The opportunity costs of the division of labor

perhaps i'm not understanding what you are saying.

why do i need the experience of picking cotton or sewing (not sowing) to appreciate wearing socks? why is that pathetic? i have never built a computer, but i can appreciate and enjoy this discussion. so what is lost?

Self-sufficiency, understanding of ones world, and a life that is less fragmented and more integrated. There are different degrees of this and some more practical than others but the modern life of, say, an American is at one radical extreme of that spectrum.

Interesting, very much in line with the home-made ice cream thread, but taking a different angle.

Picking a cotton ball does not give you the experience of being a farm worker. Nor would a day or two of it. Physical labor is tough, but not bad at all for just a short period of time. Doing a few days would give you the impression that it's a lot of fun. It would be a great break from the office routine. I say that because I once worked a job that was mostly office, but every few weeks would have a few days manual work outside.

But if it takes a while to get the experience, then it adds up to an impossible amount. If we had experience of those things, would wouldn't have experience of other things. How to find our way through a city, how to work a computer, and, presumably, much of philosophy.

Also as a side note, people ate meat even when they hand slaughtered every animal. I don't think there are any vegetarian butchers.

If I had a farm and raised my own meat I believe I would feel less of a desire to be a vegetarian. Or for that matter if I hunted and slaughtered all my own meat. But, as it is, there really is a gut level feeling that I haven't earned the right to eat a steak or a pork-chop or whatever.

Really, for me, it comes down to the proximity of these activities. I want to be able to talk to the person who picked the cotton that made my clothes and talk to the person who raised that pig I ate. And by "person" I of course don't mean corporation, I don't mean that I want to be able to talk to a customer service representative on the phone about the cotton or the pig.

And yes, if Bob the pig farmer or Jill the cotton picker wants to trade jobs with me for a few months I want to be able to do this. If someone needs a barn, I want to be able to take part in raising it rather than suggest to them that they call a construction company.

I think the apparent complexities of our lives are exaggerated. Computers are made to seem more complicated than they actually are. Heck, brain surgery is made to be more complicated than it actually is. In a truly open society much of the complexity of modern life would dissolve.

In any case the vast majority of tasks that are to be done in society could be done by anyone. There is no need to divide this labor as strictly as it is presently divided and de facto regulated.