Steve Jobs said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life”. Rarely does mortality figure as an explicit instrument in making decisions. But maybe it should.
In an abstract sense death is important for progress in a world that is perpetually changing. If old companies that do not manage to adapt to changes did not die, the market would be served by continuously more inadequate solutions. If for example companies that did not adapt to the change in transportation when the automobile was invented did not die, we would still have coach services with horse and carriage. Possibly we would have a world similar to the one portrayed in Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings where millenia pass by with no discernible impact on technology or mode of life. Presumably the modes of production of incumbents were left immortal and not allowed to die and improve or any invention to be developed, since all is well as it is and were. To all but the most sentimental, a world without death would be a chilling prospect.
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