I'm trying to explore how we decide on root causes, and how many seem to want deserving victims to punish.

Is "those people who profited should pay for it" a desire to guillotine[1] those "executives walking away with millions".

Who profited? Do we blame the executives? Should we search for culprits of modern capitalist systems? How much is my fault or responsibility?

Sorry for the horrid quote - it was there to illustrate the question about consumer surplus - but it is too close to trolling.

> consuming the company requires mistreating customers (getting rid of consumer surplus)

I don't think you are using surplus meaningfully

Byrne Hobart[0] calls such acquisitions strip-mining of goodwill. Essentially extracting money from intangibles by destroying a brand. He uses brutally vivid metaphors, but with solid economics.

Yeah the Sveriges Riksbank prize seems ignoble.

[0] Byrne Hobart writes The Diff. Worthwhile subscribing to the free tier, although there is a lot of referencing to paid tier content. https://diff.substack.com/

[1] I've just read «A Tale of two cities» which uses the French revolution for English entertainment.