It seems to me that work must be done to create value, and work must be done to make the system idiot proof (despite the continuing ingenuity of idiots), and this is true regardless of the talent and abilities of those producing the service or product.

Work (value creation) can be more or less efficient. As stated, an inefficient workman blames his tools, instead of the way he is going about his work. In this case, and often in other cases, the customer base forms part of the toolset. The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, and that it is their fault.

Here is more on this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

Internals tend to attribute outcomes of events to their own control. Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances.

In the present case, the customer base would be seen as uncontrollable (only susceptible to external control) by the inefficient workman, and controllable (susceptible to internal control) by the efficient workman.

work must be done to create value [...] regardless of [...] talent and abilities

Yes. But do you mean, as Marxists contend, that variance in ability plays little or no role in variance in the efficiency of the work?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Marx.27s_...

Viewing the customer as a part of my toolset does not make them internal. A defining feature of my toolset is that it is under my control. The customers I have are not under my control.

Viewing the way I generate my customer base from the collection of potential customers is largely under my control, but that is not the same thing. My customer base is more under my control, but is still not part of my toolset.

I have control over what I produce, and viewing what I produce as a mechanism for selecting customers is useful. Realising, and explicitly using, the fact that what I produce will implicitly determine the customers I get is valuable.

This is not achieved by viewing customers as part of the toolset.

I do not subscribe to this theory. Toolsets can be changed, improved or mastered. I can do none of these with my customers. I can only do it with the things I use to create my services. I use tools to create services to assist my customers. Calling my customers "tools" does not help me.

The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, and that it is their fault.

I disagree with this analysis. The workman is saying that there are (usually a small number of) customers who require that the services be more complex in their implementation than might otherwise be expected. This is not the same thing. I know that around 80% to 90% of my customers never provoke the inbuilt protection systems in my code. The protection systems account for about 50% of my code. I have measured these things because I work in the defense industry. I know that around half my code is there because up to 20% of my customers don't use the system the way it was intended to be used. Whether this is lack of training, lack of awarenes, or malice doesn't matter. I don't "blame" them, but I know that if my customers only did what they were shown in training, and didn't do what they are trained not to do, 50% of my code would be unnecessary.

But do you mean, as Marxists contend, that variance in ability plays little or no role in variance in the efficiency of the work?

Of course not. I mean that for every worker, some of their work is producing features and facilities, and some of their work is protecting against inappropriate actions. The balance between these two might change with the abilities of the workers, but I suspect not much. It's a pretty constant ratio across my programmers. To assume what you seem to have assumed from what I have said is, again, perplexing. Perhaps we constantly talk past each other, but I'm finding it difficult in general to understand your mindset.

> Toolsets can be changed, improved or mastered. I [cannot] do [this] with my customers.

You cannot provide any value to the world that would involve a different customer base? After Kozmo re-emerged as MaxDelivery, it changed its customer base (one of its tools in value creation) by starting out with only high-density neighborhoods of Manhattan (and it continues to change its customer base as it gradually expands its delivery areas). It has mastered its customer base (again, one of its tools in value creation) by learning how that tool reacts to various delivery deals, and by employing improved delivery deals. Please see the article linked above.

For at least many decades, bike-sharing advocates and politicians have been failing to efficiently employ the tools at their disposal, one of which is their customer base. That tool, the customer base, has been blamed over and over again as "the problem" as bike-sharing advocates and politicians have repeatedly employed essentially the same defectively-designed policies.

By that analogy usenet was 'asking for it' because it was open, worked and actually contained great content. Of course that meant that it was ideal for the jerks of this world to try to peddle their wares, eventually resulting in the near destruction of usenet.

On the web the relationship between the number of people that you have to employ to look after abusers vs the number of people that are actually productive is a good way to measure your success....

Yes. That is what I said. The workman with internal-locus-of-control improves his value-creation system based on feedback, and is seen as more successful. The workman with external-locus-of-control blames parts of his value-creation system for acting (in his eyes) wrongly, and is seen as less successful.

Separation of concerns is as useful in customer identification as it is in writing software.

http://xkcd.com/169/

I agree that blaming the customer base for the failure of the bike-sharing schemes is wrong, and I agree that it may be that changing the target customer base is the only effective solution, but do not agree that calling that "changing your toolset" is helpful.