Commerce -> revenues -> viable businesses -> sustainable jobs -> peaceful livelihood prospects.

No commerce -> no jobs -> unrest -> violence and wars (citation: centuries of human history).

Maybe, commerce is the nail which constrains humanity both in a good and a bad sense - by providing a peaceful alternative to violent lifestyles and by creating a consumerist culture?

When there's a trade that makes both sides better off that increases the happiness in the world. It's a Pareto improvement.

When marketing convinces someone to buy something that ends up being a bad trade (i.e. the person that buys it is not made better off) then there is no such improvement and the world is not made better off.

This hints at a common sentiment I see on HN. The idea that everything you and I buy and do is very considered and intelligent. But the great unwashed masses don't put such thought into their purchases, and are being "duped" by evil conspiratorial marketing. If only everybody else was as smart as us, right?

Have you considered that maybe the majority of successful companies in the world are fulfilling customer wants and needs and thus making what you call Pareto improvements? And maybe it's just that the other "dumb people" derive joy from different stuff?

The market sorts these things out. It is mostly efficient. Not perfectly. But mostly. A company that is providing net-negative value to the world is a short-lived company.

I don't consider myself immune from hucksters. On the contrary, I've certainly be tricked and manipulated before and I expect I will be again.

Given that hucksters have existed for as long as markets have, I don't have your touching faith in the power of markets to eliminate them.

It’s almost like there could be an inbetween because full throated commerce in every aspect of life and community and no commerce at all.

False dichotomy. There is such a thing as too much commerce, as is evidenced by our current state of ecological self destruction

No, commerce doesn't have to be a nail. It's just restricting the utility of the internet at this point, which is limiting commerce. The internet used to be an antidote to the shopping mall, but now it has become one.

Aren't plenty of (most?) modern large scale conflicts fueled by commerce, though?

It might be possible to have both commerce and some form of democracy though.

> (citation: centuries of human history)

That’s not a citation. And given your thesis is a sprawling abstract claim, it really needs some real citations.

It needs some citations if it were an academic reference perhaps. As a response to a comment that is speculating without evidence on the similarity between on our culture and a nailed from, it seems sufficient.

The likelihood for an individual to die by violence has been much greater for most of human history and prosperity and peace typically go hand in hand. I could provide references for these claims, but I think they are well known and references for the counter claim haven't been provided.

It’s just totally ascientific thinking. You’re connecting things with no evidence of connection.

And evidence aside, your analysis is so coarse it’s basically impossible it could be true. Nothing that coarse is true.

And one last point: I have no doubt your head is filled with examples from history that back up your claim. What you almost certainly don’t have is evidence that there isn’t an equal raft of examples that contradict it.