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By Wellsy
#15190466
What can not be commodified? What can't have a price put on it and traded? Is there a single thing?
#15190479
No. Not a single thing. Everything can be a commodity, even time and the 3 spatial dimensions. Even the laws of physics or the mitochondria powering your cells.

What 'should' not be a commodity is a more meaningful question.
#15190491
Is 'sold' part of an interaction where the exchange/trade includes time, action, affection, endogenous hormones, etc.. and the sold thing can be vague and immaterial?

Can you sell a memory? not a poor imitation by words, but the original as your brain experiences it? Id say no, even if they have your brain running in a jar or running as an annex than their brain would be interpreting something, somewhere, along the way.

A whole category would be that which is no longer available and will never be again, barring time travel/universe hopping.

If 'sold' is more concrete and commercial, then I'd say love and many emotions. They can be "earned" by spending money&time&attention&etc, but they aren't for sale, rather they are available.. to be earned.
#15190510
Igor Antunov wrote:No. Not a single thing. Everything can be a commodity, even time and the 3 spatial dimensions. Even the laws of physics or the mitochondria powering your cells.

What 'should' not be a commodity is a more meaningful question.

Wow, just wow!
I think your 1st point goes too far. Dimensions can't be sold. The Sun can't be sold. Other galaxies can't be sold. Etc.

Your 2nd point is the key question. Over time the answers have changed.
For example, in the iron age slaves could be sold.
Now, we think that this should never happen.
A person worried about ACC will think the trees in the Amazon forest should not be sold or cut down.
Etc.
Etc.
#15190511
Wellsy wrote:What can not be commodified? What can't have a price put on it and traded? Is there a single thing?

The black void of space? If space is infinite it has no value. Value/price is determined by supply and demand. If the supply of the black void of space is infinite, it has no value and no worth.
By B0ycey
#15190516
Unthinking Majority wrote:The black void of space? If space is infinite it has no value. Value/price is determined by supply and demand. If the supply of the black void of space is infinite, it has no value and no worth.


Not true. Anything quantifiable and distinguished between two people can be sold. I remember once an American selling plots of land on the moon. He didn't have international recognition to do so, but he provided the papers anyway to some big corporations and sold them on regardless. The Sun, sure it can be sold in the same way. And so can plots of "nothingness" in space I guess. But the only thing I will say is these things do need to be yours to begin with.

Things that can't be sold and traded. Unquantifiable things between users. Things like memory, ideas, intelligence, sight, hearing, feelings etc.
#15190517
B0ycey wrote:Not true. Anything quantifiable and distinguished between two people can be sold. I remember once an American selling plots of land on the moon. He didn't have international recognition to do so, but he provided the papers anyway to some big corporations and sold them on regardless. The Sun, sure it can be sold in the same way. And so can plots of "nothingness" in space I guess. But the only thing I will say is these things do need to be yours to begin with.

Things that can't be sold and traded. Unquantifiable things between users. Things like memory, ideas, intelligence, sight, hearing, feelings etc.

I meant that, to sell something you must find a buyer.
Who would buy the sun?
By B0ycey
#15190528
Steve_American wrote:Who would buy the sun?


A better question would be, who wouldn't?



The Sun has many distinguishable properties. Although hypothetical and beyond the realm of sanity, if sunlight was your intellectual property you could do very well indeed.
#15190620
B0ycey wrote:A better question would be, who wouldn't?



The Sun has many distinguishable properties. Although hypothetical and beyond the realm of sanity, if sunlight was your intellectual property you could do very well indeed.

If it was, but it can't be.
Who wouldn't buy the sun? You wouldn't.
I'll be happy to sell it to you.
Send me $100K, and I'll mail you a bill of sale.
By B0ycey
#15190668
Steve_American wrote:If it was, but it can't be.
Who wouldn't buy the sun? You wouldn't.
I'll be happy to sell it to you.
Send me $100K, and I'll mail you a bill of sale.


You don't own the sun so I am not happy to buy it from you. But if you did it could be sold. And actually you could sell it anyway like what you are trying to do now if someone was stupid enough to think you had the right to.

I guess my point was that if you could buy the sun you would given you could claim royalties on the sunlight.
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By AFAIK
#15190710
A type III civilisation is advanced enough to harvest stars. Aliens could conceivably buy and sell our sun in a similar manner to our sales of land and mineral rights.
#15190805
B0ycey wrote:You don't own the sun so I am not happy to buy it from you. But if you did it could be sold. And actually you could sell it anyway like what you are trying to do now if someone was stupid enough to think you had the right to.

I guess my point was that if you could buy the sun you would given you could claim royalties on the sunlight.

With all due respect, how is that last sentence not the same if it was ---

"If you could own 5 people you could rent them out to work."?

Or, "If you could own all the fish in the world's oceans you could make corps. pay you to operate fishing boats."?

The reason I claim somethings can't be sold is because they can't be owned. That is NOW given the current system.
By B0ycey
#15190837
Steve_American wrote:With all due respect, how is that last sentence not the same if it was ---

"If you could own 5 people you could rent them out to work."?

Or, "If you could own all the fish in the world's oceans you could make corps. pay you to operate fishing boats."?

The reason I claim somethings can't be sold is because they can't be owned. That is NOW given the current system.


Well the Sun can be owned if someone was able to claim possession of it and we all accepted that which was the point. The same as possessions and land is owned today. The idea of selling land wouldn't have been a concept to neolithic man had FYI, and today we just accept that it is. What cannot be sold is memories. And the reason is the Sun is a quantifiable object.
#15190842
B0ycey wrote:Well the Sun can be owned if someone was able to claim possession of it and we all accepted that which was the point. The same as possessions and land is owned today. The idea of selling land wouldn't have been a concept to neolithic man had FYI, and today we just accept that it is. What cannot be sold is memories. And the reason is the Sun is a quantifiable object.

So, our disagreement boils down to I want to assume the current system, and you want to imagine a system in which a person could convince everyone that he owned the sun. And then he could sell it.
Way to go, assume what you want to prove, and then claim to have proved it.
By B0ycey
#15190843
Steve_American wrote:So, our disagreement boils down to I want to assume the current system, and you want to imagine a system in which a person could convince everyone that he owned the sun. And then he could sell it.
Way to go, assume what you want to prove, and then claim to have proved it.


The question of the thread is 'what can't be sold?' The truth is procession and the concept of selling are human constructs. The Sun in theory can be sold given that. I don't really know why you are finding that so difficult to understand.
#15190914
@BOycey, I said at the top that I agreed with this.
Igor Antunov wrote:No. Not a single thing. Everything can be a commodity, even time and the 3 spatial dimensions. Even the laws of physics or the mitochondria powering your cells.

What 'should' not be a commodity is a more meaningful question.

So, that became the question I was answering.
I'm sorry you missed this point.
So, we are both right.
I was not answering to OP's question.
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