This is even my problem with the system when it comes to "the little guy." Say you make a coffee shop, or release art, or a videogame, or an invention... There's always this looming pressure to scale . No matter how much of a home run, that success is almost designed to "dry up."

Wow, one in a million success! You can chill now right? No, it's gotta be bigger, better, repeated, infinitely! Franchises, chains, out of place sequels nobody asked for! Overly enthusiastic merch destined for the Pacific Garbage Patch!

It feels like the system forces greed upon people as the state religion because they are not naturally greedy themselves if they're otherwise taken care of. Savvy business of the modern age has the mentality of cancer.

Even the wealthy need to be imbued with the pathological fear that all they have might get taken from them, so they must amass more and more. It doesn't even end with their own lives! They must aim for generational private wealth now.

It's feels like it's such an outlier mentality to want to find "just enough success to support my people and do some good."

And you're right about the adversarial relationship between employers and workers. "Honest work" is almost an oxymoron anymore, because it doesn't matter how nice a person sits in the manager's chair. Their win condition to provide for themselves is to screw you as much as possible and get away with it.