Some might wonder why ultracommodification and financialization include food, air, and the human body. The concept strikes many as an affront. As long as human

Some might wonder why ultracommodification and financialization include food, air, and the human body. The concept strikes many as an affront. As long as humans have existed, so have food, air, and human bodies. Were Adam and Eve broken up into tranches and traded by high-speed algorithms across the globe? Why, then, am I? The dinosaurs that became our fossil fuels might well ask the same. To gain insight, we must consider the essentials. Necessarily, your exhalations contain carbon dioxide. However, requiring upon food acquisition payment for potential CO2 release equivalent to food carbon content is not viable. You may well intend to bury the food, or perhaps yourself immediately after consuming the food. Nor is metering CO2 exhalations. Of course, a financially distressed individual could simply be interred the instant they become insolvent, but this forgets the utility of withdrawing fats from your body by mechanical processes and rendering them into tallow and diesel - which would be effectively subsidized by exhalation metering. Furthermore, instantaneously committing to earth or industrial feedstock any body at time of insolvency presents impracticalities if that body is far from a hole in the ground or industrial consumer of body carbon. Therefore, the human body itself, in addition to the food it consumes and gasses it exhales, is also a de-facto commodity in exactly the same way as a modern-day fuel-destined dinosaur or Adam or Eve, who are after all, you and me. To provide freedom from immediate bodily carbon sequestration, while guarding against even a single atom of carbon from escaping the system, all the wondrous vagaries of our existences are therefore encoded into derivatives sold on the free market. You are free because of it. You may even bet on the possibility that you will hold your breath forever while continuing to live, or alternatively that you are already dead and haven’t yet learned of it. Progress stops for nobody’s body, but you may live out your existence with all the stock market acumen of a velociraptor, if you like.