[consilient]

> What exactly is the argument that corporations are incapable of unbounded exponential growth

Individual corporations aren't capable of unbounded exponential growth because they can't keep the interests of the humans that make them up aligned with the "interests" of the corporation indefinitely. They develop cancer of the middle management and either die or settle into a comfortable steady-state monopoly.

Market systems as a whole can and do grow exponentially - and this makes them extremely dangerous. But they're not intelligent and so can't effectively resist when a world power decides to shorten the leash, as occasionally happens.