I shall write this to the author, even though you are not he: 1) You have divided the universe of possible desires into a short list of "needs" and "wants". G

I shall write this to the author, even though you are not he: 1) You have divided the universe of possible desires into a short list of "needs" and "wants". Good for you. But the essence of (true, classical) liberalism is the recognition that everyone has the right to their own list of needs and wants. I am not you; nor is anyone else. I am allowed to have different marginal utility curves for time, leisure, and consumer goods. Society needs to work for us all, not just your personal aesthetic ideal. 2) More generally, there are no absolutes. You try to turn to an imagined, mythical golden era. "If humans managed to do without [...] I can also." This is incoherent. What does it mean to be human? We are plains apes who have figured out a few tricks. In our time we've managed to "do without" pretty much everything, including clean water and nutritious food. And as for a "place to sleep", we've lived in mud huts, igloos, under bushes, in hovels, tents, wagons...and also penthouses, palaces, and six bedroom McMansions. Comfort has value. More to some of us; less to others. 3) You also seem to struggle with logic. There is a LOT of logic to having a large house and only intensively using a small part: Space is not a scarce resource, but the flexibility of having a lot of space is nice. Do you purposefully buy the smallest hard drive you can? After all, I'm sure you only access a small fraction of that 1TB hard drive on any given day... There's also a lot of logic to heating an entire house; it's simple and easy, and heat is cheap. Really, the median family in the US does not have to slave all day to pay their heating bill. Nor to purchase their car; you do not work anything remotely LIKE 8 hours a day to pay for your car. How about a few minutes? 4) The lawn mower example is so absurd as to deserve a point all on its own: This is an already solved problem. It's called a "lawn service". They're quite popular, you should look into it. 5) You decry people spending money in order to efficiently wash their clothes. You then turn, without pause, to decry a lack of efficiency. And then, to cap it off, to attack specialization, the ONE MOST IMPORTANT increase in efficiency we as a species have yet invented. Words fail me; I simply cannot grapple with the magnitude of cognitive dissonance these sentences have egendered in me except to ask: Is this some sort of joke? Are you trolling? Because if so, you win. 6) Even so, your entire rant about specialization has been said far better by a far better human than you: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Who here doesn't feel their heart stir upon reading that? And I've spent more than a few hours working my way through that list. And yet... ...and yet the great RAH is wrong. A society without specialization is a tribe of hunter gatherers. If you want anything more - be it material goods, services, or even our modern morality - then you need specialization. You get to pick one: A primitive hunter gatherer society, or specialization. If you are not personally gathering all the food you eat and crafting all the clothing and tools you use, then you have specialization. And if you are doing that, then you will eat nuts and berries, wear furs, and have no tools. Full stop. There are no other options. 7) You have a point buried under all the mistakes. Don't be defined by one of your activities, even if it happens to be the only one you make any money at. Have some idea of who you are as a person, and live that as much as you can, in as many aspects of your life as you can. It's equally stupid to have no life outside of your job as it is to work at a job you hate so that you can do what you really like outside of it. Strive to be a whole human being. Great idea! ...but get over the ridiculous ideas about specialization and efficiency. They have nothing to do with your core point, and they're naively wrong. People have unlimited needs and wants, and any given person is going to spend their resources in a way different from yours. That's what being a human is all about; any effort to stamp that out leads to the same insect-like existence that you (and RAH) were complaining about with regards to specialization.