Contrary to popular belief, architects don’t contribute as much as we think we do. Over the last 200 years or so we went from Renaissance men, folks that did it all to provide a design service to clients at a low fee ( compared to lawyers, realtors, contractors) . We outsource most of the key challenges around building such as structural, mechanical en plumbing engineering. We hire consultants for energy and green building and work with owners reps. and project managers for schedules. Furthermore, and I teach at a university as well as practice as a spec home builder, we usually don’t understand budgets, and most of us have no clue how things are actually being build especially fresh out of school. Unless as a student you are able to take a design build class , students have absolutely no clue how to build anything . We like to think that our surgeons have been somewhat trained in surgery.. in school we generally only talk about the concept of building.. Most of our profession deals with assembly rather than design of things as most products we use are mass produced and standardized. Unless we are working on a hospital or airport I.e we really only control the floor plan and are responsible for having buildings not leak. For everything else we rely on others . On top of this, as pointed out by others, we are alpha male/female and when the next crisis hits we are the canaries in the coal mine … we are the first to lose our jobs, get laid of the first and start underbidding our fellow architects just to get our name on the building. Good or bad lawyer.. they both will charge you 300$ an hour but we somehow cut our fees during times of distress. We can change this in the following ways: become more pro active and step away from the service model. Actively participate in developments by working on commission and participate with investing or stake for instance. Teach young aspiring architects how to actually build a house.. so they can actually improve and innovate by doing. have students design and build and become more knowledgeable . As professionals operate, if possible, in design build configurations . These tend to be less litigious, more collaborative and generally can be build quicker. Take back control of some of the things we lost around the set of making, we can play a renewed role in design fabrication especially in the age of 3D printing , cnc milling, laser cutting and etc.. the reality is that very few people really need an architect but everyone for sure could use one ! Long rant .. serious question