly shopping around for the best deal, or the best support contract, or whatever.
- devsda 4mo ago
  > It's not necessarily bad, but in tech, not actively growing is tantamount to shrinking. Dont we frequently complain that the primary driver behind ensittification of products is the need for perpetual growth at any cost. I understand the need for growth but if the market is saturated and profits are stable, then may be thats a signal that they need to innovate or branch out into other/adjacent tech without making it worse for their existing customers. But leaders take the shortcut.
blks 4mo ago
In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.
- MikeTheGreat 4mo ago
  Can you explain this further? For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?
  - BoorishBears 4mo ago
    HDDs, SSDs, RAM for their servers are all up what, anywhere 50% to >100% for the year?
  - jacobgkau 4mo ago
    I think they're saying that inflation means the $6B is reducing in buying power.
  - dchevell 4mo ago
    inflation … ?
    - reverius42 4mo ago
      My rule of thumb is inflation will eat half your principal every 20 years unless you're growing. An average of 3.5% growth will double every 20 years.
  - reverius42 4mo ago
    A bank account (or a spread of bank accounts across different banks to stay under the FDIC insurance limit per-account) is way, way, way safer than a flat market cap publicly traded company -- and with the same or perhaps better rate of return. Stocks are "supposed" to give better rates of return than "flat", in exchange for the higher risk.
  - blks 4mo ago
    Inflation, plus if you’re not trying to grow your market share, competition will be taking it away from you.

throwaway894345 4mo ago

Exponential growth can’t last forever, and I do worry about what will happen when the gravy train stops. Maybe we can figure out interstellar travel before it does so the limiting factor becomes “the galaxy” rather than “our planet”.

idiotsecant 4mo ago
I think impending demographic collapse might give us a peek at that sooner than you'd think
- mplewis 4mo ago
  Clarify exactly what you mean by "demographic collapse."
  - idiotsecant 4mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
    - saghm 4mo ago
      > In the aftermath of World War I, birth rates in the United States and many European countries fell below replacement level. This prompted concern about population decline.[8] The recovery of the birth rate in most Western countries around 1940 that produced the "baby boom", with annual growth rates in the 1.0 – 1.5% range, and which peaked during the period 1962–1968 at 2.1% per year,[13] temporarily dispelled prior concerns about population decline, and the world was once again fearful of overpopulation. After 1968, the global population growth rate started a long decline. The Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has reported that in the year 2023 it had dropped to about 0.9%,[13] less than half of its peak between 1962 and 1968. Although still growing, the UN predicts that global population will level out around 2084,[81] and some sources predict the start of a decline before then. In other words, the last time everyone got worked up over this, the trend reversed itself too hard within a few decades, and then reversed itself again. Meanwhile, over half a century after the "decline" started, we have over twice as many people as we had when it started, and the earliest projections for when growth will stop is another half century from now. I think there are a lot bigger problems we'll need to reckon with before then, and if we manage to remain stable by then, it seems like we have good precedent for reversing it fairly quickly.
      - hcurtiss 4mo ago
        I'm not so sure that global population growth tells the right story vis-à-vis declining birth rates in western countries.
        saghm 4mo ago
        Well, they were directly asked what they meant and replied with a link to a giant Wikipedia article. If they had a more specific point to make, they're being weirdly cagey about it.
        teiferer 4mo ago
        As long as everybody is nationalist (not to say racist) and keeps borders closed to protect the homeland, those differences matter. Realizing that one thing people get worked up about (immigration) is a solution to the other thing they get worked up about (not enough kids!!1) would be a great insight.
        hackyhacky 4mo ago
        Yes, but no one is really complaining about "not enough kids." They are complaining about not enough kids of their preferred skin tone. So they see immigration as an exacerbation.
        saghm 4mo ago
        I can't help but agree here. "Declining birth rate in the western world" just comes across as a dog-whistle to me. I guess I kind of only alluded to this myself with my response that they were being "weirdly cagey", and I wish I had been more direct like you were willing to, so thank you for this
        idiotsecant 4mo ago
        [flagged]
asdff 4mo ago
Not everything is in the exponential growth model. Most small businesses in your town for example. Margins might afford an upper middle class lifestyle for the owner and that is a good enough business model for this company to last decades, even pass down through the family.
- throwaway894345 4mo ago
  On the micro level, I agree. On the macro level, I don't know how viable those businesses will be when the wider economy is no longer growing exponentially (and frankly that may well be the least of all concerns).
  - asdff 4mo ago
    Well, they exist in places where the regional economy contracted significantly as well. They will be fine. They aren't so beholden to the wider economy as their customer base is local and they serve a need that has kept them in business for decades already, even with how many eras now of outsourcing and globalization and online shopping and all these other touted death blows that have been weathered all the same by these businesses.
    - throwaway894345 4mo ago
      > Well, they exist in places where the regional economy contracted significantly as well. They will be fine. This is a non sequitur. If the economy contracts and 99% of these businesses go under, 1% may well remain (“they exist…”) but that does not mean that all is well (“they will be fine”). > They aren't so beholden to the wider economy as their customer base is local The local economy in most of America is highly coupled with larger corporations. Either the large corporations are the major employers or the large corporations are the major customers for the area’s employers. Even if it’s not that, everything is tightly coupled to the banking system, as we learned in 2008.
- mrhottakes 4mo ago
  Don't worry, private equity is working diligently to make sure that can't happen anymore.

