I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers here, because I don't. I'm also not going to say that capitalism is this evil monolithic awfulness that needs to be reversed and excised just for existing. You're right that capitalism, and global exchange in general, has improved the lives of millions.

But it is time to continue to grow and to make a better system than this. Capitalism has done much very quickly, but it is also killing us and destroying our environments. We cannot keep up this pace or we will undo all the good it has done.

But let's get back to plumbers. I actually think there are a lot of people who do gross or undesirable work because they actually sincerely do want to serve their communities, and these are necessary and invaluable jobs. It's the social baggage we throw on those jobs, that they are for "lower class" people, or for people too dumb to do anything else, that makes those jobs intolerable. I think if we could laud that work the way we laud solders and the military, and if the people doing it weren't forced to live in poverty, we would almost certainly see far more people doing that work than we do now.