[walterbell]

Venkatesh Rao has an article series that compares startup entrepreneurs with historical economic shifts.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

"Entrepreneurs are the new labor. Or to put it in a more useful way, the balance of power between investors and entrepreneurs that marks the early, frontier days of a major technology wave (Moore’s Law and the Internet in this case) has fallen apart. "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...

"a labor class emerges when privileged knowledge is commoditized and institutionalized in ways that make it basically useless as negotiation leverage with the investor class, leaving supply aggregation as the only path left for the extracted and intellectually bankrupted class. The extracted knowledge is placed under the stewardship of a new mercenary class that eventually turns into a domesticated new middle class (this pattern is not just restricted to the 19th century; variants have played out at least a few times before in world history)."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/04/entrepre...

"The new financial order will comprise members representing the largest new economy companies, as well as members of the investor class who survive the ongoing collapse of credibility of their home institutions. Political participation in the new order will come not from nation-states or provincial governments, but city/urban political systems. "