Once your entire life is outsourced, you're dead.

The trend over the last century or two has certainly been one towards outsourcing. I'm not talking outsourcing in terms of corporations moving jobs offshore, but rather in terms of personal tasks -- the things we used to do before anyone knew what a job was. The vast majority of us have outsourced the production of our food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, childcare, education, and a myriad of other activities which our ancestors handled on a regular basis.

If there's one takeaway message that I picked up in my university economics courses, it's that this is a good thing. If Joe is an exceptionally good farmer, and Bill is an exceptionally good fisherman, then it's in everyone's interest for Joe to be the farmer and Bill to be the fisherman, each paying the other for their skills rather than doing everything themselves. This is the model of efficiency we've all been sold, and it makes sense from a narrow perspective. The expansion of this trend, combined with the widespread utilization of fossil fuels, is exactly what has made our industrial society the wealthiest in history. It's the reason we all own and use far more than we could ever expect to make if we made it all ourselves. The book, "The Toaster Project" is a perfect demonstration of this.

But, as always, there's more to the story. An increase in efficiency is always paid for with a decrease in resilience. In a village where Joe and Bill both farm and fish, the death of one doesn't appreciably impact the other. However, when tasks are divided, the death of either has a much greater impact, as one of their essential skills is lost.  Should we ever find ourselves in any of the major upheavals of the sort which fill history books, we'll find that a diversified skill set may be the very key to survival.

There's another, perhaps greater cost to our outsourced lives as well. When we specialize only in a particular skill or task (i.e. our "careers"), we experience less and less, to the point that once diverse and multi-faceted lives have become monotonous and repetitious. We're bored. Bored people tend to get fat, develop addictions, bad habits, and physical or mental illness. Anti-depressant use skyrockets, as do the side-effects we regularly hear about on the news.

Though purely economic reasoning would suggest otherwise, we can and should reclaim the experiences and skills we've given up. Monetary return is important in a world that still runs on money, but I'd suggest that it's far from the only issue of importance. The less we outsource, the more we live.