The result of every bubble has been the same: inevitably, most bubbles collapse and many of the companies with the loftily-valued stocks chug on in the new normal.

The closest parallel to a world-changing paradigm that most in the present day can relate to would be the dot-com era in the late nineties to the early noughties, which laid the groundwork for the importance of Big Tech to American commerce. Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems – a darling of the dot-com bubble era – had this to say in an interview with Bloomberg in 2002 over the implications of the lofty Price-to-Sales Ratio of 10X that his company’s stock had once risen to:

“At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?”

Mr. McNealy’s exclamation was in response to the lofty valuations bestowed on his company. 10.7 was the highest Price-to-Sales (PS) Ratio it ever had. After that, the company’s stock waned away until Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009-10.