There is a big confusion here between personal credit and objective physical properties.
Software is 'eating the world' because it is the most super-efficient building material ever invented.
You could say the wheel 'ate the world', but not because each person making each wheel is a genius, but because of the general physical properties and value of roundness. The overall benefit is not a matter of individual credit or respect, it is a matter of physics.
We should be paying the total programming workforce for the total (personal) effort required, not the absolute (objective) 'value' returned. The excess of value is gain: you do not need to pay anyone, it is a free gift from physical reality.
Now, whether programmers' pay compares 'fairly' with anyone else is still an open question, but the physical facts of software being great stuff does not (or should not) seem to justify one side or the other.
Software is 'eating the world' because it is the most super-efficient building material ever invented.
You could say the wheel 'ate the world', but not because each person making each wheel is a genius, but because of the general physical properties and value of roundness. The overall benefit is not a matter of individual credit or respect, it is a matter of physics.
We should be paying the total programming workforce for the total (personal) effort required, not the absolute (objective) 'value' returned. The excess of value is gain: you do not need to pay anyone, it is a free gift from physical reality.
Now, whether programmers' pay compares 'fairly' with anyone else is still an open question, but the physical facts of software being great stuff does not (or should not) seem to justify one side or the other.