It's a tough one for sure. Virality definitely is the "luck" factor of any successful web technology. It's such a difficult thing to quantify though. I think that as @thatkidsblack mentioned, Malcolm Gladwell made an attempt at this, but I haven't read it yet.

Once an account has enough Hive to get the resources they need to post what they want to post, they don't really actually need any more Hive, and so they can sell everything they earn from there.

I think you're underestimating the power of human greed, but I could be wrong. There are plenty of wealthy people in the world that continue to seek wealth despite being set for life.

In any case, thanks for the thorough reply.