The Commodification of Human Traits: Market Dynamics in the Genomic Economy

This article theorizes the emergence of a genomic marketplace in which traits—from disease resistance to enhanced cognition—are priced, licensed, and traded as proprietary assets. We introduce two mechanisms that organize value capture in this economy: inherited revenue assurance (IRA), a lineage-binding royalty structure for germline edits, and genomic asset–backed securities (GABS), financial instruments that securitize expected royalty cashflows from edited populations. We build a conceptual model of the trait value chain—from IP origination through multigenerational licensing and secondary finance—and analyze distributional and ethical consequences under competing regulatory regimes (patent exclusivity, FRAND-style licensing, royalty caps, and trait commons). The contribution is a political–economy account that connects molecular IP to household welfare and macro–finance, while offering policy tests that distinguish emancipatory from extractive designs.