The masses chased the trend, left their own business and rushed to work for other's businesses. And gradually the whole economy became centralized and got dependent on a few elite entities.
The nature of a standard economy should be decentralized. When the economy gets centralized and a few entity starts to hold the majority control, it becomes more easily collapsible.
When the economy collapse, normal people suffers most. Because the elites have already prepared their haven and moved out to there.
How does a economy gets centralized?
When the majority of the people build there career based on doing job of higher economic entities, like government jobs or big companies. So the cash flow goes through the elites, instead of the many.
So, most people gets dependent on the economy and cash flow controllers.
In a small-business influenced community, economy collapse is almost impossible due to its decentralized nature.
But when a big company loses in a job based economic community, it falls down with everybody else.