"What people find when they leave the system is a confusing, byzantine, and slightly scary world of health insurance, taxes, pensions, and regulations."
Your choice: intentionally build and nurture your assets, or ignore them in the pursuit of the next thing...
Now that everyone has the ability to own a slice of the attention paid to media, now that everyone can build and nurture a network, assets are no longer off limits to people who work for a living.
In just three words, then, there's the huge chasm between the trusted, experienced freelancer, the one you're happy to hear from when she has a new idea, and the newbie or the short-term maximizer. Those guys have to start from scratch, each and every time.