ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that commoditization acts as a Darwinian selection pressure that, by “selecting” those species of goods and services that utilize more energy and raw materials and create more waste, drives the development of the entire economy toward ever-increasing mobilization of energy and materials, pollution, and waste. It looks at products to see how commoditization serves as a selection pressure, an evolutionary force that favors certain qualities in goods and services over others. The chapter discusses the system level in which products, producers, and consumers interact. Systems evolve both as their makeup changes through the evolutionary dynamics of their component parts and through dynamics that operate only at the system level. It also looks at how the process of commoditization operates both at the level of individual goods and services and at the level of the economic system as a whole to affect several economic sectors including agriculture, health care, environmental protection, science and academia, and social movements.
