And yet there are signs that such arrangements are being eroded. Even the poet laureate, Ted Hughes, seems to have his eye on the cash. Last year, according to a newspaper report, he made known his intention to sell his butt of sack at 4 pounds the bottle, the vintage to be marketed under the name Laureate's Choice. Wisely, I think, Hughes seems not to have followed through on this scheme.
Money can be delusory.
It is a commonplace that the value of one currency relative to another can cause a country's exports or imports to surge, even though nothing about the exported or imported products themselves has actually changed. In contrast, transactions in which the ancient idea of barter plays a role put more of a premium on true equivalence. By one estimate, some 20 percent of the world's economic transactions are now in the form of barter deals, up from only about five percent thirty years ago. In the American domestic economy the value of barter deals is growing by about 15 percent a year. The government of Peru is settling some of its debt to overseas creditors with iron pellets, fish meal, copper wire, and alpaca cloth.