I think you're stuck in a groove of your own making. Selling a company is not a 'literal death' because a company never was 'literally alive'. It is merely a convenient fiction that allows multiple people to work together and to somewhat fairly share the proceeds. Survival of a company is never an inherent goal. Survival of a product can be such a goal.
Companies are utterly un-important, they are simply vehicles.
It's difficult to buy stock in a product. It's difficult to make an index fund of products. It's difficult to retire on "product dividends."
Companies exist as an attempt to get all the money in the world, and most fail that goal. Apple is pretty close. Refusal to acknowledge failure as failure is pathological insanity. Getting paid to fail (or to "soft land" and save face on an outright failure) doesn't mean the fail didn't happen.
> It's difficult to make an index fund of products.
Well, that's what I said, companies are vehicles.
> It's difficult to retire on "product dividends.
But you can retire on corporate dividends. And when a companies shares are acquired you either get money or shares in the acquiring company.
> Companies exist as an attempt to get all the money in the world
How do you square that with 'it is hard to retire on product dividends'? Companies pay out dividends to their shareholders.
Companies clearly do not exist to 'get all the money in the world' because then the economy would grind to a halt.
> and most fail that goal.
All companies fail that goal. They fail every time they buy new resources, pay out salaries, rent offices, pay out dividends and so on.
In fact, the worst thing for a company is to have a whole pile of cash and nothing to do with it, that's money that is not currently working for the company in a meaningful way. That's why companies tend to manage their liquid reserves very carefully.
> Apple is pretty close.
Close to getting all the money in the world? No, not even remotely close. And even all that money that Apple has is indirectly owned by the shareholders of Apple. Either Apple will have to spend it or they will have to pay out. Having it sit there does them no good.
> Refusal to acknowledge failure as failure is pathological insanity.
Are you calling me insane in a roundabout way?
> Getting paid to fail (or to "soft land" and save face on an outright failure) doesn't mean the fail didn't happen.
Oh, that happens. But it's pretty rare. But better than chapter 11 if that's the alternative.
Pretty rare? That's back to the beginning, because every acquisition means the bought company has explicitly failed to become "real" in a make-more-than-we-spend (and continually grow the "make more") sense.
But better than chapter 11 if that's the alternative.
I'd rather see 20-somethings lose everything and learn tough, introspective, life changing lessons, than see them running around with their "soft landing" $10 million paydays just because they had the right connections.
Companies are utterly un-important, they are simply vehicles.