I doubt we really disagree; you're completely right on the ever increasing complexity of web development. What I was talking about is how things tend to get eas

I doubt we really disagree; you're completely right on the ever increasing complexity of web development. What I was talking about is how things tend to get easier for "normal" people, not developers (but I usually try to avoid calling "most" people "normal" since it also implies that developers are "abnormal" ;). When you take a step back from the actual complexity of themes, you realize the mere existence of "themes" to control how things look has made the task of changing how things look by just changing themes extremely easy. A person using a theme enabled tool like Wordpress or Bootstrap can figure out how to replace the default theme without much effort, even if creating a theme from scratch is still difficult. The ease of use with applying pre-existing themes is what makes the good ones valuable. Plenty of people value their time a whole lot more than they value their money, so buying a theme makes sense for them. The trouble I was pointing to is the point when actually creating themes becomes nearly as quick and easy as applying them. When the choice is between easily spending a few bucks and 20 minutes to find, buy and install a new theme versus just as easily only spending 20 minutes creating your own theme by picking out some colors and styles, then the value of pre-existing themes will drop. At present, good themes are currently the result of skilled labor, but when the task becomes easy enough for everyone to do on their own, it no longer requires skilled labor.