Here’s a theory of Human Progress: the more humans integrated economically and socially, the more progress there is.
The idea is that specialization of labour is the only reliable theory of progress. At any particular margin, innovation requires further specialization – the paths multiply like a web. The more scarce human-level intelligence is, the less innovation there is. Fewer paths are walked.
Likewise, these humans need to be brought to the font line before they can strike out on their own in their particular specialty. This is education, of course.
But the ‘system’ only really takes you to the 19th century-level of specialization; beyond that, you need to work and learn from people who work at today’s front line or, more specifically, where today’s front line is forming.
Sometimes this extra boost of education happens concurrent to the regular kind (think of computer programmers messing around on their own time, then founding a startup tech company).
THEN your training is complete and THEN you can innovate and contribute to technological progress.
Not Unreasonable 