The speaker won't break, it will reach a limit and that's it. Otoh, this constrained system will break.

Speakers can break :)

The behavior when it doesn't break is actually more informative, though. At first, all aspects of the music experience exponential growth. Once clipping sets in, the growth of the loudest / highest gain frequencies continues, but now at the expense of every other frequency. Eventually one frequency wins and the system devolves into the distorted shriek of a single fundamental frequency and its harmonics.

The idea here is that we can tell where we are between "free growth" vs "starting to clip" by looking to see how well the rising tide is fulfilling its promise of floating all boats.