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This article is a little ridiculous. It assumes that marketing/sales generates no value, that engineering/making things is the sole value creator. Anyone who's
by swombat 15y ago
This article is a little ridiculous. It assumes that marketing/sales generates no value, that engineering/making things is the sole value creator.
Anyone who's ever tried selling something knows that building something is not even half the battle. Putting engineering on a pedestal above all others serves no useful purpose (I say that as an engineer myself).
- bwarp 15y agoI think you are confusing product creation with engineering. Engineering is solving a problem or need. Product creation is trying to artificially create a need. Marketing and sales get involved in the latter. Engineering is a byproduct of need and requires no marketing.
- mohene1 15y agoI stated in my "Sources of the Economy" that marketing is essential to the economy. I partially agree, marketing can generate wealth indirectly by creating demand, but marketing only creates wealth when the end product is used for something functional. If I market a music band, I create no wealth, I facilitate the exchange of wealth. I am not saying that this is bad, but I am saying that the creator is the basis on which everyone else operates. I agree value can technically be created at the base level by controlling production of crops and things. You are right, but still this is dependent on the producer. @bwarp you are right, engineers usually have clients and contracts for which they build.
- swombat 15y agoI've actually got a blog post in the works about this whole idea of value, and who "creates" value as opposed to "facilitating the exchange of value" (that's often regarded as inferior, but I would suggest that it's not). The line between the two is harder to draw than you'd think, anyway. Is art really creating value, or is it just facilitating things? Is building a physical product really creating value? From an environmental point of view, every physical product creating is destroying value, or at best turning one type of value into another. Is writing software creating value? When you really dig into it, this idea of "creating value" is pretty damn complicated...
- mohene1 15y agoSend me the blog post when you get around to it. I considered writing software the same as creating a machine. It allows us to access/construct the things we need.