I'm not sure I deserve the "elitist" label, but yes, I find this development very negative. While I agree with your point that hobby startups distribute money

I'm not sure I deserve the "elitist" label, but yes, I find this development very negative. While I agree with your point that hobby startups distribute money and enlarge the market, I was trying to point out that people working under management with no experience will probably not learn their craft well. In my opinion, the old apprentice system used for jobs like becoming a carpenter would be quite appropriate for software engineers. But it only works if there are enough master level programmers around to teach everyone else. As for the pie analogy, I don't share your opinion. When the market moves towards lower quality, that usually makes high quality more expensive or even outright impossible to acquire. Case in point, I'm not aware of any bicycle that is rated for 200kg+ for driver and luggage. Not only are there no cheap bikes at that stability level, but also nothing in the $2000+ premium range. So something that used to be easy to buy for everyday folks 20 years ago is now too expensive even for rich people. And all that only to drive the price of the cheapest bikes down from $500 to $300, which I presume won't make much difference to anyone because a good bike will last you 10 years, so it's <$1 monthly in either case.