Dear Womack,

Sure, trust in the sense that the monetary unit received - whatever it is - can be passed along, either in new exchange or in the discharge of debts.

But is it not also the absence of trust? We no longer constrain our economic relations with only those in our community - those we trust or should trust - but because of money, we can transact with people we know very little about.

I'm no anthropologist, and I know that they have some "reservations" about this kind of discourse. It seems things were never this simple. People, so they say, have always engaged in economic relations (in broad terms) with others from outside their immediate community, and the history of money is much more complex than either mainstream or heterodox economics admit.

But what I was trying to get at is "how different conceptions of money affect an economist's vision of the economy and, in turn, his/hers theorizing".

I don't know if that will lead somewhere, but I hope it does.