Question

You spend your 8-hour/day job on an assembly line making handles for toilets. It’s a glorious job and someone has to do it. While you are proud of the craft and labor that goes into those beautiful toilet handles, you also realize they all look alike and thus have the same exchange value. These beautiful, shiny, but very impersonal handles are examples of:

a. prestige good
b. fiat money
c. surplus
d. commodities

Answer 1

Toilet handles created on an assembly line, being identical in appearance and exchange value, are examples of commodities. A commodity has intrinsic value and can be exchanged with other commodities of the same type.

Step-by-step explanation:

The beautiful, shiny, and impersonal toilet handles that you make on the assembly line and which all look alike and have the same exchange value are examples of commodities. Commodities are economic goods or products before they are processed and/or integrated into other products. These items typically have value because of their substance and properties and can be interchangeable with other commodities of the same type.

For instance, gold is a classic example of a commodity because it has been used throughout history as a medium of exchange (commodity money), yet it has intrinsic value and other uses such as in electronics, manufacturing, and jewelry. Unlike fiat money, which has value because a government declares it to be the legal tender and it has no intrinsic value, commodities such as gold possess utility beyond their role as a medium of exchange.