Nature's Metropolis, Wheat, Chicago, commodity trading

[stormdog]

In his book on Chicago and the Great West, William Cronon describes the way the simple change from processing grain shipments in individual sacks to bulk processing in grain elevators led to the rise of abstracted commodity trading and the futures market, and shaped socio-economics on a national level! He quotes historian Morton Rothstein, who said that the futures market is "a place where men who don't own something are selling that something to men who don't really want it."

That was a fascinating chapter. Wheat's abstraction from tangible good to commodity, and the repercussions of that process, are deeper than I'd ever thought about. And I understand commodity trading and the future market a little bit better.

And with that, I'm off to bed.