Dear Harold, First of all I must thank you for the excellent posts that you publish through your blog. I totally agree with you that "jobs" is the wrong indacator of economic success, especially at a time when so many people are choosing to be independant workers and entrepreneurs. The Internet and collaboration technologies have made it possible and we will probably see a lot of small companies grow by forging alliances rather than by hiring more employees. Infact there are some excellent companies with a team of 5 - 15 people that are doing global business on the Internet (37 signals - the company that offers Basecamp is one of them, but there are many more). I believe this paradigm will also elliminate the ill effects that usually creep into an organization when it grows beyond a certain size. it is almost impossible to maintain the initial culture after a certain amount of growth, not to mention the management overheads that creep in.