Instead, if you're Bob's player, just declare that you're a blacksmith. You can make stuff out of metal. That's great--good for you. Now get on with the whole reason you and your pals arranged to meet tonight, and play some D&D!
It's sentiments like this that have made me move away from D&D.
What if the group - the entire group - wants to play a group of merchants and smiths, working out of a small town? Now all those things you claim are just "flavor" are important.
Why can't the game support that, and the combat-heavy and "heroic" games that folk such as yourself enjoy? I don't see a reason for a system to cater specifically to one or the other. There's no reason the system shouldn't be able to support any style of play.
I imagine that one of the underlying factors is how XP is gained - killing things and taking their stuff. Nothing other than combat-related abilities are seen as valuable in such a system; everything beyond it is just "fluff" or "flavor."
In thinking about it, I would think that the majority of the mindset of those who support 4e's removal of crafting and such is an effect of the nature of character advancement. Craft: Cheesemaking does not help the party slay critters, which is how advancement is attained, and thus the Craft skill is seen as inherently inferior to a combat- or adventure-enabling skill.
The problem of limited time is related, though I don't think it's the cause of this approach, and I think there's a bit of a strawman going on - I'd think that a system that supported crafting and such would have a way to streamline it so that one player didn't monopolize the DM's time, at least not more than necessary. A system that allowed for a player to suck up half-an-hour of DM time would get annoying, fast, and I don't think that anyone that advocates craft rules would really go for that.