These acquisitions end up paying for themselves. Just look at semiconductors, where some of the only "value creation" is in ever bigger companies buying each other. You have Analog Devices buying Linear Technology for $14B in 2017, then buying Maxim for $20B in 2021, both of them massive competitors and themselves the result of countless acquisitions over the years. And it repeats all over, Intel buying Altera, AMD buying Xilinx, NXP merging with Freescale..