Nice analogy but there’s just one problem: it assumes arriving at mars is the end goal. But that’s not how companies seem to operate. They’re about indefinite growth. Which clearly isn’t possible and ends up killing a lot of companies as they eat themselves from the inside just to keep greedy shareholders happy.

There used to be a time when people would invest over the course of decades and enjoy the dividends they received. But these days it’s all just about the short term rewards.

Tragedy of the stock market: infinity can hit a company even if both management and shareholders are fully committed to modest long term stability (apparently this is absolutely not what happened at nvidia).

A company can get into the sights of "infinity believers" even if they try not to. Infinityists will honestly believe that the stock is a very good buy and whenever a "stability lover" has to sell, they will outbid the next stabilityist. Price goes up, it becomes more visible to infinityists and so on. Eventually infinityist will outnumber stabilityist and management will enter "or die trying" mode on promises they never made. Or be replaced.