Indeed, there are entire shops now where everything is free.
We are clearly moving inexorably towards a remarkable trading situation wherein retailers will pay the customer for the right to take stuff away.
I put this theory to Auckland University economics professor Tim Hazledine when he was down here over Easter, as a keyboardist leading the justifiably revered Joe Cocker troupe at the Heads Ball Reunion in The Savoy.
''Tim,'' I said economically, ''are we not moving inexorably towards a remarkable trading situation wherein retailers will pay the customer for the right to take stuff away?''
His stunned silence spoke volumes as to the merit of my inquiry.
Two weeks ago at my favourite watering hole, the Princes St Salvation Army store, I plunged into a huge carton of Free Books and emerged with pure gold: Wedding Speeches For Women, by Suzan St Maur.
I have never judged a book by its cover, so the fact Suzan couldn't spell her own pen name, it HAD to be a pen name - was she shooting for Susan or Suzanne? - was neither here nor there.
It was the content that would establish whether my free purchase had been prudent.
And happily for the future of free trade, it was.
Suzan writes (2006) it is only in recent times that women have spoken as much at weddings as men, and where men have been constrained by tradition, women were not reared within those same parameters and have been therefore free to say anything they want.
Women can, in fact, be funny without being unfeminine, writes Suzan, in a scabrous attack on male wedding speakers and their propensity for being smutty.
Suzan then produces 179 pages of suggestions for the smutless and intellectually subtle woman.
Poetry.
A wonderful weapon at a wedding for women speakers, writes Suzan.
And boy, she knows her stuff.
It is clear from this why there are hardly any male poets anywhere these days, not even in the Ukraine.
''It's rare that an ungainly goose/can attract a man without a noose.''
Phew. And humour!
Pretty much vital, writes Suzan, though you have to be careful, you have to read your audience.
She is right.
I was at a wedding where the best man stood up and asked all the men with keys to the bride's flat to please put them on the front table.
That went down like a lead balloon with ME, I can tell you.
I walked right out the door.
Suzan, a raging feminist, has much better jokes than that for women wedding speakers.
''A man will spend $20 for a $10 item he needs: a woman will pay $10 for a $20 item she doesn't need.''
Or, on the subject of men and women -''A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend: a successful woman is one who can find such a man.''
Sometimes though, and this is pretty much genderless I reckon, though Suzan presents it for women, you can bring the house down with brilliant creative thought.
Consider, for example, the pesky topic of whether to take the man's name in marriage.
''If Olivia Newton-John had married Wayne Newton, then divorced him to marry Elton John, she'd be Olivia Newton-John Newton John.''
This is not just wedding speech gold, it's a game you can play all night.
If you're really smart.
This is a book every young intending bride should keep by her bed with a black felt pen for annotation.
I speak as one who knows, in a reverse kind of way, what makes a good wedding speech: my 1975 effort at Elizabeth House in Christchurch is still to be found in earlier editions of The Guinness Book of Records for Worst Wedding Speech Ever Stammered By A Groom.
I have taken much from this book to pass on to not just women, but men also.
Humour, after all, is universal.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
