Mar(x) Bittman

Karl Marx once wondered about why the piano-maker makes substantially less than the piano.

He came up with an explanation that I can at best oversimplify thus: The value labor is typically less than the value of commodities.

As pointed out by food-critic Mark Bittman, in today's economy, certain labor gets more adulation than certain other kinds of labor.

Within the food-economy, for instance, the restaurant chef gets more publicity and money than the farmer.

Bittman asks consumers to reverse the trend: less focus on the chef and more on the farmer because the farmer has a more challenging task on hand in growing quality food against the vagaries of nature.

The chef, on the other hand, does a relatively "easier" task--transform already existing ingredients--of catering to the palate.

There is a Marxian bent in Bittman's thoughts.