He thinks this needed a perl script or defining the task by email for an assistant? Seriously?

  $ wget -i urls.txt

I understand that this may have been a contrived example, but many of these foreign VA stories sound pretty contrived. Having worked with foreign and remote staff, I know that it is what you're able to make of it. But at the same time, there are some natural hurdles to doing this effectively at a small scale. It'd be easy to spend a lot of time managing the process, doing quality review, and providing feedback.

When you can scale delegation, or when you're talking about things outside of your skill set, then there is of course no question.