Your link implies that self-sufficiency can be accomplished in 2 acres of selective, intensive agriculture, which is a number I've seen a few places.

This assumes you know how to raise food, which is much more involved than throwing seeds into dirt.

There's this real Chris McCandless vibe to a lot of young mens' concepts of self-sufficiency without really grasping that Chris McCandless starved to death 5 months into his odyssey even with someone else's hunting shack to live in.

That is the one I was thinking. There is a romantic version of going back to nature, living off the land etc. There is a reason it is a romantic fantasy; go talk to a old farmer for a few hours and that fantasy comes crashing down. I have the added benefit that I have friends living on farms so I get to see how the sausage is made and have no desire to do that on my own.

There's a reason jobs specialized. I'd much rather make hundreds of dollars a day pushing faders than averaging less than a hundred dollars a day milking cows. As a result, I arranged my education and experience to further that goal. That doesn't make me deviant, that makes me normal.

Bingo. I make ~100 per billable hour; doing a lot of things would be a good learning experience but there is an opportunity cost that needs to be added to the equation. The concept of an opportunity cost is one of the things I have trouble explaining to people.