Scheper-Hughes quotes George Soros who asserts that markets are "indiscriminate [and] promiscuous... [and] reduce everything, including human beings and their sexual and reproductive capacities to the status of commodities, things [that] can be bought, sold, traded and stolen" [ 6].
The dubious status of art as commodity is the central question here.
The decision has reached the status of an export commodity: anyone who watches American movies and television anywhere in the world has likely heard a recitation of Miranda rights during an arrest on screen.
A handful of other countries, from Chile and Brazil in the emerging world to Australia in the rich world, share the debilitating status of having a commodities bent, a biggish current-account deficit and a wilting currency.The currencies of some commodity importers are also wobbling.
But the industry rejects the stigma of commodity status.
It would effectively also mean that the ongoing trope that "software will eat the world," championed by other investors like Marc Andreessen, will actually hold true for years to come, with no one able to take hardware beyond the point of commodity status.
Roberts has a powerful passage on industrial chicken, showing how its vile flesh is a direct consequence of its status as economic commodity.
Gold's Sweet Swing Gold has special status among commodities because of its allure for everyone from regents to rappers.
The peculiarity of art is its status as a commodity.
Trying to make this correlation between the commodity and status of sports, of art, of people.
If the iPhone is deemed cheap, it could get into the hands of so many people worldwide that it loses power as a status symbol and turns Apple into a maker of commodity products like Dell, Hewlett-Packard or Asus.
