The importance of capture is skimmed over a bit too much in pg's essay, in my opinion. He writes "for much of human history... the only ways to acquire [wealth] rapidly [was] by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation. Naturally wealth had a bad reputation."
Wealth-by-confiscation is far from dead, and is in fact alive and kicking. Excepting the government, no one can print money; hence, the only way to get it is from other people, who don't part with it willingly. The separation of others from their money is the real business, and those who specialize in it or aid others in it (salesmen, advertisers [Google, Facebook], lawyers, marketers, those who provide marketplaces [Amazon, eBay, Viaweb], payment facilitators [PayPal, banks]) will find themselves much better paid than those who "merely" create wealth. The same is true for those who guard wealth against those who would take it: tax accountants, lawyers, security system vendors (one of the more lucrative jobs in my town is sales for a security systems company---double whammy), and defense contractors (on a national level).
Today I threw a kill switch on work I'd done for a client that was seemingly impervious to invoices. In two hours I had an email titled "Urgent Matter," and two hours later I had a check in hand (five minutes later the client's software was working just fine again, if you're curious).
So while I would much prefer to think of myself as a developer, today I got paid for being an extortioner instead.