Society is not uniform or monolithic. Society has structure, including various relations based on interests that may be shared or antagonist.
Social value is not intrinsic to skill, nor to any other target of valorization, but rather determined from processes of valorization bound to the surrounding social systems.
It is unequivocal that our society valorizes labor not for benefit shared generally across the public, but specifically for its value to private business.
It is also questionable that a skill itself may carry a demand for respect that is separable from respect as understood by having a personal target.
Their accomplishments already are being plundered.
Otherwise, the discussion would not be occurring, and the conditions from which it emerged would be only fictional.
I am interested in criticizing the systems that have produced the disempowerment, and in building new systems that empower everyone.
You are interested on avoiding criticisms of the systems in which problems are occurring, denying the deeper structure of such systems, fatuously asserting their benevolence, and obstructing possibilities for transformation.
Your accusation about denying reality is dishonest.
You live beneath particular social systems sustained by ideals of a particular historic period, and refuse to see further, while deriding anyone even for trying.