Very wise, MarioMarimba!

You are correct. Any designer can run straight out of the box of a commercial program and produce what's called "Laser Sludge".
But that doesn't make that person a designer.
If you want to use a modeling program, and design things - it would be worth your while to check out a book on mechanical design or architecture.
The thoughtfulness of the design itself is what will be attractive.
(I'm not speaking from the soap box, I deal with artist daily, that believe their shirts should sell because they used their new skills in Illustrator to hack something out. Throwing clip-art swirlies and grungy borders in designs does not make it a good design.)

Take the "russian guy", 600v (http://600v.deviantart.com/)
He told me when I wrote him one time that he (up to that point) never used plug-in when using SketchUp, just the native building blocks.
And the tool array is Spartain in SketchUp to say the least - but he produced some really great retro-car designs.

However - I can't lie, I looooove new tools and gadgets. ;-)
If the NURBS Open Source library came with a variant to T-Splines, I think I'd be one of the first to act like Tom Hanks on a deserted island yelling proudly: "Fire... I made Fire... look at me!"
But maybe the new tools would simple clutter our minds and actually hinder our work processes.

Thanks to Michael for thinking rationally for us and keeping MoI's tool-set simple.