It's the hedonistic treadmill Everybody loves a startup/small business. When it grows then people still appreciate the quality of life that the growing compan

It's the hedonistic treadmill Everybody loves a startup/small business. When it grows then people still appreciate the quality of life that the growing company provides. At some point though the startup becomes a behemoth and the rate of improvement in quality of life provided by the behemoth slows down. It's natural, S-curves rule the world. But the hedonistic treadmill has already took hold of the population and all of a sudden with the rate of improvement in quality of life slowing down they all take a long and hard look at the monetary rewards reaped by the company and the entrepreneur. All that can be summed up with: "What have you done for me recently?" If the population think that the answer is "not enough" then the next logical step to extract quality of life out of the company is to break it up and expropriate the entrepreneur. That way you'd get yet another boost in your quality out of past purchases of products and services by de-facto retroactively stealing them. That's a good way to beat the hedonistic treadmill, to get one last hit out of the bong...or in this case out of Windows 95. On top of that you also get the huge quality of life boost of seeing somebody richer than yourself getting down at your level or even worse. So it's useless to try and reason with people. The heart wants what it wants. There is some equilibrium though . Under the current system the limit was tested most recently by Microsoft and Bill Gates. It took: a) 160B personal wealth back in 1999 = 262B today equivalent b) Total domination in a newborn sector of the economy which everybody wanted to have a foot in. c) Not wanting to talk with politicians and bend to play the D.C. lobbying games. d) Lots of angry competitors who actually did bend and went to cry to D.C. and accepted to play their games. e) But all of the above wouldn't have mattered if Windows 98 was as big of a leap in quality of life provided as Windows 95. So the lesson here is: 1) You would not have to worry about the haters until you are disgustingly rich, they can moan and cry but they can't do anything. 2) If you reach a stage where your company is exceptionally powerful and you are disgustingly rich and you want to keep going for more then you have to keep taking risks like you were poor and the company was a startup company. That's the only way to beat the S-curve and avoid the "what have you done for me recently?" question.