There's a lot to be said for face time. Given an average contractor, if you bring him on site and meet with the team for 3 days a month, I bet the ROI easily doubles.
Getting value out of outsourced workers is a skill more rare than programming itself.
But usually that high barrier is erected by incumbent companies in that field, whereas the "incumbent" in this case is mindshare and perception. I'm not so sure a sole individual or company could change that easily... it's like when slavery was abolished, it still took the USA quite some time to treat african americans as equals.
Getting value out of outsourced workers is a skill more rare than programming itself.