Been thinking about that "Coffee pourers are bourgeoise" thing all day and the way it frames that as luxury and therefore scornful.
So let's talk 'luxury.' Luxury, and disability.
Let's start with the personal anecdote.
I've attached photos of my wheelchair. Insurance paid about 6,000 USD for this chair. It's entirely custom - the width, depth, front angle, the amount it narrows down to the foot plate, the particular combo of interchangeable parts...
Sure looks like luxury, sounds like it: custom work and thousands of dollars. It's not stripped down to the barest most easily produced parts.
Except, I can't use the mass-produced chairs. They are not safe for my environment, I can't propel most of them, the method and weight and just physics involved has caused me injuries trying.
My wheelchair is built for a narrow person with unusual torso-limb ratio, delicate joints but strong muscle, self-propelling in non-hospice environments (carpets, slope, minimal under-furniture clearance, damp, bumps), and various lower-body errata.
My access, my mobility, depends on 'luxury.'
This is the nature of Complex Rehab Equipment, of permanent home adaptions. Want a ramp that lasts ten years, twenty, a shower bench that can hold up for even a couple years safely, safety rails that can withstand constant use without ripping from the wall?
It costs, and someone else has to construct it to your orders, and it isn't immediately vital for continued survival.
At least for most people.
And therefore luxury.
And sometimes it has the gall to look nice, come in something other than hospital beige or rehab grey, something not worth thinking about for the acute-use versions you'll use for a couple weeks while an injury heals.
And that's luxury.
And luxury is bad. Luxury is capitalism.
It's a way that ableism sneaks into the conversation, hitching a ride on the cold war propaganda for one side and prosperity doctrine for another. If it makes life easier, possible, for a few people then it's luxury and belongs to the rich. On one side, only people who can survive working a farm by hand to stand in a communal bread line each evening are good, damn the rest as overlords and traitors. The other, only people who've climbed to high ranks of society deserve to make their life a little easier - damn the rest as lazy and thieves.
Voice-control lights, curb cuts, sturdy shower benches, wide halls, voice dictation, home delivery
Mobility aids built to our bodies and daily lives...
... Coffee, made and poured by someone else.
What is the line between accessibility and luxury? Does it matter?
Focusing on what is luxury, what service jobs are luxury by association, what's required for surviving or thriving, that's just distracting from the problems at hand.
That those who make coffee for others and those who move items in warehouses, they aren't recieving the respect, dignity, income, so-on-etc to truly live and thrive. Meanwhile others have it and withhold it through any means they can think up.
