First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. King Henry VI People have long been suspicious of “middlemen,” e.g., traders, lawyers, bankers, salesman, marketers, managers, and politicians. For millennia, most people have suspected such middlemen of being mostly social parasites, and many “Utopian” reforms have planned to eliminate them. Economists have faced an uphill battle arguing that middlemen usually serve important functions. Among intellectuals, engineers and physical scientists find it especially hard to appreciate roles other than designing, building, maintaining, fueling, and distributing physical goods.