[rsnor]

Is it fair to say that because there will always be more specialized skills to be learned, that none should be learned?

Everyone may not need to know how to repair their car, but to perform basic, routine maintenance on it and to learn driving technique as intended is something that, when neglected, can cause major inefficiencies.

[scarface74]

Specialization says just the opposite. That everyone should specialize in a combination of what they are good at and there is a demand because it is much more efficient and trade those goods and services that they specialize in for goods and services that they don’t. In the modern era instead of trading directly, we use money as an intermediary.

Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. Why is car maintenance anything that everyone should know and not plumbing, electrical work or carpentry?

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize.

That's simply bullshit. If you specialize on only installing tires on cars, but not removing them, you have specialized more than a business that swaps your tires, but you have created massive inefficiency by requiring your customers to somehow move around vehicles without tires for you to install tires for them.

There are particular circumstances where specialization increases efficiency, and there are (obviously) other circumstances where specialization decreases efficiency, so it's nonsensical to just say that specializing is always the more efficient choice, which is why all your analogies fail: You use an example where specialization (arguably) increases efficiency, then you completely fail to explain how computer skills fall into the same category as that example, and then you conclude that therefore it is in the same category.

[michaelmrose]

If you know nothing whatsoever about cars or maintenance thereof you will get taken by the salesman then you will run your cars into the ground burning money and then get ripped off every time you need someone to maintain or fix your car because you don't know enough to know when someone is bullshitting you.

People are expected to know SOMETHING about cars because they are frequently a huge expense that you are required to expend to be able to exist in a lot of places.

Econ 101 in this case assumes that time and money are fungible in any particular increments and that the money they earn doing whatever they are optimal at is greater than the cost of the specialists services.

Example someone making 20 bucks an hour needs a professional service that requires 3 hours of work for a professional at a cost of $900 learning to do so ineffeciently for 5 hours then spending 6 hours seems like a, huge waste but consider.

- Just because their labor is worth $20 an hour doesn't mean that they they can trivially in the context of their current obligations convert a day off into extra pay right when they need it.

- 11 hours x 20 hours will furnish 1/4 of the money required. Even given an immediate alternative it will require 45 hours of additional work.

Incidentally if you own a home you probably ought to learn at least enough basic maintenance to fix simple things.

This is often effecient in practice.

[concordDance]

You're ignoring transaction costs.

Doing a bit of maintainence can take you 2 minutes, having it done by an expert could take 2-3 man hours once all the inefficiences are considered (getting to the mechanic's shop, setting a price, waiting for things to be done, all the overhead of running and advertising the shop).

Based on my experience with talking to clients and observing them while doing B2B, if the average office worker had decent Excel and Googling skills (let alone the skills of the average vim user) they'd save a couple of hundred hours a year.