And even if they do fail it's rarely the end as the bankruptcy process do totally allow for the critical/valuable aspects of an company to continue under new ownership, and the state could easily ensure that that process happens by buying up the parts they have an interest in doing the bankruptcy proceedings.
All the current model of Bailouts do is protect the shareholders from having their share value wiped out as a part of the process, and of cause keep up the appearance that the stock market can keep going to the moon(which a lot of retirement funds depend on).
The liquidation is the company being stripped of assets, who then gets sold of to highest bidder in order to pay the creditors, some of those assets might very well be fully operational business units that someone else(a competitor or the government) want to buy whole.
I known that the us chapter 11 is kind of a bad way to do bankruptcy as it don't really wipe out the whole but allows the previous executives way to much of a stake in the process where as other countries replaces the leadership with a bunch of court/creditor appointed outsiders on day one.
All the current model of Bailouts do is protect the shareholders from having their share value wiped out as a part of the process, and of cause keep up the appearance that the stock market can keep going to the moon(which a lot of retirement funds depend on).