If They Can Teach You, They Can Replace You

Let me tell you about two developers I know.

Developer A has a computer science degree from Stanford. Knows React, Python, JavaScript—all the "hot" skills. Charges $50/hour on Upwork and constantly gets undercut by someone willing to work for $30/hour.

Developer B dropped out of community college. But they've developed an intuitive understanding of user psychology that can't be taught in any bootcamp. They charge $500/hour building interfaces that convert visitors into customers, and clients line up to work with them.

What's the difference?

Developer A has knowledge that can be commoditized. Developer B has knowledge that can't be replicated.

The Commoditization Trap

Here's the brutal truth the education system will never tell you:

If someone can teach you what you know, they can teach someone else (or AI) and replace you.

Society has commoditized your brain. Every skill they mass-produce in schools and bootcamps becomes a race to the bottom. When thousands of people have the same certificate, the cheapest always wins.

This is why:

• MBA graduates compete for the same corporate jobs

• Coding bootcamp graduates undercut each other on freelance platforms

• Marketing "experts" all teach the same recycled frameworks

• Writers all sound exactly the same

They're all running the same mental software.

The moment knowledge becomes widely available; its value drops to near zero. It's basic economics—supply and demand.

But here's what they don't want you to know: there's another type of knowledge that becomes MORE valuable as the world gets more connected.

The Specific Knowledge Revolution

Naval Ravikant didn't get rich because he went to business school. He developed specific knowledge around startups and angel investing that felt like play to him but looked like impossible work to others.

His unique combination of:

• Philosophical thinking + startup experience

• Long-term thinking + tactical execution

• Technology understanding + human psychology

• Risk assessment + pattern recognition

Cannot be taught, outsourced, or automated.

No business school can replicate Naval's specific insights because they emerged from his unique combination of experiences, obsessions, and natural inclinations.

This is Specific Knowledge:

• Highly creative AND highly technical

• Cannot be taught in a classroom or course

• Inherent to you and feels like play

• Makes you irreplaceable, not replaceable

• Gets more valuable as you develop it further

Why Mass Education Is Mental Prison

The education system was designed during the Industrial Revolution to create compliant workers who could:

• Follow instructions without questioning

• Perform standardized tasks consistently

• Compete for predetermined positions

• Accept being replaceable parts in someone else's machine

But we're not living in the Industrial Age anymore.

In the Creator Economy, being "well-educated" in the traditional sense is often a liability. It trains you to:

• Wait for permission instead of creating opportunity

• Memorize other people's answers instead of asking your own questions

• Compete in oversaturated markets instead of creating new ones

• Seek validation from institutions instead of results from reality

The "best" students often become the worst entrepreneurs because they've been trained to optimize for someone else's metrics, not their own success.

The Specific Knowledge Framework

Here's how you develop knowledge that makes you irreplaceable:

1. Identify Your Natural Obsessions

What topics do you find yourself reading about for hours without getting bored? What problems do you think about in the shower? What conversations energize you instead of draining you?

Your specific knowledge will emerge at the intersection of:

• What you're naturally curious about

• What you're naturally good at

• What the world needs and will pay for

2. Go Deep Instead of Wide

Mass education teaches you to be a generalist. Specific knowledge demands you become a specialist in something that doesn't have a name yet.

Instead of learning "marketing," develop expertise in "psychological triggers that make B2B SaaS buyers upgrade their plans."

Instead of studying "business," become the person who understands "how remote teams maintain culture while scaling from 10 to 100 employees."

The riches are in the niches—especially the niches that don't exist yet.

3. Learn Through Building, Not Consuming

You can't develop specific knowledge by reading books or watching courses. You develop it by:

• Building things that fail and figuring out why

• Solving real problems for real people

• Making mistakes that teach you what nobody else knows

• Iterating based on feedback from reality, not theory

Specific knowledge is earned through experience, not purchased through education.

4. Document Your Learning Process

As you develop your specific knowledge, document everything:

• What you tried that didn't work (and why)

• What insights emerged from your failures

• What patterns you're starting to see

• What unique approaches you're developing

This documentation becomes intellectual property that compounds in value over time.

The Unfair Advantage

Here's the beautiful paradox: the more specific your knowledge becomes, the more valuable you become to the right people.

When you're one of thousands who "know marketing," you compete on price.

When you're one of three people who understand "how to build viral loops for AI productivity tools," you name your price.

Specific knowledge doesn't scale down—it scales up.

Your Next Steps

• Audit Your Current Knowledge: What percentage of what you know could be taught to someone else in 6 months?

• Identify Your Obsession Overlap: Where do your natural interests intersect with valuable problems?

• Start Your Specific Knowledge Laboratory: Pick one area and start building/experimenting, not just studying.

Remember: the goal isn't to become unemployable in the traditional sense. The goal is to become irreplaceable in the valuable sense.

Tomorrow, we'll destroy another toxic belief: the idea that more effort automatically leads to better results.

Spoiler alert: It doesn't. And the people who figure this out early get exponential advantages while everyone else stays stuck in linear thinking.

Talk soon,

Praise J.J.

P.S. If you're thinking, "But I don't have any specific knowledge yet"—good. That means you're starting to see the difference. Most people can't even see the problem, which is why they stay trapped in the commodity game forever.

This post is from my 5 Days of Unlearning Series. Subscribe here to get the full course for free and start building the unique intellectual property that makes you irreplaceable. https://crive.substack.com

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