He is quick to insist that most of those opportunities boil down to business matters, and that "the Internet's vision of 'consumers' as 'producers' has turned inner life into an advanced type of commodity".
There is now also the beginning of a hard landing (growth well below potential) in emerging markets as the recession in advanced economies, falling commodity prices and capital flight all take their toll on growth.
For many countries, the immediate challenges come mainly from outside, in the form of lower exports to advanced countries, volatility of commodity prices, and high volatility of capital flows.
At the same time they want to diversify from commodity chips into advanced chips such as processors and chips for mobile telephones.
Moreover, many emerging markets and even some advanced economies that rely on commodity exports have been riding on China's coattails during a difficult period in the world economy.
Still, faced with near zero Treasury yields and the twin temptations of cheap assets from other advanced industrial countries and depressed commodity prices, China has ample reason to resume diversifying its reserves away from the dollar.
The continent whose integration into the global market is least advanced and whose vulnerability to commodity price shocks and financial instability is most pronounced.
And other advanced economies – such as Canada, Australia and Norway – face headwinds from low commodity prices.
Since Andrew Liveris took the helm at Dow Chemical in 2004, the company has been trying to move away from materials based on commodities such as oil and gas toward more advanced chemicals.
The upshot is this: Russian oil and gas have become vital commodities in a majority of the world's most advanced economies.
