Self reference

I found this year-old posting over at Mark Bernstein about Clement Mok writing this in “Designers: Time for Change”:

“In the ensuing years, the deadening effects of social turmoil followed by stagnation and, later, the sheer volume of work created by waves of economic expansion engendered an environment of complacency. Designers increasingly just scrubbed and brushed what they already had for each successive client and project. They added more bells and whistles as was required by their clients, and chimed all the way to the bank.”
and
“The design profession functions as if each individual designer is selling his or her services in some sort of terminological vacuum, with nothing more substantial than his or her personal charisma or taste to serve as the foundation for vast edifices of public influence.”

Clement Mok is right, but I can’t really see that this is a behavior of designers in particular.