Knowledge isn't zero-sum, but credentials are. Educating everyone doesn't make "menial" jobs go away. Better, really, to recognize some of those jobs as more important, and be willing to pay for them.
Also, there are gains from trade, and economies of scale. The time to cook two meals is less than double the time to cook one. And the person who specializes in it is probably better at it than the person who specializes in some other thing. When things are working correctly, these gains are then distributed across society by exchange.
I wrote education, not credentials. That includes learning how to farm, be an electrician, a crane operator, a researcher, learning how to cook, it could be anything.
It is obvious that a society with widespread use of personal drivers/housekeepers/nannies is simply one with a wider income/wealth gap.
One option is to spend multiple generations slowing bringing the housekeepers kids up the ladder with the housekeeper’s meager savings, and then their kids, and so on. Or we can cut the crap, and redistribute wealth more quickly and directly via a public education/training system.
What I wrote does not preclude ditches being dug, or being a ditch digger. What it does is prevent ditch digging from being one of the few options for many people which result in ditch digging labor prices to be very low.
You give people opportunities to do many more things than menial labor, then that allows the price for menial labor to rise so that it is not done by the “lower” socioeconomic rungs.
This is a good argument, IMO. The main dangers I see are of status-signaling "non-skills" dominating education, and of overall malinvestment in skills that aren't needed.
"Step 1: Everyone gets a Ph.D.
Step 2: Meals cook themselves!"
(I suppose we could all live on MREs?)
Knowledge isn't zero-sum, but credentials are. Educating everyone doesn't make "menial" jobs go away. Better, really, to recognize some of those jobs as more important, and be willing to pay for them.
Also, there are gains from trade, and economies of scale. The time to cook two meals is less than double the time to cook one. And the person who specializes in it is probably better at it than the person who specializes in some other thing. When things are working correctly, these gains are then distributed across society by exchange.