I recognize some of the sentiments, but I think I'd put it slightly differently. We live in a society where a heck of a lot of value is created, but the value

I recognize some of the sentiments, but I think I'd put it slightly differently. We live in a society where a heck of a lot of value is created, but the value accrues to people who don't seem to be the ones creating it. If you look at economics, the "who creates value" question has been neatly sidestepped. If you can get someone to pay you, GDP goes up by that amount. There's not a whole lot of quibbling about whether the value paid was correct, although the GDP accounting system has had a number of changes throughout the years (vast simplification). At present if you just don't do something illegal, the dollar you earned is as good as the dollar anyone else earned. This system has the fault that it doesn't seem to connect with ordinary ideas about who contributed. If whoever ends up with the trophy is the person who deserves the trophy, what is the trophy for? There's a kind of nihilism about what work is for if the purpose of climbing the greasy pole is to reach the top of the greasy pole. Why should I bother to write good code if the thing that really has value is to sit in meetings and talk myself up to people who have no idea what good code actually is? Why should I not simply create a compliance tax for my colleagues, and become the troll who extracts payment? I can start with things most people agree with: good code should have unit tests and documentation. And we can move on and add code reviews, from at least 2 other devs, before any new merge is allowed. And we can't have the same two guys that are your buddies, let's rotate it a bit to make sure there's no corruption. And make sure the rotation system is documented. And signed. By an independent auditor. With an industry accreditation. From an organization that is overseen by government committee. A government committee that confers with other government committees to ensure best practice. All those people need to be paid. And they are valuable, you can't deny that documentation is important. So all these people are creating value and need some of the pie.