Appleseed

If you never invest the effort to know how much work it takes to feed yourself, all you can really know is how much work it takes to buy food.

The work needed to grow food will be slightly reduced over time as skill grows, but will vary mainly with climate conditions; harder to farm in drought, easier when you've done it your whole life.

The work needed to buy food INCLUDES the work needed to grow it, as well as any other costs the food grower wishes to pass along. So if it is true that the efficiency of centralized production is passed on to everyone else as free time for other pursuits, the farmer should be paying less per meal he grows than we would each do on our own, and in turn each of us should be paying this same reduced price.

See, this is what actually justifies centralized agriculture, the idea that streamlining production means less work for everyone. But in a system which prescribes that the maximum amount possible be charged for any product or service, products and services become grossly overvalued just because of the amount of work needed to buy them.

It is the human influence on pricing, in other words, which sabotages the potential advantages of centralized production.