[taneq]

Sure, but on what timeframe? That's why small family businesses are some of the longest enduring - because their owners want them to generate earnings indefinitely. Investors who buy shares are often looking for much shorter term gains (1-5 years) and will put pressure on the board to sacrifice long term viability for a short term boost in share price.

[erikb]

Consider a world where your company always dies after 1-5 years. But for each dying company there's a new one. Investors still make profit, people still get products, employees still get jobs. In that kind of scenario do you really need a long living company? I'd argue you don't. Long life is an arbitrary factor that in itself has not much value.

And the longest living companies may actually be the biggest ones. At a certain size companies don't die anymore. They get merged with other big companies, restructured, or renamed.

[taneq]

Some (all?) products need more than 1-5 years of active development to really become awesome. Every time a company dies, a huge amount of knowledge is lost.

[gozur88]

It's not that simple, though. The value of a company's stock is based on future earnings. If the company starts eating the proverbial seed corn you may get more profits disbursed, temporarily, but the value of the stock will go down to reflect the loss of future earnings. There's no free lunch, even for investors.