🤑The Hideous Odds of Becoming Disgustingly Rich (a.k.a. the True Purpose of Modern Education)

M.D. Singer — January, 2025

Everything is the way it is for a reason.

Historically, Time Equaled Value.

If you needed open-heart surgery, would you choose a doctor straight out of residency or an industry veteran with 40 years under their belt? Of course, experience wins. Historically, time served as a useful heuristic for experience and, therefore, value. Or as Ronald Reagan quipped, “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”

Apprenticeship Distills Value Back to Time

Reflecting on their youth, someone once told me that when they were 20, they wanted 50 years of experience in 1. I resonated with that. People are hesitant to invest 50 years from their finite lives in learning a trade. The apprenticeship model aims to expedite learning, transferring the most important wisdom from master to student. In areas where experience of the past is valued, apprenticeship is critical.

Young People’s Imperative (Potential—> Experience)

As we get older, we trade potential for experience. Young people’s core resource isn’t their money (we have no money), but our time and malleability. With fewer responsibilities, more energy, and a longer time horizon, younger people start as the classic scrappy underdogs. For older people, time compounds money, connections, and experience, allowing greater leverage. In a different lens, apprenticeship is about fostering higher leverage in youth.

The past 30 years of technological development have radically destabilized this paradigm.

More Than Ever Before, Time Doesn’t Connote Value

Would you prefer a veteran dermatologist to look at your strange freckle or an AI model that’s trained on all of the world’s ailments?

Technology Increases Output per Capita.

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes

Venture capitalist and Georgetown Law alumnus, Chris Sacca recently talked about Tim Urban’s graph of a man looking at human progress. We infer that the future will be like the past when it’s not true. The past isn’t the future. Averages are, on average, wrong.

Everything is the way it is for a reason.

In the past, wealth was likely contingent on your family’s wealth or your age. With the leverage of software and the democratization of computers, a lowly college student has the operating leverage of a robber baron. As Naval Ravikant writes, code and content are permission-less. They increase your leverage without having to seek approval from gatekeepers—as opposed to other leverage amplifiers like capital or labor that are conditioned. Napoleon needed the French Revolution to seize power. Alexander Hamilton needed the American Revolution. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even need Harvard’s permission to launch The Facebook.

Everything is the way it is for a reason.

Conclusion/TLDR:

While the odds historically of becoming disgustingly rich have been quite small, never before have the odds been this appetizing. The eyes of the world are searching for the first self-funded AI billionaire. Whoever it is will understand these truths.

We are moving too fast to live solely in an apprenticeship model. As Brian Chesky says, “You need to know just enough to be dangerous.” Young people’s chief operative is to stick to the curve of innovation as closely as possible in order to gain more leverage than otherwise possible. Education should be focused on learning technology of the future.

“If I have seen farther, it’s by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

Just because everything is the way it is for a reason doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

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