[asdff]

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.

[mrhottakes]

Don't worry, private equity is working diligently to make sure that can't happen anymore.

[throwaway894345]

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]

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]

> 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.