Capt. Picard "economics of the future are somewhat different"

Very true. Sadly, while "companies" play a very large role, ultimately, it's people. The dynamics are, I think, somewhat interesting. The essential pattern appears like "theme and variations", woven endlessly through human history that I'm familiar with. It has been possible, in brief periods, to imagine that perhaps we had moved past some of it ... grown a bit, on the whole. But, it's really difficult to imagine we might ever reach a sort of "Star Trek: First Contact" ... "economic regime"*. Circumstances continually evolve and even relatively subtle changes in policies and principles and such, at scale, can make a big difference. One key problem is simply that the cohesion and principled behavior and all of that, borne out of challenging times** and the desire to make things better for ones offspring, so easily leads to less purposeful more entitled people who can even end up resentful at what previous generations accomplished, the philosophies they espouse, the plaudits that they have engendered... and purposefully wish to go against that grain. But, to get a bit away from this unintentionally increasingly high-falutin' "jibber jabber" - the phases of commercial internet development adhere to fairly typical (modern) human patterns. First: optimism and practically "free money" ... an initial gold rush, real attempts at building real value ultimately drowning out the charlatans and general gold rush "carnival". Second: a sort of plateau, "professionalization", coalescence, b