moment a hypothesis about money. If money can be hypothesized, then you could put it down in a simple form. So I simply said, (A) money enhances or speeds up exchange; (B) money obsolesces barter; (C) money brings back something that had been pushed out earlier. It brings back potlatch. Potlatch was an old form of conspicuous consumption among native peoples. Kwakiutl Indians still use it in British Columbia. It was a way of showing off and also a way of inspiring further production. But, then, having got A, B, C, I decided that if you push anything far enough, it’s going to flip into the opposite form. You push money far enough and it becomes credit, which is not money. Credit has a completely different set of laws. Using these four, I’ve approached every kind of human artifact I can think of, and by artifacts, I mean words, pencils, safety pins, bulldozers—anything man-made—disease. I was
