Are they really? Nothing of value is produced unless the exact artifact is transmuted into a professional good? There’s nothing to be gained from sketching preliminary drafts or notes because they’re never polished for publication?

Not what I meant. The point was work under a certain grain size of effort has very little (or negative) value to others.

We're in an environment awash in 'content' where every person has an infinite slop producing machine, and a lot of people are publishing nearly zero effort drafts, awed by the appearance of meaning.