baristas […] unproductive labor
The coffee beans and hot water don’t turn into coffee without the barista’s labour.
The existence of instant coffee doesn’t make it unnecessary labour: in the case of instant coffee the work was done earlier.
The fact that I can brew my own coffee doesn’t make it unnecessary or unproductive labour either. It’s production whether I do it or pay a barista to do it.
And it’s not unskilled labour: if the coffee machines in any of the coffee shops I go to were self-service, they’d break down within hours from misuse. And when you have a really skilled barista, you can taste it.
You should tell your mutuals-with acquaintance that whoever’s insisting to them that baristas are unproductive ought to be chewing coffee instead of drinking it.
This list reminds me of how every now and then a liberal will pop up on xitter or some other public space and proclaim that they’re uncomfortable with what’s happening in Gaza being compared to the Holocaust because “the Holocaust was on a whole other level of cruelty”, and I’m never sure if they’re saying that out of idiocy or malice.