Growth is the prime directive of capital. And as far as capital is concerned, the purpose of increasing production is not primarily to meet specific human needs, or to improve social outcomes. Rather, the purpose is to extract and accumulate an ever-rising quantity of profit. That is the overriding objective. Within this system, growth has a kind of totalitarian logic to it: every industry, every sector, every national economy must grow, all the time, with no identifiable end-point.
