Commodification of Value

Everything has been commodified under Market Society, devaluing all we hold dear. People have become denatured 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 one's reward/survival, in effect "commodifying" ourselves and our labor for economic resources. As market capitalism has evolved over the past century, with the complete privatization and financialization of society, there exists today virtually zero constraints on what we'll make into sellable, marketable product in the pursuit of profit and survival in the system— the planet's natural resources... our healthcare and medicine... our educational institutions... our creative ingenuity in the form of copyright protection and patents... our activism as mere occupational paths... the spreading of ideas and information in and of itself in the form of "content creation", as we sell personalities and vibes over substance and truth... nothing is sacred. If they could package the air we breathe, they would.

Because everything has to generate profit at all times in our society, inherent value and intent 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 Value
While "value" in society is highly complex and subjective to try to create an objective scale for, here are some core components it must factor in to serve as the basis for society:

• must be tied to actual "physical referents" of reality; to tangible, physical properties of nature
• must have a sustainability basis
• be based on shared goals, purpose, usefulness, urgency of need, and difficulty to obtain

"Human value" should be intrinsic, not based on how much money one works for. In the current system you do not have value unless you work for money, and if you do not have money you do not have access to basic necessities required to live a human life. Human worth should be intrinsic to all people, with basic necessities made freely and unconditionally available to the public, along with educational opportunities; and never dependent upon one's labor ever again.

Society tries to tell us, "we won't be productive unless we work jobs”, but we need to rethink this concept of “productivity". Instead of thinking of it in terms of "jobs and products to be sold", we should think of it in terms of "problem solving", and "meaningful contribution". 

Value is the linch pin around which society functions, by which people define themselves, and by which society is defined and run. As long as value is 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 commodified, arbitrary, and destructive society.