> But does this, at least for those who choose to use it as leverage, free up more brain power for other newer or different things?

My personal belief is that the answer to this is “absolutely.” That’s how it proliferates on the level of society in fundamental ways, otherwise it wouldn’t.

Just think of the analogy the grandparent comment makes. Yeah, if we transported a bunch of modern specialists many thousands years in the past, they will struggle with just surviving. But also, in a modern environment, they are able to make crucial congributions to producing things that make the rest of the humanity much more advanced, better to live in, and push humanity as species forward. Which is something absolutely nobody in the thousands-years-ago times is able to do (talking about the specific things, like computers, not the ability to push humanity forward in general; after all, we got to the current point exactly from those thousands-years-ago times).

I just don’t see a human civilization sending a human to the moon or getting to the point of accessible air travel without heavy specialization across people. And heavy specialization is imo unachievable, if your entire survival depends on being just a survival generalist as a full-time thing.