jagraff 4mo ago

> at some point in the human civilization journey we'll have to be content with something instead of chasing clouds all the time. Surely we're not even close to this point though? I can think of a lot of things that would be incredibly good for humanity to have, and which are achievable with enough economic growth, but which we are currently very far from because our economy does not have the necessary productive capacity (for example, enough solar/wind/nuclear/renewable power to completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels)

jon-wood 4mo ago
I mean sure, but marginally better/more profitable file storage isn’t any of that, and artificially juicing the share value doesn’t actually make any difference to the real economy it just makes some people who like gambling on made up numbers happier for a bit.
mplewis 4mo ago
What does any of that have to do with Dropbox?
- saghm 4mo ago
  If we stop chasing clouds, we'll have to go back to local offline storage!
- whiplash451 4mo ago
  The point is that we should be directing our energy in a direction that’s net useful for human kind which should translate into growth. Dropbox is not one of those because there are many viable alternatives.

RigelKentaurus 4mo ago

It's not necessarily bad, but in tech, not actively growing is tantamount to shrinking. Organic customer churn and attrition means that you're just a few years away from irrelevance. If DBX wants to stay a stable tech company, it should figure out a way to go private.

brendoelfrendo 4mo ago
Yeah but in a market where the current suppliers are satisfying demand, I feel like the churn just means your customers will go across the metaphorical street to the other guy, and you likewise have the opportunity to bring in someone from a competitor. So you still, of course, need to invest in marketing and retention, but as a means to maintain stability, not to grow forever. The cloud storage market feels pretty mature, so customers are going to be constantly shopping around for the best deal, or the best support contract, or whatever.
devsda 4mo ago
> It's not necessarily bad, but in tech, not actively growing is tantamount to shrinking. Dont we frequently complain that the primary driver behind ensittification of products is the need for perpetual growth at any cost. I understand the need for growth but if the market is saturated and profits are stable, then may be thats a signal that they need to innovate or branch out into other/adjacent tech without making it worse for their existing customers. But leaders take the shortcut.

blks 4mo ago

In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.

MikeTheGreat 4mo ago
Can you explain this further? For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?
- BoorishBears 4mo ago
  HDDs, SSDs, RAM for their servers are all up what, anywhere 50% to >100% for the year?
- jacobgkau 4mo ago
  I think they're saying that inflation means the $6B is reducing in buying power.
- dchevell 4mo ago
  inflation … ?
  - reverius42 4mo ago
    My rule of thumb is inflation will eat half your principal every 20 years unless you're growing. An average of 3.5% growth will double every 20 years.
- reverius42 4mo ago
  A bank account (or a spread of bank accounts across different banks to stay under the FDIC insurance limit per-account) is way, way, way safer than a flat market cap publicly traded company -- and with the same or perhaps better rate of return. Stocks are "supposed" to give better rates of return than "flat", in exchange for the higher risk.
- blks 4mo ago
  Inflation, plus if you’re not trying to grow your market share, competition will be taking it away from you.