Quotes About Commodities

The equality Liberalism creates is equality before the Law; it has never sought any other. From the liberal point of view, therefore, criticism which condemns this equality as inadequate — maintaining that true equality is full equality of income through equal distribution of commodities — is unjustified.

they pale by comparison to the trading volumes of hedge funds, to say nothing of the levels of trading in exotic securities such as interest rate swaps, collateralized debt obligations, derivatives such as futures on commodities, stock indexes, stocks, and even bets on whether a given company will go into bankruptcy (credit default swaps). The aggregate nominal value of these instruments, as I noted in Chapter 1, now exceeds $700 trillion.

One can best describe the culture of consumerism as the unbridled consumption of commodities for the satisfaction of psychological needs that cannot be satisfied through the practice of consumption

In the economies of late capitalism leisure displaces labor, consumption displaces production, and commodities become the instruments of leisure, identity, and social relations.

The rapid global economic growth from the 1950s required ever-increasing quantities of raw materials and foodstuffs—metals, oil, coal, timber, fish, meat, and agricultural commodities of all types. Heightened demand for these pushed commodity frontiers ever outward, into parts of the world that were not yet wholly integrated into the modern economy.

The production of fuel from basic food commodities is, in fact, unjustifiable.

much agricultural land which might be growing food is being used instead to 'grow' money (in the form of coffee, tea, etc.).

If animals are just commodities, then we are just consumers, with no greater good than material pleasure and no higher law than appetite.

Commodities have shown a high correlation to inflation, especially in high inflation periods. In addition to diversification, the commodities asset class may also protect investment portfolios against an expected inflation or a declining local currency.

These acts recall the 1971–72 "Chicken War" between America and Europe, and the grain embargo that quadrupled wheat prices outside of the United States. It was this embargo that inspired OPEC to enact matching increases in oil prices to maintain terms-of-trade parity between oil and foodstuffs. The "oil shock" was simply a reverberation of the U.S. grain shock.

The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.

Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.

The phrase "consumer society" complements the description of the present social order as an "industrial society." Needs are tailored by the mass media to create a public demand for utterly useless commodities, each carefully engineered to deteriorate after a predetermined period of time. The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.

Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach DECISIONS, you will not succeed in any undertaking.

Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.

Energy prices in the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index soared almost 60 percent in 2021 as supply lagged behind demand.49 Pressure on institutional investors from eco-minded shareholders has slashed investment in new fossil fuel projects by 40 percent, according to one estimate.

Even the cost of commodities necessary for renewable energy—like lithium and copper—will sharply rise as the price of fossil fuels skyrockets, a phenomenon dubbed greenflation. Supply chains that depend on fossil fuels will strain to keep goods moving. Shortages will proliferate.

Emerging markets often get in trouble when the Fed hikes interest rates rapidly, or the price of exported commodities falls sharply—or both.