> How many public companies have needed bailouts after spending most of their profits on stock buybacks, again? Setting aside for the moment the general agreem

> How many public companies have needed bailouts after spending most of their profits on stock buybacks, again? Setting aside for the moment the general agreement that bailouts are bad, and a policy failure rather than a market failure...maybe another question to ask is: what percentage of the GDP comprises public companies that needed bailouts after spending most of their profits on stock buybacks? One of the advantages of decentralized planning is that there is no single point of failure — some subset of corporations are always efficiently providing for consumers. Governments that are large and centralized enough are single points of failure, and it's really hard to correct that once such failures occur. > As opposed to public companies and the quarterly earnings cycle? But Value Investing is a big part of the market, and it's fundamentally a long-run investment strategy. Some of the most successful and impactful companies don't pay dividends, or operate on losses with the expectation of profits at some time in the distant future. Even the argument that Governments are good at doing big things without the expectation of profit seems to be under scrutiny. NASA's planned SLS moon mission is a bit of a disaster — way over budget and way behind schedule. Because the boosters aren't reusable, each launch is expected to cost $1B (with a B) dollars — EACH launch! Meanwhile SpaceX's target cost-per-launch is $50M. SLS is unlikely to fly until at least 2021[1]. Meanwhile, SpaceX is building a factory that will manufacture 1 Starship (capable of going to the Moon), every 72 hours[2]. I don't even need to go down the F-35 rabbit hole. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/nasas-large-sls-rocket-unlikely-to-fly-before-at-least-late-2021/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/nasas-large-sls-rock... [2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-plan-to-build-one-starship-a-week-and-settle-mars/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-pl...