Capitalists must always seek to maximize differential profits—they have to collect more profits than their competitors.
Because you can reinvest those profits in buying up more revenue generating assets, you can expand your business and grab more market share. Or, like when Microsoft bought Nokia to grab the patents Nokia held, you can invest in blocking your competitors from expanding.
If your share of the market falls so far that you can’t make payroll or pay your creditors, you go out of business. Your capital is seized and sold off, and you become just another worker, subject to the whims and commands of capital owners.
So capital owners in competitive markets must always try to grow at a rate faster than their competitors. If they stop, if they take a break, if the global ecosystem collapses, then so does capitalism.
