[pwk]

Photography is different from other fields in that the typical unit of work is quite small: one photo. That means amateurs can overwhelm the professionals by shear volume. There are so many more of them, and they take so many photos; so what if 99.9% of them are awful, as long as there's a good filter to find the gems.

This of course doesn't work if you absolutely must have photos of some particular event, so there will always be room for professionals even if they're squeezed.