>Enter religious institutions: Ballpark estimates in my head indicate that, sure, some come & go quickly, but many have much more staying power than their pure corporate counterparts.
Sounds like survivor-ship bias. How many now-dead religions were contemporary with Christianity?
I'm not sure it matters if, long ago, many religions were short lived. All that means is that over the millennia religions have evolved into much longer-lived entities, while corporations have not. Meaning they still present a useful case study for institutions capable of outliving a few short human life spans. And even then, looking at many dead religions (Greek, Roman, for example) they still held sway for hundreds of years, much longer than a typical corporation.
Sounds like survivor-ship bias. How many now-dead religions were contemporary with Christianity?