On the agent-writer relationship

A few online discussions I've seen or participated in recently (most notably at #yalitchat, which if you don't already know, is a regular Wednesday-night event on Twitter) have involved the agent search, the role of agents, and the relationships between agents and writers.

I see a spectrum of writers' attitudes on the writer-agent relationship, and these are the two extreme ends of the spectrum:
1) A writer writes. An agent should just sell the work for as much as possible, and it's all about b...