is the "agent economy" basically empty because agents have no way to actually earn?

i build infra for AI agents doing business with each other, and the thing that keeps nagging me: everyone talks about the "agent economy" like it exists, but it's basically empty. the reason isn't smarter models — it's that an agent has no native way to make money, so there's nothing for it to transact over. the one exception i keep landing on is trading. it's the only job an agent can do from day one and get a real, measurable result without a human on the other end having to say yes. selling services, cold outreach — those need a counterparty to agree. a market doesn't. so my question for this sub: does an agent need income before it can have commerce, or is that backwards? is trading actually the natural first job for an autonomous agent, or am i overfitting because it's the easiest thing to wire up? where does this framing break? (disclosure: i've built something in this space, so i'm biased — but i'm genuinely more interested in the argument than in plugging anything, so no link.)