But definitely his mother. And his underage clones. And his adoptive daughter. And a whole bunch of other ladies.

Lazarus Long has sex with those girls. And probably that computer.

There is a Heinlein quote that often crops up in commentary by people around here. It comes from Time Enough For Love:

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.

Something about it always bothered me, though for the longest time I was unable to pin it down. On the face of it, there is nothing there but a statement of a philosophical ideal. One that was given the corollary of “Self-reliance is Liberty” during a debate.

Much like the philosophical ideal of a hermit in his cave giving up physical comforts for spiritual comforts, it is one few actually attain. So why did it bother me? I finally figured it out. The issue is the last part “Specialization is for insects.” The quote itself takes the general philosophy of being well-rounded and self-reliant to the reductio ad absurdum limit and derides specialization. That was the irritant, the bombast and derision the quote taken alone carries. I think I might finally be able to articulate the key problem.

A Saxon churl was a self-reliant generalist. If there was anything that needed to be done around his farm, he was the one to do it, he had no choice. So he could do pretty much any task needed well enough to survive, albeit in a precarious state of slightly above subsistence farming. In every task, he was limited to the capability of his own two hands, and in most tasks rarely went beyond ‘good enough’ because there was other work that needed doing and he didn’t have time to waste. The one thing he had to outsource because he could not reach ‘good enough’ without devoting far too much time to the matter was blacksmithing. The skills and tools required to reach just ‘good enough’ were quite an investment in time and capital and it was not the rational choice for most churls to invest in. Especially since one smith could supply a goodly number of farms with the ironmongery they needed. Thus you had specialists. It is just one example of a pattern that repeats every societal development starting from the birth of agriculture.

There is a very simple reason specialists emerge and proliferate. The market in of itself incentivizes specialization. A specialist will always be more efficient on a marginal basis than a generalist in performing the same task. So the specialist will produce for the same effort a higher quality output, and often in less time. Thus specialization proliferates, and people drift away from churldom towards their own niche in a larger society.

This does not invalidate the ideal of being capable of handling tasks normally handed off to specialists, but it does strain the “Specialization is for insects” assertion. I know the principles and procedures on how to process an animal carcass, but I’m terribly slow, so the rational choice is to let the slaughterhouse handle that most of the time. I have enough basic woodworking skill to frame and erect a simple building, but it would never be as plumb and square as one put up by a professional carpenter. I know enough to be able to build computers from parts and design my household network. This I do because it is a very basic task within my specialization.

Now I can see a counter-argument that the quote is more about being a well-rounded person and insect specialists are incapable of even knowing the principles of other specializations. But it does not sound that way to me. Also, I can see how it might sound as if I am looking down upon those who strive for self-reliance as a principle. This is not the case. If you are able to live by your principles on such matters, I respect that. But, much like the townsfolk walking past the hermit’s cave, I could not live that way. I am a specialist because rational choices led me down that path.