Having been part of outsourced projects since 2008,I would say that is a nice theory.

You require the same amount of in-office management.

Every time that management decided as you say, they got something else as delivery.

So true. In fact, it can be even worse managing an outsourcer style vendor, since the natural industry pressures lead to outsourcers being very incentivized to find the very minimum possible effort they can spend on a client project without losing the contract.

As a result, getting more effort out of an outsourcer may feel as annoying as getting your insurance company to approve your claim -- their entire company culture/process has evolved and/or been designed to prevent this.

By contrast, individual employees (remote or otherwise) might get lazy or burnt out or have personal problems or something, but few of them are actually Wally from Dilbert, using all their available effort to avoid having to make any effort

the outsourcee does not share the same values as the ourtsourcing company, therefore if you have any focus on long-term values such as quality then outsourcing does not work.

The outsourcee is always motivated to do the minimum work compared to an in-house team that can focus on quality and efficiency for the long term benefit.

That is so wrong. Outsourcers require an insane amount of management. Add 12 hours of time difference to the mix and the real fun starts.

They require a ton of product management, of course. They don't require career management (recruiting, hiring, getting them to show up engaged, etc), which is what I meant (but not at all what I said).