So almost every form of money involves death, danger and destruction. A frightened word-lover might start to wish that the stuff had never been invented at all. It is, after all, possible to run a society without any money. America, which is now the land of the fast buck, had no money until European colonists arrived. Well, almost. On the coasts of the North-East they used clam shells called wampums that could be threaded together into necklaces, and in Mexico they used cocoa beans as a standard by which to barter; but the point, essentially, stands. There were no coins, no notes, no green and
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