Profitable capitalism must forever discover new uncommodified emotions to exploit

Evidence

Draper’s genius, meanwhile, is to grasp, and to confront, the paradox of commodification. Yes, capitalism must commodify everything it touches. But at the same time, high exchange value, and thus serious profits, depends on failing to do so fully. If it is to avoid the fate of a school of predators that devours its prey so efficiently that it starves to death, capitalism relies on there being an endless supply of experiential values for its exchange values to trounce and cannibalise. It must always be discovering and commodifying what has so far escaped it. … Smart advertisers do exactly that: they tap into emotions that have previously escaped commodification in order to capture our attention. And then they sell our attention to an entity whose business is to commodify whatever experiential value was hiding in our soul, fleeing commodification. … Thus a Hershey bar becomes the simulacrum of a dead father’s caress. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 129

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that commodification’s own success depends on a perpetual reservoir of the not-yet-commodified is the engine Varoufakis will use to explain how attention became the raw material of technofeudalism. Dense and generative.
• XREF: Directly feeds the ADDENDUM on trees and grafting — the constant search for uncommodified experiential value parallels how infrastructure must keep discovering new uses. — connects to: Capitalism requires perpetually unsatiated desire to maintain civilizational growth — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3420; Capitalism’s resilience comes from its plasticity in adopting new social forms — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1647; Lyotard grounded capitalism’s force in neguentropy, not human desire — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 79 (+12 more)
• STORYSTEM: The ‘simulacrum of a dead father’s caress’ — advertising manufacturing desire from private grief — is a ready seed for fiction about emotional commodification.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 129

Broader Connections

• Capitalism requires perpetually unsatiated desire to maintain civilizational growth #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3420
• Lyotard grounded capitalism’s force in neguentropy, not human desire #contradicts (0.80) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 79
• The discourse of creativity masks real needs that capitalism cannot actually satisfy #corroborates (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 572
• Capitalism’s resilience comes from its plasticity in adopting new social forms #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1647
• Capitalist need-satisfaction depends on suppressing needs #qualifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 383
• Market penetration shifted emotional investment into the private sphere #expands (0.72)