The different tranches of economic activity feature definitive shapes that are held together by a certain kind of tension, and this is another way in which the division of labor maintains itself. Because of the extreme material complexity of an industrial society, any given sphere of the built environment implies an entire galaxy of knowledge and techniques. Because the built environment is so valuable, and because that value is bound up with so many interests, there is a constant and pervasive fear of its alteration, barring the expertise of a specific professional.
One of the things that the plumbing pipe, the electrical wire, or the wooden beam have in common is that their mere appearance can serve as a signal of permission to modify, or a warning to altogether avoid, based on the observer.
For example, without the requisite plumbing knowledge, the general maintenance person regards plumbing pipes with a vague suspicion, and calls upon the knowledge of the plumbing professional to alter them in any way, as any mistake could result in expenses that eventually come back to claim a large chunk of life of the offender, and this is not an exaggeration.
Often this is a structural truth: it is indeed dangerous to tinker with an extremely materially complex system that does not belong to oneself.
But it also results in a profound destruction of the individual's basic ability to alter the environment. A proportion of material maintenance is quite simple, if only one has the basic and general knowledge. But everyone is pressed so far into their chosen specialization in the division of labor, and shut off from all the rest, and then threatened so intensely not to veer from the path if they want to maintain economic security, that one becomes helpless to solve a large proportion of completely soluble problems, and conditioned to call upon the economic services of the professional, wherever a given problem arises, which becomes internalized to a large extent for many.
And the unscrupulous professional, if perceptive enough, can navigate a dense social environment and charge sizable sums for their exclusive services. But this sort of behavior depends on the scale and complexity of the work, the averages in market practices, social relationships in the work, and a host of other factors.
