[YeGoblynQueenne]

Yes, more people who want to, can do the job today without needing a PhD.

However, most of the people who want to do the job want to do it because they heard Google pays six-figure salaries for it. But Google pays six-figure salaries for the job because it takes a PhD to do it right. When the job becomes a job that everyone can do, Google won't pay six-figure salaries for it any more - to PhDs, or anyone else.

At that point, once more, you'll need a PhD to do a job that Google pays a six-figure salary for.

The goose that lays the golden eggs gets killed over and over again. Some people get in early and get a golden egg. The rest are left to suck ordinary eggs and accuse the others of cheating.

But, who was it who killed the goose in the first place?

[imtringued]

Nobody killed the goose, people bred them and once you have 10 geese laying golden eggs the benefit of being smart enough to "invent" the proto goose has diminished.

[908B64B197]

Going into Academia sounds like a lousy strategy to get a six figure salary.

[mamon]

I think you meant "seven-figure" because "six-figure" is a salary that Google pays to fresh college grads.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Probably. I'm a PhD student but I don't study the trendy stuff so I have no idea what money Google pays.

Some of us are actually in it to scratch an intellectual itch, not for the money. I gave up a lucrative career as a software dev to study the subject I'm really interested in and took a huge pay cut for the privilege of working in the only environment that offers anything near the freedom to research whatever satisfies the little gray cells. The OP's turn of phrase about gatekepping sounds like a bitter joke to me. My field gets maybe one or two new entrants a year, folks like me who don't know what's good for them and can't tame their intellectual curiosity enough to get a real job. Most PhD students, most researchers of any level, don't want to gatekeep anything, we want to tell the world about our work. But most people don't give a shit, unless Google is interested. Unless you can grab my research and be an instant millionaire nobody cares.