You need enough medical people to take care of people who are sick, enough lawyers to keep the legal system running efficiently, and enough financial people to

You need enough medical people to take care of people who are sick, enough lawyers to keep the legal system running efficiently, and enough financial people to make good decisions about the allocation of capital. You also need a few managers, to mention the most prominent elite profession. Most of these professions, however, are overloaded and have people in them who don't belong. Having one profession attain the status of an elite caste leads to a lot of problems, including a sharp reduction of quality within that profession. People go into that profession with the wrong motivations, and a lot of the people who enter this elite profession don't have the necessary talent, but get put there as political favors (e.g. top-tier managers). Much of why managers have such a negative reputation is that most people in management really have no talent for it, but ended up there because executive positions pay well while expecting very little at minimum, and they were able to get these jobs. Much of why finance and law suck up so much talent, though, has to do with risk-aversion. A person only has one life, and an assured upper-middle-class lifestyle is more appealing than a 1/5 chance of becoming very wealthy and a 4/5 of faceplanting and having to enter a traditional track at 30. There's more expectancy in starting a company than in going to law school, but expectancy is meaningless, given human mortality. If I had the ultimate power, here's the program I would found in order to take at least the long-term risk out of startups and encourage bright young people to form companies: career mentoring, 3-5 hours per week, from a VC. The "trainee"/protege works for, and eventually may found, startups. He operates "on the market"-- the program wouldn't guarantee any funding or line up particular jobs, though it might provide assistance and advice-- and is therefore fully responsible for his own job search and funding. After 12-14 years working in startups (some successful, some failed) he gets a job in VC, if he wants it (he might be doing something more interesting). This removes the long-term career risk from founding startups and makes "serial entrepreneur" a viable career rather than a pipe dream. While one might argue that the guaranteed exit would lead to people being less hungry, most young hackers would much rather found successful companies than end up in business in any context, even as VCs.