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> Scott Adams based Dilbert on his career at Pacific Bell in the 80s. Can you imagine quitting Pacific Bell in the 80s to, uh, found your own Pacific Bell?

Idk man, imagine quitting HP in the 70s to make your own HP or IBM. Inconceivable

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Quitting Fairchild to make your own semiconductor manufacturer (twice), quitting Intel to make your own CPU manufacturer, etc. The point isn’t that people didn’t do it if brave/desperate enough, the point is that it wasn’t a Thing You Can Do in the collective consciousness. Also, relatedly, that the societal infrastructure to support(/profit from) this category of people wasn’t yet in place, so you needed to be wealthy or connected (even more so than now).

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