As opposed to shareholders, who ravenously seek to maximize short term profits and sink the company.

That's why there are no publicly-traded companies more than a decade or two old. Oh, wait...

The comment you replied to was just pointing out that, like how a founder-held company can get stuck pursuing the founder's obsession, a stock market held company can also single-mindedly pursue quarterly gains to the detriment of long-term health.

There are old companies in either model.

It didn't say can. It stated it rather definitively, which I wanted to point out the absurdity of.