Your post also opens up the concept of an economy based on manufacturing versus an economy based on moving pieces of paper from one pile to another (the financial industry). Is one a real economy and the other a mirage?
It's all about trading value for value. If I need someone to move paper from one pile to another, I trade something I value to compensate them for their effort.
I am in a service industry... architecture. People pay me for my ideas and experience. I don't produce an object, I produce the means for making that object (a building). I pay accountants to keep track of the piles of paper because it is more valuable for me to spend my efforts on the architecture side of the business.
For that matter, I pay the people who work for me to produce the drawings... not because I cannot, but because I am more valuable to my business in the client/public relations end of the business. Now that I think about it, the drawings that I do produce are presentation renderings. I do that myself becuase I can do it better and for less money than hiring it out or delegating it to an employee.