> The ‘generalist’ who gets good results is either the recipient of privilege, a specialist in something high-value but invisible, or both.

That 'high-value but invisible' thing is often bridging two (or more) arenas or communities that other people don't/can't. You see this in tech and startup founders a lot: Often it's less about their tech skills and more about them having ENOUGH tech skill to combine that with ENOUGH of an understanding of something else to create something wildly successful. Or you have a group that between them all covers those rare connections.

Skills that are rare IN COMBINATION are as valuable as rarer single skills sometimes. A person that is a competent coder and good with people can be pretty valuable in the right contexts. Or a competent coder who has some knowledge in a specialized domain (like medical law or knowledge).

Two things here:

1) Having multiple skills is a “skill” too. For example DevOps (programmer + system admin) or full stack developers (front end and back end programmer) combine multiple skill sets in one person.

2) Overspecialization can be bad when the need for a skill disappears or lessens. For example, if you’ve specialized in building webpages in a CMS that isn’t popular anymore, you will need to retrain.

I think you are interpreting Adam Smith to strictly. Instead of looking at brewing and baking as a skill you should look at them as a job that is a set of skills. Skill sets of jobs evolve over time and vary by employer (even if the job description is the same) and not everybody is going to be good in all of the skills required for a job.

Whatever skill set you have, the best general recommendation would be to find the job that matches the skill set you currently have best and adding addition skills to specialize in your job. Those skills with also help you with other jobs and might not help you to do the same job for somebody else.