> I mean what value have I generated from writing a bunch of code that is used to do some analysis? How is my company/industry providing value to society again?
Does somebody pay money for your company/industry's product? If so then they're getting more value than the money they paid (unless they were coerced somehow into buying the product). All companies solve a problem for somebody, and indeed one of the reasons why a fully planned economy would be inefficient is because no planner can fully intuit all the problems in society which need to be solved (since the only way that question is not political is if it's reduced to the simple rubric of whether or not someone will pay money for a solution).
> For instance, if janitors is a highly respected and well paying job, would people still think less of sweeping floors and flushing toilets?
You're presuming that primary job satisfaction comes from external social validation. Time and time again we see that in cases where you would think that is the case, e.g. doctors who are well respected by society, children who are pushed into those careers by their parents can sometimes end up really unhappy because the internal motivation was never there, and many people who end up in that situation end up quitting and switching careers because life is too short to be in a career you hate just to make your parents happy.
Nobody is naturally internally motivated to pick up other people's shit. Societies with high levels of public cleanliness are that way because people in those societies clean up after themselves in public, not because people elect to spend their free time on a personal crusade to clean up after others.
Does somebody pay money for your company/industry's product? If so then they're getting more value than the money they paid (unless they were coerced somehow into buying the product). All companies solve a problem for somebody, and indeed one of the reasons why a fully planned economy would be inefficient is because no planner can fully intuit all the problems in society which need to be solved (since the only way that question is not political is if it's reduced to the simple rubric of whether or not someone will pay money for a solution).
> For instance, if janitors is a highly respected and well paying job, would people still think less of sweeping floors and flushing toilets?
You're presuming that primary job satisfaction comes from external social validation. Time and time again we see that in cases where you would think that is the case, e.g. doctors who are well respected by society, children who are pushed into those careers by their parents can sometimes end up really unhappy because the internal motivation was never there, and many people who end up in that situation end up quitting and switching careers because life is too short to be in a career you hate just to make your parents happy.
Nobody is naturally internally motivated to pick up other people's shit. Societies with high levels of public cleanliness are that way because people in those societies clean up after themselves in public, not because people elect to spend their free time on a personal crusade to clean up after others.