Travis (19:26)
Well, one of his friends who's like a very well esteemed dentist who's kind of well known for doing this type of surgery, volunteered to have that like do surgery on him and it was totally fine. But my point is like we're at the very beginning stages of that. So the time that it takes to become a dentist or the time that it takes to become a doctor, you know what I mean? Like if you start like a kid who's 14 right now who's like, I want to be a surgeon, you know, it's like, well, once you graduate high school, then you're going to go to college. You got to get into a good college. So dedicate a lot of work to get into a good college. Then you get into that good college and you go through four years there and then you have medical school and then you have residency and then like, like we're talking from a, for a 14 year old, we're talking about what, 16 years before they're going to be a practicing surgeon, you know what I mean? Like in that time period from now to 16 years in the future, a lot of again, there's probably going to be a robotic arm that can do the surgery in a better, more complete way. By the time that you are capable of doing that. And now you're going to be $350,000 in debt by the time you're starting to earn and your ability to earn is going to be limited by the fact that there's a machine that can do it that is going to be more accurate than any human. You know what I mean? Even those types or being an attorney or something like that, it's like, and we talked about this a little bit before and you have people in the comments that are like, yeah, but an attorney is still required for. And look, I'm not saying that lawyers are going to be completely replaced by AI, but what I am saying is that a significant portion of the jobs available in that world will definitely be automated replaced by AI. You know, like, like the traditional path where it's like you, you're in law school and you're a paralegal at a law firm, so you can hopefully get as a lawyer once you graduate. Things like that, like that work is not only, is not only, like AI is not only capable of doing that, it's better. Like if an AI tool has the ability to research all of the potential available data and provide information to an attorney who's making a case, that job is gone. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be much, remarkably better at doing that job. Rather than having a paralegal stay up, you know, working 22 hour days pouring through literal boxes of paper, research and data to find answers. Or you can just like throw it into an AI thing and then the next morning you wake up and it gives you all the information that in a team of paralegals would give you over the course of two weeks of digging through, you know what I mean? Like that stuff is going to be gone and there's still going to be people who are going to have roles in that world who have to have the level of competence to be able to decide and make decisions and things like that. It's just that the jobs are going to shrink, you know what I mean? It's not a market that's going to be growing in terms of available positions. Whereas you look at these trades jobs, they are by definition growing every single year with available positions. And because again, it comes back to simple supply and demand economics, which is that it's not just supply and demand in terms of the marketplace. The job market works the same way as the products and services market. If there are a ton of people who have this skill, then by definition it is less valuable to a company and therefore will be paid less at a lower rate. Whereas you have another position that is they're begging people to fill and be competent in that will by definition require employers to offer more money to fill that position. And a lot of these trades jobs are very, very overlooked by the younger generation. And I'm including myself in that category. Like millennials, Gen Z, like, they're very, very overlooked, when in reality they actually probably are providing a much more stable potential career path than a lot of the jobs that have coveted for the past two decades. So, yeah, if you're a young person listening to this, you should be willing to question the status quo again and ask yourself, like, am I pursuing this sort of desk job type career because I truly am passionate about this thing and I want to do it, or because I view that as being the thing that is going to give me economic prosperity in the future? Because the reality of the situation is that in a decade from now, those two things are going to be wildly different. So you have to take into account all of the other external factors before you make these decisions, especially when you're making a decision to burden yourself with six figures in debt that you're going to have to pay off throughout the remainder of your life, when the vast majority of people, even if they had to have a degree to get hired, they're not even using the thing that they got their degree in, you know what I mean? Which is why a lot of companies are, even tech companies, which have historically been the people to recruit solely out of Stanford. You know what I mean? Even these companies are like, yeah, we don't even require a college degree anymore. It's like, okay, well if that's the case, if that's already happening, then what are, what are the odds that that's going to be the case when you graduate in four years from now, if you're starting college, or eight years from now if you're just starting high school. So let's take all, all of these things into account because it's going to directly affect your ability to earn. And, and, and you know, that type of debt is really, really crappy debt to have. It's like having a mortgage payment as soon as you graduate college, which will prevent you from getting an actual mortgage payment because that you can get to buy a house right now. You know what I mean? So. And it might be a little bit of a different scenario depending on the situation. Right? That's why, like, all the advice we give on the show is always like, look, there's a nuanced approach to all of this and you have to decide what's best for you because in some scenarios, it might be like, oh, well, if you got into a really great school and you got a full ride scholarship and you don't have to go into debt to get it, and you can put yourself in a position to go meet a bunch of other kids who are in a, who are in a different socioeconomic class than the one that you come from or are familiar with, then the, the relationships and the network and the exposure, like, those things may be worth the college experience for you, but if it's one of those things where it's like, I have no idea what I want to do and I'm going to go get in debt to go to college because that's what I feel like is the next step for me in life. Or I think there's a lot of people in this category. Actually, it feels safer to go to college because the only thing you know how to do is school. You know what I'm saying? Like, when you're 17, 18, that's the only thing you've ever done, that's the only thing you have any experience in is school. So it's like, it feels safe. I'm convinced that's why a lot of people just continue going to school. There's like, oh, well, guess I'll go back, get a master's. I guess I'll study for my PhD. I guess I'll study for my second PhD. And then they end up being a professor because, like, they never actually decided what they wanted to do. They were just like, it feels more comfortable. It feels safer to me. I thrive in this environment. I was always rewarded for getting good grades. So I'm just going to stay in this, this world because anything outside of that seems unsafe, uncertain, and I don't know whether or not I'll be able to make it. So they just like go.
