I'm really not sure what the next 20 years holds for the traditional professions—law, architecture, medicine, etc.

Caroline bought a bucket of joint compound for $15 last weekend. Kind of remarkable considering it costs $50-100/hr to get that put on the wall. $15 of joint compound, 100x that in labor cost.

In software, which is lightly regulated, more and more work is leaving the Bay Area. There's no reason to pay Bay Area salaries for work that can be done at 1/2 to 1/3 the cost somewhere else. Law is a conservative, cautious profession, and yet, when I got a bill for $365/hr for contract review that could've been done by anyone who got through engineering school it just feels…off.

As a buyer of this stuff, the ratio of price to value feels out of whack. I know I'm going to get a huge speech about credentialing, and education, and regulation. But a one-hour call with an attorney costs $365, and Google Maps navigates me anywhere I want to go, for free. It's the same with surgery ($30k for a hip replacement), accounting, and many other licensed trades.

All of this is headed for disruption—I'm pretty sure of that—but I'm less sure what shape it will take. It feels inevitable given the current populist political climate, and the perception (true or not) that "real wages aren't growing". The point isn't to hurt the professions, it's to give buyers better value. If I had to guess, we'll see a combination of fewer jobs due to better software (e.g. Atrium), looser restrictions for trade in services, medical/other forms of professional "tourism", domestic "near-shoring" (especially considering rising wages in China), and some loosening of credentialing, such as letting nurse practitioners do more in healthcare.

I just don't see how these wage premia are going to hold up, when customers have been conditioned—by things like Uber, HotelTonight, and TripAdvisor—to expect so much convenience, ease, and value, that today's professions don't deliver.