The global economy runs on a singular, unrelenting mantra: grow or die. This doctrine, enshrined in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures success by how much we produce, consume, and discard—not by how well we live, how sustainably we steward resources, or how equitably we distribute prosperity. Nowhere is this paradox more glaring than in the story of Apple Inc., a $3 trillion behemoth trapped in a cycle of its own making.
In its fiscal Q1 of 2023, Apple reported $117.2 billion in revenue, driven by iPhone sales of $65.7 billion—a 1.5% year-over-year increase. Yet, within days of this “record-breaking” performance, analysts pivoted to fretting over the next quarter: What’s next? How will Apple top this? For Apple, revolutionizing human communication was last quarter’s achievement. This quarter demands a new miracle—even if that miracle is a phone 0.2 millimeters thinner.
Apple’s iPhone, responsible for 52% of its 2023 revenue, exemplifies the absurdity of this growth-at-all-costs logic. Since 2007, the company has sold 1.38 billion iPhones—a device so revolutionary it redefined modern life. Yet today, its survival hinges on convincing users to upgrade for reasons as trivial as a camera that performs 10% better in low light or a processor imperceptibly faster to the average user.
Consider the math: $621 billion in total iPhone revenue since 2007, 151 million tonnes of global e-waste generated annually (20% from discarded electronics), and an average iPhone lifespan of just 2.5 years—despite hardware capable of lasting over 7 years. The rationale that we must upgrade is outdated. Instead, Apple’s survival depends on convincing us that “new” equals “necessary.” This isn’t innovation; it’s planned obsolescence disguised as progress—a strategy that swells landfills with lithium and cobalt while shareholders cheer.
This growth mindset is also reflected in our understanding of GDP and its inability to distinguish value creation from destruction. When wildfires ravage communities, GDP applauds the rebuilding costs as “growth.” When Apple ships a marginally thinner iPhone, GDP counts the sale but ignores the environmental toll of mining rare earth metals in Congo or assembling devices under exploitative labor conditions in Chinese factories.
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Take Gillette: The twin-blade razor, introduced in 1971, was more than sufficient for a clean shave. Yet today’s five-blade “Cuatro” exists not because consumers demanded it, but because GDP rewards “more” over “enough.” Each new blade iteration fuels artificial demand, turning basic hygiene into luxury. GDP calls this “economic activity.” The rest of us can call it waste.
And the consequences are dire. Producing one iPhone requires 34 kg of ore, over 100 liters of water, and 20.5 grams of cobalt—a mineral tied to child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier, has faced decades of scrutiny over worker suicides and grueling conditions, including 12-hour shifts and military-style dormitories. Meanwhile, Apple’s supply chain accounts for 85% of its carbon footprint. Yet GDP treats emissions as an externality—a footnote in the ledger. At the same time, GDP dismisses unpaid labor—such as parenting, caregiving, and community work—as economically irrelevant. Repairing an old phone? GDP penalizes it. Buying a new one annually? GDP rewards it.
The banking sector in Nepal has also fallen victim to the same growth-at-any-cost mentality that plagues corporations worldwide. With a population of just 30 million and nearly 90% of adults now holding at least one bank account, Nepali banks have effectively exhausted the pool of unbanked citizens. Yet rather than focusing on improving services or financial literacy, they’ve turned to cannibalizing each other’s customer bases in a destructive zero-sum game. Bank employees face impossible sales targets, pressured to constantly bring in new accounts regardless of actual need.
The result is a frenzied marketplace where banks spend more resources poaching customers from competitors than serving existing clients—offering temporary cash incentives to switch accounts, only to see those same customers lured away by another bank’s better offer months later.
This mirrors the notorious Wells Fargo scandal, where employees, under crushing pressure to meet unrealistic growth quotas, resorted to creating 3.5 million fraudulent accounts. While shareholders initially cheered the impressive account growth numbers, the truth eventually emerged as institutionalized fraud.
In Nepal’s case, while the methods may be less blatantly illegal, the underlying pathology remains the same: a financial system that prioritizes the appearance of growth over genuine value creation, where customer relationships become commodities to be traded rather than nurtured.
The tragedy is that this misallocation of energy comes at the expense of what Nepal’s banking sector truly needs—innovation in financial products, improved access to credit for small businesses, and better digital infrastructure to serve remote communities. Instead, the growth imperative has turned banking into a game of musical chairs where the music never stops.
Why must company sales and a country’s GDP always grow? Because we’ve conflated survival with extraction and progress with consumption. Yet nature thrives on cycles of renewal, not endless expansion. Apple’s mission, “to leave the world better than we found it,” rings hollow when its growth model depends on mining the Earth’s crust faster than it can regenerate.
The path forward requires fundamentally redefining what prosperity means—shifting from mindless consumption to mindful regeneration. Some nations are already pioneering this transition: France’s repairability index penalizes manufacturers for planned obsolescence, while Sweden incentivizes citizens to repair rather than replace, through tax breaks on appliance fixes. Apple’s own 2025 iPhone 16e, priced at $599, includes modular parts—a small nod to sustainability.
True transformation demands holding corporations accountable for their environmental impact through mechanisms like carbon taxes and e-waste fees that finally make ecological costs visible on balance sheets. These aren’t radical ideas but necessary corrections to an economic system that has for too long rewarded destruction as growth.
The iPhone proved humanity’s capacity for reinvention. Now, we must reinvent our metrics. Growth isn’t evil, but growth without purpose is ecological and moral bankruptcy.
Consider Boeing’s 737 Max: overloaded with automated “safety” features that led to catastrophic crashes, it became a symbol of innovation gone awry. Or Nike’s self-lacing shoes—a $350 solution to the “problem” of tying laces. Such absurdities are symptoms of a system that equates every new launch with “progress” and “more” with “better,” even when “more” means unnecessary complexity or harm.
