Everything has been commodified under Market Society, devaluing all we hold dear. People have become so denatured in their behavior because we don’t “value” anything. Everything is bought and paid for… nothing is inherently sacred or important… we are losing all true, tangible value.
For millennia labor has been intimately linked to reward/survival… but with the onset of free markets, hyper privatization and financialization over the past century, there exists now few constraints as to what is commodified in the pursuit of survival & profit — the planet’s natural resources, our health & medicine, our educational institutions, war armaments, our “ideas” as intellectual property in the form of copyright protections and patents, our most personal intimate “human emotions” have become targets of media outrage, shock, and sensationalism for views and clicks… the free expression of our art & music undergrounds are destined, eventual exploits for the fashion industry & pop culture… our activism has become sanitized as some occupational path for “career activists”… social movements are too easily co-opted or self-sabotaged by financial frameworks and donors… as individuals we’ve been reduced to mere economic units operating and competing like little businesses in our mercenary gig economies… even our very social engagement itself online; our hobbies, and everyday life experiences are opportunities to get “monetized” not to be passed up, as we sell personalities & charisma over true substance. If they could sell the air itself, they would… nothing is sacred.
Because everyone/everything must generate income and profit at all times, inherent value becomes secondary and lost. It’s said that markets best serve the economic process, of tracking value and demand, allocating resources, and enabling progress… in reality markets deeply corrupt value and society:
- Markets seek opportunity to take, steal, or exploit value… the process of “valuation” becomes one of “exchange value”, where material and biological resources are reduced and commodified to “market” value.
- Everything becomes a machination of the profit system. Commodities have a value at a point in time, but they do not have (inherent) value because our financial system frames everything within what is “cost” efficient, profitable, and consumption-generating.
- Money and financial instruments of abstraction (stocks, derivatives, securities, futures, interest) become commodities in and of themselves as core mediums for wealth creation, beyond their basic use as currency and resource allocation.
- Value between things like labor and resources are now completely distorted because everything is so artificially inflated and artificially created in the financial operations of society.
- Objective value is totally non existent in the Free Market because everything is just a game of competing, inflated, subjective, speculative value.
- The concept of “Capital” itself is completely arbitrary and subjective – as long as it expands more capital, liquid cash, and power.
Defining True “Value/Valuation”
While “value” in society is highly complex and subjective to try to create an objective scale for to implement as a basis for a new system, here are some core components it would include:
- value must be tied to actual “physical referents” of reality; tangible/physical properties of nature (not metaphysical price abstractions)
- it must have a sustainability basis
- factoring in purpose, usefulness, urgency of need, and difficulty to obtain
- and should be based on shared goals
As for our “human value”, our worth should not be based on how much money we work for. In our current system you do not have value if you don’t work for money, and if you don’t have money you don’t have access to basic needs. But human worth should be intrinsic to all people, with basic necessities made unconditionally available along with educational opportunities, never dependent on one’s labor.
Society tries to tell us that we won’t be “productive” unless we “work jobs”. But we need to rethink our concept of “productivity”. Instead of thinking of it in terms of jobs and products to be sold… we need to think of it in terms of problem solving and meaningful contribution.
Conclusion
“Value” is the linch pin around which society functions, by which people define themselves, and how society is defined and run. But as long as it’s based on a linkage between labor and income, and the circulation of money in and of itself, we will continue to live in an increasingly arbitrary, destructive, and highly commodified society.