When you really think about it, the fact that the civilized world bottles and sells water to consumers is mind boggling. Companies have somehow tricked the world into buying something that for the entirety of human existence has always been free. But what is even more mind boggling than the sale of water? The sale of air!
That is exactly what is happening in Beijing, China, in the face of dangerously high levels of pollution in the air. What started out as a joke with a Ziplock bag full of air sold on Ebay for 99 cents has turned into a profitable business, with the company Vitality Air’s canned oxygen selling like hotcakes in the clean-air-starved cities.
An initial shipment of 500 bottles sold in four days and the company has already prepared and shipped an additional 4,000.
Before you know it, we will have cans of all sorts of air on our grocery store shelves. From mountain breezes, to salty ocean wind, to crisp arctic gusts, everyone will have their favorites.
We will all forget about the time when air was as free as the water…er…dirt…er… actually, air was the final frontier, here. Commercialism and a consumer-driven culture means that now literally anything is for sale!
Oh, the future.
