ABSTRACT
The roots of commoditization lie in the effort to improve life through commerce and trade. The benefits of trade begin with the simple fact that raw materials, knowledge, and experience are unequally distributed across the Earth. The goods and services so privileged are those that are most suited to being treated as commercial commodities because they are suited for buying and selling. The story of economic development, economic growth, and commoditization is the story of the gradual expansion of property rights into more and more of life. Property rights may be a prerequisite for commoditization, but without transportability the ability to exchange is limited by geography. Commoditization has the effect of focusing attention disproportionately on products rather than systems. Development as distorted by commoditization increasingly simplifies human life in the aggregate, even as it is experienced by the modern individual as becoming more complicated.
