Similarly, Toys-r-Us was part of the US culture and has been destroyed for a few million in profit because it made economic sense. Hardware stores and book stores will also disappear from our culture, is this the society we want? People band together to support opera and symphonies, I would rather save drive-ins and hardware stores since they are more important in almost everyone's lives.
Many analogous things are true for toy stores and hardware stores etc. And people are banding together to support things that aren't commercially viable, the closest thing to hardware stores in this regard is probably hacker spaces.
And to answer your question directly, yes, I strongly prefer to live in a society where businesses are allowed to fail when they've run their course rather than being kept on life-support for vague past-romantic reasons.
I completely agree non-viable businesses should fail just like we let insolvent banks and automakers...well those were an exception.
It comes down to what our core beliefs are as a society. If we want to maximize private profit, why aren't there slot machines and cigarette vending machines at every bus stop? Toys-R-Us was a viable business that was destroyed for a relatively small profit - should that behavior be: illegal, discouraged by taxes, or encouraged with government backed loans? Those are the kinds of questions we could be asking. Our current regulatory environment is not the same as what it was in the past or what it will be in the future.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/abandoned-drive-in-mo...