But during the gold rush, freely building wealth was possible

Now we're much further along in the collapse of civilization and building wealth tends to turn into building debt

Can you make a profit on solar panels, or do you lose more value in letting the authorities force you to share power or revenue they can use against you?

The answer is you lose more value, because if you were making a true profit, that would be the signal for the authorities to take more from you (that's how the auto-balance works at this stage of collapse)