What do you mean? What is value "in a social sense?"
However, my point was a little more general -- it makes most sense in connection with the bit about work and reward. Doctors and lawyers are portrayed as civil servants in the article, and this is used to drum up some sympathy for their relative impoverishment (relative to VCs). Why don't they mention the poor nurses?
Doctors and lawyers have ridden the demand curve long enough; they now find themselves contending with people who do even less and make even more, and they complain. Reflection would have been a more respectable response.
The problem we are having is that the economics are being changed in a occluded space. The doctor makes 250k, but has to shell out 60k for malpractice insurance, and 30k a year to repay student loans for nearly a decade. The lawyer trudges to work every day to stick postits on briefs in order to get that "big score" from a medical liability suit, knowing that he is part of the problem; I'll just grin and bear it until I make partner...
Picking grapes starts to look pretty good.
What will we do when all of the good doctors decide to pick grapes?
If it was, there would be no Neiman Marcus, or much of anything else.
Good example. Just coming off the wine tour at Napa are we?
In the intervening years, many kind people tolerated me as I wormed my way into IT. Now I live in a house and, yes indeed, drink the wines of Napa and other places.
We all ought to consider, too, the absolute worthlessness of venture capital in a social sense (and the basic worthlessness of the web, I might add). How much should people expect to make for playing with computers -- in one form or another -- while other people make their bread and clean their houses?
Of course, it's always been that way -- income is not proportional to work. If it was, the grape pickers would be shopping at Neiman Marcus.