Commodity Trading - Day 5

It's a huge blow to the ego to think of one's self as a consumer. As much as you think about yourself, someone else is thinking about you just as much - as a consumer, a potential consumer. Everything is product. A manufactured thing is a product, a service rendered is a product. Product is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Our contemporary era has endeavored to reconsider every aspect of life, even death, as product - to be consumed.

At least the consumer can segregate himself from product. "Product is something I consume," he says confidently to himself. "My existence may be defined by my ability and propensity to consume, but at least the power is in my hands. If I do not consume, it's an economic crisis, and bureaus everywhere will meet with tall mugs of coffee and tinker with numbers on papers to try and get me to consume again."

But there reaches a point, in the transformation of existence, when product begins to encroach upon consumer. Famous people are model consumers. They give us a high watermark of consumption, an impetus to move and work, so that we can attain greater ability to consume. And now that famous person has become a product - a salable image, a commodity that garners a fee by enticing more consumers to consume.

It's a cycle you see. Consumers consume product, but need resources to keep consuming product - so they work. A work force is produced by the need to consume, and they consume, and they are produced in order to consume. What if consumers could act as one mind when they become commodities? What on earth could that be?