Eventually, we tried selling the sunlight.
Field Notes
The joke works because it feels impossible.
No one can own the sunlight. It arrives every morning without invoices, subscriptions, applications, or permission. It falls equally on oceans, mountains, cities, and fields. It belongs to no one because it was never created by anyone.
And yet it feels strangely believable.
Modern societies have developed a remarkable tendency to convert nearly everything into a transaction. Land becomes real estate. Water becomes a utility. Attention becomes a commodity. Experiences become products. Even moments of wonder are packaged, branded, and sold back to us.
The line of people waiting to buy sunshine feels ridiculous because it reveals the logic more clearly than everyday life does.
Some things become so valuable precisely because they were never meant to be owned.
The beach, the sky, the warmth on your skin, the reflection of light across the water — these are gifts rather than products. They exist outside the marketplace.
The absurdity comes from imagining a world where even sunlight has been placed behind a counter.
The unsettling part is how familiar that world already feels.