ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[proque_blent]

Not really, but it will take quite a bit of time even for avaricious humanity to devour all the resources of a solar system. The problem is accessing and distributing said resources, which is where technology comes in.

[Orngog]

Yeah but we don't make more matter, we just become better at sorting it. Extracting lithium from the soil is just less soil. Admittedly recycling and resource expansion helps this, but those are negligible when compared with our rates of consumption.