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This dissertation addresses the phenomenon of 'radical commodities'-commercial products which advance an oppositional politics. Examples of such include the products of Rage Against The Machine, a 'revolutionary' rock band; Michael Moore, a best-selling author and award-winning documentary filmmaker; Naomi Klein, a journalist and author of the international bestseller No Logo; The Body Shop, a multinational manufacturer and retailer of 'natural' cosmetics and toiletries; Freitag, a company which manufactures bags, wallets and other fashionable accessories from recycled materials, and; the Adbusters Media Foundation, publisher of Adbusters magazine and producer of Blackspot shoes. Radical commodities are fundamentally paradoxical objects whose apparent ethic would appear to be at odds with the fact that they are commodities. This dissertation asks: can a commodity-object legitimately serve as a vehicle for social and political critique? It is reasoned that the problem of radical commodities is principally structural. Marx's seminal writings on the commodity accordingly represent the logical point of departure. The Marxian analysis illuminates not only the commodity-structure, but also the political problematic which emerges from that structure-for Marx, the commodity is a mechanism of exploitation. From an orthodox Marxist perspective, the idea of a radical commodity would therefore be most contradictory, or indeed impossible. It is argued, however, that the Marxian analysis is inconclusive. This dissertation traces a genealogy of analyses of the commodity, which variously advance or diverge from the orthodox Marxist position. From a perspective of the consumption of commodity-objects, the radical commodity would appear to be possible. Yet, the relationship between the commodity-structure and the capitalist ideology runs deep. The question of the radical commodity is therefore markedly more complex than it might initially appear. With regard to the ideological consequence of the commodity-structure, however, certain streams of post-Marxist analysis are themselves problematic, for they ultimately short-circuit historical critique and destabilise the very possibility of politics. In contrast, this dissertation seeks to reaffirm a place for politics and, in so doing, to establish the theoretical possibility of radical commodities. To contend that the idea of a radical commodity is not fundamentally contradictory, however, says nothing of the political potency of such objects. These are undoubtedly complex objects, whose peculiarities cannot be ascertained by abstract theorisation alone. For this reason, this dissertation also employs empirical analyses of a number of radical commodities. In sum, it is argued that the sphere of commodities should be admitted as a possible site for the expression or implementation of a radical politics, and thus that radical commodities should be understood as a legitimate vehicle for social and political critique, but that such objects are by no means free from contradiction, and that the political efficacy of these products is anything but guaranteed.

The thesis consists of two parts. The first one deals with Gentzen's consistency proof of 1935, especially with the impact of his cut elimination strategy on the complexity of the proof. Our analysis of Gentzen's cut elimi- nation strategy, which eliminates uppermost cuts regardless of their comple- xity, yields that, in his proof, Gentzen implicitly applies transfinite induction up to Φω(0) where Φω is the ω-th Veblen function. This is an upper bound and Φω(0) represents an upper bound on heights of cut-free infinitary deriva- tions that Gentzen constructs for sequents derivable in Peano arithmetic (PA). We currently do not know whether this is a lower bound too. The first part also contains a formalization of Gentzen's proof of 1935. Based on the formalization, we see that the transfinite induction mentioned above is the only principle used in the proof that exceeds PA. The second part compares the performance of Gentzen's and Tait's cut elimi- nation strategy in classical propositional logic. Tait's strategy reduces the cut-rank of the derivation. Since the propositional logic does not use inference rules with eigenvariables, we managed to organize the cut elimination in the way that both strategies yield identical cut-free derivations in classical propositional logic.

Background: This study discusses the phenomenon of luxury goods as investment assets,focusing on luxury watches in particular. The rise of globalization and increased wealth,particularly among the middle and high-income groups in developing countries, hascreated a larger potential customer base for luxury items. This has led to an increasing interest in luxury goods as investment assets, including collectibles such as cars, art, andwine. The recent development of online niche marketplaces for luxury goods has enabledthe systematic collection of data, facilitating research on Veblen goods as alternativeinvestment assets. Therefore, it is interesting to analyze the financial performance ofinvestments in luxury watches as compared to traditional assets. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the comparative performance ofinvesting in luxury watches versus traditional assets such as equities and bonds. Methodology: This study collects data on luxury watch prices and characteristics. Thehedonic pricing method is used to regress the price of the watches on their characteristics.The regression results are used to analyze the price impact of the characteristics, as well asto create a watch price index. In order to evaluate the index performance, data is collectedfor the MSCI World Index and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. For all the indices, the financial metrics of the Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, CAPM, and Jensen’s alphaare calculated. Conclusion: This study suggests that luxury watches, with their wide price ranges and high resale value, have been a viable option for portfolio diversification during thestudied five-year period between 2018 and 2023. The watch index yields an averagereturn of 2.01 % and a cumulative return of 49.35 %, outperforming the MSCI World Indexwith average returns of 1.38 % and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index with -0.01%, and cumulative returns of 31.90 % and -0.15 %, respectively. The watch index alsooutperforms the compared indices in terms of the financial metrics Sharpe ratio, Treynorratio, CAPM, and Jensen’s alpha. The results suggest that the most important valuedrivers for luxury watches are: Brand (Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and VacheronConstantin), Features (Chronograph, tourbillon, and rotating bezel) and Case Material(bronze, rose gold, and yellow gold).