(this may be an overly naïve or slightly overloaded question) would it make sense to treat salaried individuals as one-person businesses? this approach could grant them access to opportunities like these which typically reserved for businesses, especially considering that in many countries, businesses are increasingly being granted the same rights as individuals.
I think it's more to do with people in those environments not having good alternatives that creates incentive to do anything to get ahead. If we do some self reflection, similar things can be said about Uber & Airbnb et al. Painting this as cultural phenomenon is not productive IMHO.
This assumes we can come back from the failure without major consequences, and we'll still be in a position to leverage the learnings from that failure. I think the OP is pointing to one of those scenarios where that's less likely.
I also like the set of slides Paranoid Programming - Techniques for Constructing Robust Software [1] from Stratus Computer. They were discussed here earlier this year [2]
