What's a comparable example of an already huge, industry-spanning conglomerate American corporation of 1981 that's done better than GE over the past 40 years? IBM is probably the best "successful" comparison, but they were never as diverse as '80's GE.

Berkshire Hathaway

That's a good one, but Berkshire had earnings of $40M in 1981[1]. I couldn't do better than the 1980 numbers for IBM ($3.5B)[2] and GE ($1.5B)[3] but safe to say in that era they dwarfed BH.

My point is that it would have been extremely difficult for any giant conglomerate adapted to the business environment of 1981 to transition successfully to the business environment of 2021 without changing nigh unrecognizably.

[1] https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1981.html

[2] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/01/16/IBM-reports-sharply-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/23/business/ge-had-small-gai...

General Motors became a finance company that sold cars on the side.

It is amazing how vertically integrated GM used to be - for a vehicle they made just about everything except the windshields, the paint, and the tires. They also made city buses, diesel locomotives, fractional HP electric motors, earth moving equipment, consumer kitchen products, and sold insurance. They even had their own university that awarded bachelors and masters degrees. All of that is long gone now.

Also nuclear reactors and the uranium fuel rod assemblies those required.

My distilled belief is the finance guys managed to regain control of things from labor and manufacturing in the early 70's. After 1980 came the complete financialization of the American economy. Instead producing goods, services and jobs companies were pushed to create 'paper'.

That's why GE and GM both let the finance part of the business wag the dog.

Rockwell peaked at a similar time frame & then exploded into a 1000 tiny pieces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_International#Apex_an...

Some are in fact successful companies to this day.