Marketed commodity

Modern industrial uses include dentistry and electronics, where gold has traditionally found use because of its good resistance to oxidative corrosion. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and can form trivalent and univalent cations upon solvation. At STP it is attacked by aqua regia, forming chloroauric acid and by alkaline solutions of cyanide but not by hydrochloric, nitric or sulphuric acids. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but does not react with it. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid, which will dissolve silver and base metals, and is the basis of the gold refining technique known as "inquartation and parting". Nitric acid has long been used to confirm the presence of gold in items, and this is the origin of the colloquial term "acid test", referring to a gold standard test for genuine value.In Marxist political economy,[2] commodification takes place when economic value is assigned to something not previously considered in economic terms; for example, an idea, identity or gender. So commodification refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-market areas, and to the treatment of things as if they were a tradable commodity.

For instance, sex becomes a marketed commodity, something to be bought and sold rather than freely given. Human beings can be considered subject to commodification in contexts such as genetic engineering, social engineering, cloning, eugenics, social Darwinism, Fascism, mass marketing and employment. An extreme case of Commodification is slavery, where human beings themselves become a commodity to be sold and bought. Similarly, the use of non-human animals for food, clothing, entertainment, or testing represents the commodification of other living beings.