I think here we're seeing the difference between what the money comes from.
Well, yes. What revenue stream can be built around a barrel of oil? Do you need my training to use it? Do you need an upgrade in six months? Do you need a phone number you can call when something goes wrong? No -- after you've bought a barrel of oil from me the only thing you'll want is another barrel of it.
But if you make a widget that purports to do something, you can make it hard to use. You can charge people money to teach them how to use it. You can create attachments that you sell at a premium, without which the widget is nearly useless. You can make it so the widget breaks after 5 years and requires replacement. You can make it so the things the widget services can only be manipulated with the widget, which you conveniently replace with a new version (to be sold at a premium) after the other one is discontinued. That's how software works, and it's how a lot of other stuff in engineering works too.
But I still maintain there is a very big difference between how the petrochemical industries are organized and how, say, aerospace is organized. Aerospace is based on contracts between companies that each tries to maximize its value in the deal, leading to strategies based on vendor-locking and maximizing profit at the expense of quality and innovation. Petrochemicals were the original trusts (e.g., Standard Oil) that basically controlled everything in their operational chain. Very efficient and appreciative of innovation, but not especially capitalistic.
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