The age old question; which is more important, the installation tech or the salesman?
The salesman argues that without him, there would be nothing to install.
The tech argues that without him, there would be nothing to sell.
Reality is that the whole system needs to work in balance, even though the sales people usually get all the congrats for a great year because they are more visible.
The PVP pilot is the sales guy, out there on the front line doing the high profile, and argueably the funnest, part of the game. Miners, haulers, and industry players are in the background creating all the items that the PVP player needs.
The NIC and resource requirement to create items increases with the item complexity, be it T1-4 or light to heavy bots. Miners need better equipment as the demand for more raw material increases, industry players need more NIC to because the larger items require advanced purchases of high quantites of material.
Of course the system doesn't work if the PVP pilot can't afford to purchase the items that are produced.
The PVP pilot does not require MORE NIC, but they do require NIC.
If at this time, your impression is that miners are making more than PVP pilots, that's probably because the risk reward balance for PVP is out of balance.
I don't PVP, so this is just my impression, PVP pilots have to lose a crap-ton of bots before they start actually winning. Which makes PVP a huge NIC sink for players.
Again, just my impression, but even when you do win, the overall likely hood of you getting away with any loot is low. So, in general PVP players 'pay' NIC for the opportunity to PVP.
How PVP players generate NIC is either using alts, combat missions, and ratting.
The market is broken at the moment, which is causing everyone trouble, but if it was working correctly than the kernels and modules that drop from combat missions and ratting would be equal to or greate in value to what a miner can earn per hour. Note too though, that the miner depends on the market too for making profit.
TL;DR - The system is out of balance because the market isn't working correctly, it isn't because any one role has an easier time of making NIC; because of the broken market transport missions, which don't depend on the market, appear to make more NIC.
We need to revitalize our economy.