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.
All companies work that way, or they risk to fail. The maximization of profit stems from the need to stay competitive. If your competitor can produce the same amount of goods for a lower price, you won’t be able to sell yours for a cost-covering price and therefore go bankrupt. Instead, you then have to find a way to be more efficient by investing in your business. To be able to invest, you have to have created profit. Once you have done that, your competitor has to do the same and the cycle starts anew. That’s the idea of modern capitalism.
I am not sure what you mean by that. I tried to show that just because someone sells something, they are not necessarily a capitalist.
The question says capitalism (not so loaded term) your answer said capitalist (more loaded term and you’ve taken time to use the loaded part of the term).
That said, I accidentally replied to a question in lemmy.ml so the person asking the question is probably more aligned with your way of thinking and explaining than I am. Sorry about that
Well, to me that sounds a little like you prefer the term swimming over being called a swimmer.
Oh, I didn’t say I had a preference. And I see your point that one is just a conjugation of the other. I’ve just seen capitalism as a term used more for explanation and when I’ve seen capitalist said it tends to have a negative connotation at best but more often it is half spat out