currency

Currency

Words are valued for their age and beauty, for their permanence and their origin. Words can be given as gifts, are free, can be used by all, and evoke all the wonder of the world. The most valued words are the oldest, most evocative and historically resonant ones – for example, chalice is much more evocative than glass, treasure instead of capital, love instead of crush, court instead of flirt. These older words have been used in more contexts by more writers across more centuries; they thereby become richer, acquire more resonance than new words which are exciting, because they are new, but still rather flat.
Capitalism uses money as a currency: paper notes that evoke nothing more meaningful than numbers, that are not freely available to everyone. Capitalism is a system within which the things that are valued are those that are desired by the greatest number of people and available in the smallest amounts (greatest demand, smallest supply). Things which are of value in the capitalist system are often material, having clear physical worth.

Artefacts are interesting, because they hold value in both the capitalist system and the cultural system. The capitalist system deems them valuable because they are rare, in small supply. They also have clear physical worth and are attractive; therefore lots of people want to collect them.
However, artefacts are also valued by poets and authors, in their world of words, for their permanence, and their historical richness. They are aesthetically pleasing and from the past and yet strangely timeless, in that they are accessible to any future generation. They reveal truths about humanity.