Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up.

From Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Rhett Butler speaking:

I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day. 

It is the equivalent of playing the business cycle but at a civilizational level.  Most people benefit the most from the incremental up-building.   Very few people and very select people benefit enormously from the crack-up.  

Utopian fantasists wanting to remake society always generate crack-ups that destroy everything for everyone.  But it is because the utopian fantasists always imagine that they will be among the very select people.  And they rarely are; they crash with everyone else.