War of Attention

Dear Reader (Including all the politicians afraid to publicly come out of the closet of normalcy),
Since it’s Labor Day weekend, let’s talk a bit about labor.
One of my favorite scenes in Game of Thrones is also one of the best explanations of Marx’s labor theory of value ever offered in popular culture.
The context doesn’t matter much, so I’ll offer little. Jonathan Pryce plays a mild-mannered religious zealot who goes by the title “the High Sparrow.” He divulges his origin story to his prisoner, Queen Margaery: