Academics, once seen as stewards of knowledge, now often bemoan funding cuts while dismissing the economic legitimacy of manual labor. (i.e., "How can a plumber charge that? I have a doctorate and don’t make that kind of money.")
The academic’s work—rarified, selective, and self-referential—is defended as refined merit, while essential labor is devalued as common. This inversion of worth is telling.
When intellectual production ceases to serve, becoming insular or extractive, society owes it nothing. Prestige does not guarantee relevance.
If the academic’s output is neither needed nor wanted, its decline is not injustice—it is market correction. A livelihood based on public subsidy must justify itself in public terms.