I could not offer you a worthy response in the space allotted, but I tend to circle back to exactly why I am considered a "piss poor consumer" in the context of modern life: I just don't see myself as needing many of the things/complexifications that supposedly serve us as conveniences, and so I don't need to call aforesaid niche experts... because I choose to not have a kitchen with 20 electronic appliances that all need to talk to each other.

I think that is the snake oil bag of goods most people have bought into... and (getting back to Darwin) what's turning people into helpless idiots. We have become SO far removed from the basics of life most can't even find their way back there. "convenience addiction?"

Is specialization necessarily bad? 2,000 years ago, chances are the village had a blacksmith, a shaman, a potter, a scribe... there IS purpose — to a degree — to having people people specialize in whatever they naturally excel at.

Oh the other hand, if you take a social experiment like the independent "state" ecovillage of Damanhur in Italy, if you are a dentist, they'll ask you to work in the kitchen; if you're a lawyer, you'll get to teach elementary school; if you're a musician, you get to be a bookkeeper and office manager... in other words, their vision is to strengthen the community by making people work at what they DON'T usually do.

Meanwhile, I love growing, cooking and eating our own food...