I'd agree with you in a way DoubleT. Crafters CAN make more money from a single crafted item, but it's got to be taken into account that for every crafter making one item, there are another x amount of crafters needing the materials they can't be bothered to go gather themselves, who are willing to pay for the fact.

What I do as a multi crafter/gatherer is whenever i'm going to gather items i need for a craft, or levelling up a craft, i will gather the items i need, then gather another stack of them to sell.

For example, levelling up my carpenter:

Needed LOTS of walnut lumber (i pretty much levelled up from 30 to 50 on these lol). So, i gathered 500 of the logs for myself, and gathered another 1000 for sale purposes, of which i turned half of them into HQ Walnut Lumber to sell (there's another carpenter leve that needs JUST these lol.) Sold them in stacks of 100, put more up when the last stack sold. Add into it the reward from the levequest i was grinding, (oak logs), which i put up for sale as i didn't need them, and i made a pretty penny.

So aye, gathering has it's worth, especially now with desynth, people are crying out for shards/crystals/clusters and even NQ's of materials.