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Commodity Quotes

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Commodity Quotes

“You can read it in history books now, but they often suppress the fact that the U.S. government tolerated [Nazi]. It's really remarkable because they claim that [Franklin] Roosevelt was impeded by the Neutrality Act. On the other hand, he bitterly condemned a Mexican businessman for sending several guns to the Republic. If you look back, oil was the one commodity that [Francisco] Franco could not receive from the Germans and the Italians, so that was quite significant.”

“There's a sense in which Marx does contribute to the fund of human knowledge, and we can no more dismiss him than we can [George] Hegel or [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau or [Baruch] Spinoza or [Charles] Darwin; you don't have to be a Darwinian to appreciate Darwin's views, and I don't have to be a Marxist to appreciate what is valid in a number of [Karl] Marx's writings-and Marx would call that a form of simple commodity production rather than capitalism.”

“I've been criticized by many anarchists as believing that anarchism is impossible without affluence. On the contrary, I think affluence is very destructive to anarchism. If you are absorbed by that commodity world then you're not going to move toward any radical positions, you're going to move toward a stance of protectiveness.”

“The international institutions go around the world preaching liberalization, and the developing countries see that means open up your markets to our commodities, but we aren't going to open our markets to your commodities. In the nineteenth century, they used gunboats. Now they use economic weapons and arm-twisting.”

“High fidelity is a rich experience, and you'll put up with terrible convenience to get it - maybe it's high cost, waiting in line, jumping through hoops. High convenience is the opposite - it's a commodity, but it's cheap and easy and ubiquitous. A great exclusive boutique shop is high fidelity; Wal-Mart is high convenience. Both are hard to establish in their own way. The thing to remember about sustaining either is that you can't sit still. Some other entity will always find a way to challenge your fidelity position or your convenience position.”

“The problem is that humans have victimized animals to such a degree, that they aren't even considered victims. They aren't even considered at all. They're nothing. They don't count, they don't matter, they're commodities like TV sets and cellphones. We've actually turned animals into inanimate objects - sandwiches and shoes. It is the greatest magic trick ever performed.”

“Oil is a tangible commodity, so there is a global market. The fact that we may need less may affect the global price because we're big consumers: we probably take about a quarter of global demand. But if suddenly, let's just use a crazy example, fighting in the Middle East led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and no oil could get out through the Strait of Hormuz, well that would affect China, India, Europe, it will affect the whole global economy. It will affect us, too, then.”

“Purchasing power parities are not a reasonable method for comparing households across countries or currencies. The reason for this is simply that PPPs are sensitive to the prices of all the commodities, goods and services, that households are consuming worldwide, with each commodity weighted in the calculations according to its share in international household consumption expenditure.”

“In 88 poor countries for which we have data, in each and every one of the 88, the PPP for food shows that poor people can buy less food than you would expect from the PPP that the World Bank is using. The reason for this is obvious on reflection. It has to do with the fact that most foodstuffs are tradable commodities: basic foodstuffs, such as rice, flour and beans, can easily be conveyed across national borders and their prices will therefore roughly mirror the exchange rates among currencies.”

“We know where the television is - everything has to be a sound bite; everything has to be an image; ideas are okay as long as they don't take more than four or five seconds to explain; candidates and issues are commodities that are sold like cans of soup; entertainment is limited to what a few people believe the lowest common denominator is; and you can't talk back to it.”

“We are privileged that the dollar is the "currency of last resort" and the most important currency in the world. Global commodities are priced in dollars. Central banks in other countries hold great quantities of dollars. The dollar was the safe harbor, the port in the storm during the credit crisis.”

“The current U.S. and Eurozone depression isn't because of China. It's because of domestic debt deflation. Commodity prices and consumer spending are falling, mainly because consumers have to pay most of their wages to the FIRE sector for rent or mortgage payments, student loans, bank and credit card debt, plus over 15 percent FICA wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare actually, to enable the government to cut taxes on the higher income brackets, as well income and sales taxes.”

“The only way to make a criticism of something is to really participate in it. I'm a completely capitalist person. I participate in commodity culture and the fashion world. High art is a money-making vehicle. We're not making art in a vacuum. We're not shopping in the woods. These are all things that we do within the larger system of capitalism. For me to critique it, I'm also participating in it. That's obvious, I feel. In my work, I participate in the things that I critique. I satirize the things that I love and know well and find problematic.”

“Inspiration is the most valuable commodity for an artist; it is for me anyway. I can't move forward in any way if I don't feel a strong spark of excitement or creativity. Sometimes it is very difficult to get things flowing. It's important to be in a peaceful state of mind, and then I invite the spirits to come into the studio. I don't stare into a blank canvas or paper. I look through my various collections of books, toys, statues, photographs and other things, and something will trigger an idea. My studio is packed full of things that inspire me.”

“It is the masculine dynamic that has caused our society to place money and corporate profit above human beings. It has allowed the earth to be viewed only as a commodity to be exploited. The feminine perspective sees things differently. She sees the earth and all its inhabitants as entities to be revered and cared for. She sees individual human beings as more important than the relentless advance of capitalism and competition. It is my hope, perhaps indirectly expressed in my work, that the divine feminine is reawakening.”

“We Americans, or half of Americans, think health care is a commodity. Other countries view health care as a social service that should be collectively financed and available to everyone on equal terms. My wife and I just interviewed the German minister of health, and it was an exhilarating experience, because it was a totally different language. It was obviously important that everyone should have the same deal in health care.”

“I'm also looking for the psychological elements that fuel commodity culture. For example, if we imbue girls with deep insecurity about their bodies through images of an impossible ideal, we create a really vulnerable and avid consumer. If somebody feels that they're not OK without a certain product, you have a very deep and loyal market that will come back to the product again and again. Sometimes, this process is both rational and irrational.”

“The median family income in the U.S. is lower than it was a quarter-century ago, and if people don't have income, they can't consume, and you can't have a strong economy. There's significant risk - actually it's no longer a risk - a significant likelihood of a marked slowdown not only in China, but also in a lot of other countries like Brazil, which is in recession. All of the other countries that depend on commodities, including Canada, are facing difficulties. So it's hard to see a story of a strong U.S. economy.”

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

“When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity; only the very coolest kids had a phone line of their own, and long-distance phone calls were made after eleven, when the rates went down, unless you were flamboyant with your spending. Then phone calls became as cheap as dirt and as constant as rain, and I was on the phone all the time.”

“Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.”