All,
Wow, this thread turned out to be pretty worthless.
teddy, here's another good article on the topic -
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...feoutsourcing/
I mainly agree w/ you that for the bulk of these tasks, being more Internet-savvy will do the job. Between OpenTable and Yelp, I can come up with a place to eat quicker than it would take to explain my criteria to someone and interact with them to finalize the selection. But many people aren't familiar with the right tools to use to find information and get stuff done quickly on the web.
There have been some stories in the media and posted on some blogs about people (mainly freelancer types) who have actually outsourced much of their jobs.
And if you're doing stuff that's relatively mundane/repetitive in nature, I can see it making some sense.
Anyway, locking this thread since the discussion pretty much sucks. Continue discussion on it in the four-hour workweek thread if you like.