Now I think about it, some of the most admired people in history were polymaths: Leonardo da Vinci, Richard Feynman, Thomas Young, Maria Agnesi, etc. Although, I'm using the term 'polymath' rather specifically here.

I respect those programme presenters who bridge the art and science worlds whilst treating both disciplines with equal respect. Good examples would be Melvyn Bragg, Stephen Fry and a bloke who goes by the alias Golem.
I despair when serious scientific or artistic topics are tagged on to the end of The Today programme as 'light entertainment'.

"The economic environment that most effectively contributes to prosperity is one that induces entrepreneurs to gain by investing in new means of production, not by rent-seeking, redistributive property expropriation, debt foreclosure and insider dealing."

A few years ago I would have agreed with Charles Clarke – the result of learning nothing but science. With growing awareness of the liberal arts, and I hope some wisdom too, I can now see that true understanding of *anything* requires knowledge of where we came from.
History explains all the blithely accepted facts learnt by rote at school.

I've just been skimming your suggested Michael Hudson article – it looks like we're making all the ancient mistakes again. Fascinating and horrifying! It's eerily similar to what has happened recently.

I just read a very thought provoking article my Michael Hudson (and others) on debt and entrepreneurship through the ages. This is a long article, it has taken me three evenings to read, but it is very good (in my opinion). What goes around comes around. If the financial class maintains its stranglehold on the world economy, then perhaps we are heading for another "dark age". Debt forgiveness was an important feature of the economy in the past – maybe we need this going forward.

But as you say, debt is power – in both directions. Debt greases the wheels of the modern financial system.

There seems to be a fine line between productive capitalism and extractive capitalism. The job of government regulation should be to keep things on the productive side. We are definitely on the extractive side of the line and the moment, and we need to get back on the productive side. I find it hard to know where the dividing line is, but the policies to get back on the productive side should be pretty clear.

I too love it when a thread springhs up. I am trying to see if I can change the form of the blog to include more firendly formats for threads to be created. But I am not very adept at computer things. So it may take a while.

As for your second point. There is the rub. If we don't want to continue on the current path of the evisceration of all democratic control and power then we will need to assert the will and power of the citizens of our nations. But that is fraught with danger.

As you say there are always those who will use any time of change to simply run riot. All I would say is that the financial class is runnning riot. Lives are being laid waste. So to think that we are avoiding suffering by 'not rocking the boat' is just cowardice in disguise. What we really mean when we talk about the 'dangers of times of change', is dangers migrating, from those who arecurrently suffering the raw edge of the status quo, to us.

So ultimately I am with you Rich. Either the financial class allow change to come about and their debts, wealth and therefore the power confered by those debts to be taken away by peaceful and democratic means OR we do it the hard way.

We must be willing to FIGHT for democracy. Because if we let it die, the fight necessary to save ourselves by non-democrtic means is much much worse.

I prefer the democratic route. But one route or another we cannot betray our children.

That's my position.