Individual Freedom Comes With a Side

Individual Freedom Comes With a Side

note taken by Marshall Mayer on July 5, 2021 at 8:45 AM at Breakfast in America, El Jebel, CO USA

Image and text above Copyright © Marshall Mayer. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Marshall Mayer
Marshall Mayer says:
Jul 07, 2021 08:18 AM

As Americans celebrate Independence Day, few reflect on the true cost of their freedom. In this western Colorado restaurant, Breakfast in America, the clientele is exclusively older men, almost all of them sitting by themselves (off-camera there are 20 other male patrons). There could be many reasons for this, not the least of which is that many will not/cannot cook breakfast for themselves and have no one else to cook for them (for free, of course). Breakfast labor has thus been commodified. But unpaid labor is still labor and should be valued as such through a living-wage universal basic income. Sharing food with each other, including its production, has an inherent social value that capitalism does not value. Capitalism produces alienation.

BTW, I had excellent migas there.

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