You can see it as depressing that companies did this to themselves over, say, the previous 30 years. But they did it to cut costs and if the consequences of tha

You can see it as depressing that companies did this to themselves over, say, the previous 30 years. But they did it to cut costs and if the consequences of that action are only biting now, then maybe it was the correct decision. It probably kept the shareholders happy. If you take a long view of 100 years, its hard to see whether shareholders would be better served by companies optimizing themselves for longevity or by a changing population of companies planning for an initial 10 years of growth, followed by 30 years of cost cutting, followed by gradual decline. I'm sure I'm not the first to have had this thought. Does Economics teach a standard line on this?