Thought-Provoker: the commodification of risk-aversiveness (commodification series part 3)

To recap from part 1 and 2: commodification resides alongside consumerism and the need to earn money in order to survive, as an essential foundation of a Capitalist economy.

Commodification is the process by which market potential is assigned to products, services, ideas and information. Commodification is also the process whereby solutions are created for problems that don’t exist. For example, the medicalization of normality, and the development of gratuitous and frivolous products that are essential to no one. Therefore, commodity production is not necessarily determined by use value, instead, commodity production is based on potential exchange value. An exchange value can be assigned to anything that has a potential to produce income for the proponent of the commodity. Commodification then, is the process of creating market place niches.

Because of a number of social, political, and legal changes over the last few decades, a more 'risk-averse society' has developed. We are now very much in the era of increased, perceived threat and danger, and the resulting fallout is one of risk and harm minimization. Some commentators have referred to this phenomenon as the 'cotton-wool' era: one where individuals need to be mollycoddled and protected from harm. However, this harm potential often doesn't truly exist or has such a low probability of occurrence as to not be of genuine concern.

Westerners are now socialized to believe society is more dangerous than it has been in the past, and that, such increased danger requires legislation, products and services to reduce risk. In essence we see a whole new group of industries born from this socialized indoctrination. This then, is the commercialization or commodification of the 'risk-averse-society'.

One pertinent example is the rise of the OH&S industry. For example, it's now possible to undertake a degree in OH&S. A large number of business enterprises have come into existence to provide safety training, while others sell safety equipment of all types. Other organizations create and/or enforce OH&S policy. So what's the problem you might ask? After all, we all need to be safe in our workplaces.

In years past, workers were indeed often exposed to very hazardous working conditions---dangerous chemicals, excessively long working hours and un-shielded machinery etc. Legislation was quite rightly sought and created to protect vulnerable workers from genuine hazards such as these. Nowadays however, OH&S intervention has mired workers and personnel in a quagmire of 'tick the box' paperwork, and limited their capacity to actually achieve workplace goals. Much of the OH&S interference today doesn't address genuine, real-world safety concerns. Lets face it, legislation preventing healthy individuals from picking up a box weighing more than 5kgs would be laughable, if there wasn't such bizarre reasoning behind it and punitive enforcement for noncompliance.

And there is a much darker side to the 'risk-averse-society' as well. The fear-mongers have convinced many people that government intrusion into peoples private lives and the handover of their personal information is necessary in order to curb crime and terrorism. Governments know and understand that a fearful population is a compliant population.

And when it comes to medicine, diagnostic tests are now set to err on the side of returning false positives if 100% accuracy cannot be achieved (false positive = an indication of disease when there is no disease present). Diagnostic false positives have, for example, led to a large number of invasive breast surgeries the world-over, when no actual cancer was present.

Then there is the litigation industry, which in part, actually helped to spawn the 'risk-averse-society'. However, discussion about this commodification sector is for another time.

More generally, the creation of a 'risk-averse society' can increase anxiety and reduce the resilience of individuals. This also negatively impacts upon perceptions of personal control and, therefore, can undermine well-being. Unsurprisingly, such people are often the most likely to endorse over-the-top policy, products and services they perceive might reduce threat and danger.

Furthermore, once a 'risk-averse-society' is created it becomes something akin to a runaway freight-train---more and more safety intervention is called for by individuals and groups---even for situations and events that would have previously been considered relatively innocuous.