That's actually how progress gets made - by people doing thankless work in obscurity. Then opportunists usually take that effort, make it fit an existing industry and charge whatever the market will bear.

It'd all be fine if the middlemen didn't then proceed to claim greatness, insight and ingenuity, but they do (because then older middlemen give them money to replicate their success).

This social structure is quite bad because it makes people think the middlemen are capable of creating value through their 'insight', without people who did unsexy, hard, thankless work prior.

Anyhoo :)