Because it has always been about prestige and money as much as doctors wanted to hide behind altruistic notions.

In the past, being a specialist was seen the pinnacle of the profession and society, giving you prestige, respectability and good upper middle class outcomes. You also had an undisputed monopoly on medical knowledge in a specific specialty.

But stagnating wages in public healthcare relative to other industries like finance and tech, has eroded this position.

Also, the accessibility of medical info on the internet has turned everyone and their NOK into armchair doctors. At the very least, it has demystified the complexities surrounding medical concepts and jargon. Regardless whether its the right or wrong info, the doctor's monopolistic hold on medical knowledge is also perceived by the public to have lessened.

So it's not really that the pie (of wealth and prestige) has shrunk, but rather the pie has increased while physicians' absolute amount of it has remained the same.

All these are not lost on the younger gen of doctors, who don't see the point in slogging it out for so many years for an end state that is less valued than what their predecessors enjoyed. Better to take the easy route in GP-land with easier outcomes.