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So where does that put us? Eisenstein says that puts us under overwhelming pressure to turn everything into a good or service. Consider, for example, the forest primeval. “ While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes ‘good’ when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer. I convert a forest to timber, a commodity, and GDP goes up. Similarly, if I create a new song and share it for free, GDP does not go up and society is not considered wealthier, but if I copyright it and sell it, it becomes a good. Or I can find a traditional society that uses herbs and shamanic techniques for healing, destroy their culture and make them dependent on pharmaceutical medicine which they must purchase, evict them from their land so they cannot be subsistence farmers and must buy food, clear the land and hire them on a banana plantation — and I have made the world richer. I have brought various functions, relationships, and natural resources into the realm of money.”
It’s such a powerful case Eisenstein is able to make it without bringing up the bowl games.
