AbstractIn this article, we challenge the (implicit) dogmas of the current trend towards a business rescue culture within Europe. It is unclear why this trend – as a logical consequence of the desire to create increasingly debtor friendly insolvency regimes – keeps revealing and reinforcing itself in this time frame. Many different approaches take this concept for granted. The idea thus risks becoming an end in itself. The assumptions behind the current trend of business rescue culture should reflect the stylized facts of a firm embedded in its business ecology. An implicit dogma of current business rescue culture is that a firm is an entity that must survive and will create value indefinitely and, accordingly, deserves a second chance. However, the ability to create value and therefore the viability of a firm are the outcome of an uncertain economic process. Capitalism is a process of trial and error. Failure is a normal outcome and should be considered an essential part of capitalism. In general, the life span of firms is finite because they have to cope with many uncertainties and trade‐offs. The firm itself is only a tiny temporary (legal) shell within a self‐organized value chain that continuously reallocates resources as competition intensifies and the rate of innovation accelerates. The implicit assumptions or dogmas of the current business rescue culture contradict the accelerating destructive forces of capitalism and therefore can be labelled as an anachronism. Instead of focusing on the specific micro‐level of the firm, insolvency regimes should aim to provide a solution at the higher meso‐level. Copyright © 2018 The Authors International Insolvency Review published by INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.