the problem is we haven't had capitalism as most of us understand it, we've had something closer to fascism, capitalism would have had the banks fail along with Greece, new financial institutions would have emerged and Greece would have had to change it's ways. What we got was Governments/politicians and Banks working together to defraud the taxpayer. Since 2008 the too big to fail banks are bigger and more leveraged than ever and Greece is more in debt than it was when it ran out of money, the discipline of capitalism has been lost, what remains is everything that is bad about it.

It is really the whole problem with the power of resources and the ability to overvalue the contributions of those companies and owners that dominate markets. Capitalism provides a framework that provides more and more to the winners of this game of Monopoly. Combine this with a regressive tax system that favors the rich we become slaves to the process. Yesterday Apple gave their top 7 executives more than 50 million each in stock.. Is this something like Crony Capitalism? Wonder why Steve jobs didn't do this when he was CEO? Can Innovation be purchased by increasing the amount of money we pay someone? Innovation can be developed by allowing innovations to become possible through the patent process and funding opportunities. Unfortunately unfettered Capitalism supports greed and is just money following money which serves to disproportionatey distribute wealth and can ultimately stymie innovation. The ultimate balancing act should be Democracy when it can be implemented fairly.

The vile behaviour of the banksters should be investigated. Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corportation (HSBC) increased the credit card limit of an individual to around BBP20,000 without that individual's partner being aware of it. It is considered that the behaviour of this bank was vile and gangster like.
Such behaviour can easily force individuals into bankruptcy and cause them to lose their homes.
As a result the vile behaviour of this group of banksters this amount can only be repaid to this criminal-like enterprise when the family home is sold.
How many have been bankrupted and become homeless due to vile banksters like HSBC. Can anyone wonder why banksters like HSBC are hated and despised.

There is a nonsense in the press. We are made to feel guilty by blaming us on over spending and leaving a legacy for our children. The very underbelly of capitalism is Osborne and Cameron. It will not be tolerated and I thank the people in their tents fighting for the people that haven't a spare minute because they work for hours to make a decent living. It's deplorable how the poorest are being made to pay and are vilified in the press. These are vile, over privileged, over indulged men who haven't known a days hardship in their lives while they inflict it on everybody else. Unsustainable crap. The electorate are angry and scared. We see disgusting Cameron staying in £1000 plus a night hotel for the G20 and hate every fibre of his being as he destroys Britain. He is the most vile man to walk this planet. Clegg is a pile of shite not even worth a mention because he and the Libdems are finished in the UK. After the shit hits the fan, which it will, nobody will vote Conservative ever again and Cameron will be held to account.

Cameron et al are desperately trying to ignore the world wide protest, trying to dismiss it and insult the people protesting but higher powers have taken note and are taking our concerns seriously. Ignore the people to your peril Cameron.

Where do you begin with all these comments above?

Some are so in the money-making system that their comments are purely and selfishly subjective, yet they are usually taken to be serious and objective people.
I just cannot talk to them on their terms and with their language!

My friend Mary is a do-gooder. In her free time. She is a wonderful person and just "does" things for others. The pity is that she does not get paid for what she does, and what she does, as well as being do-gooding, is essential for the people she helps. So, when her free time is over, she has to make enough money for someone else so as for this someone else to give her enough money to pay for all the things she needs. The thing is, I have disguised Mary´s real name as she is ashamed of the paid work she does. I will not mention what it is as she is a dear person and I would not want her to find out that I am talking about her here. Sufficient to say that the work she does does harm to people. It is all quite legal. In fact, she belongs to a reputable profession .

I suppose Mary is not alone. I had a neighbour who was a Bank Manager Monday to Saturday morning, then worshipped God twice on Sundays!

It could be that Mary is a dedicated do-gooder to compensate the human damage she does for pay. I know she has tried to find a less harmful job but these are difficult times, especially when you are no longer young. But how do you measure the harm and the good you do to others? Anyway, what a schitzophrenic existence! What kind of a system is this that rewards anti-social work and does not reward pro-social ones?

Mary happens to be an atheist so she has no comfort in thoughts that she might go to Heaven, that life on earth is just a testing ground for the real true and eternal after-life. So there is nothing to soothe her everyday, all year round dilemma.

Surely, Mary should be paid or otherwise rewarded for her voluntary good works, and if that were so, she would not have to seek payment from elsewhere and would cease to do harm to some people to finance doing good to others.

Now, doesn´t democracy mean we can decide that Mary will be paid for do-gooding, and in her free time she could enjoy herself? She deserves it, far more than most people I know, who make their money not thinking of possible negative consequences of their jobs and then they go out and spend their well-earned money - not thinking of how they spend their money might be harmful to others. Unlike them, Mary is very unselfish.

I don´t know. Someone above has said the problem is not capitalism. I´ve heard people talk of money-fascism. All I know is that what Mary has to go through is an utter perversion, so much so that if I could, I would make counterfeit money to give to Mary!

Can any of the experts suggest a solution, a solution that Mary would accept? I know she would not accept sponsorship or take part in any fund-raising activities to raise the funds to pay her. Like some of the contributors above, she says people are more important than things. Does that mean there is something wrong, malfunctioning, with the capitalists? Why doesn´t the government sort of charge those who earn huge fortunes a "volunteer tax" if they don´t spend a certain percentage of their earnings on employing do-gooders like Mary?

Actually, what´s to stop the government from circulating its own currency, a sort of "social currency", as valid as money; but it would be better than money, wouldn´t it, as the government would not have to go into debt by borrowing it from a private bank?

This is getting beyond me. It seems the money world is not pro-social. I know, we should get Health & Safety to intervene as the money world is endangering the lives of millions!

Mary has got an older sister in Australia. They have not seen each other for many years. I would love for her to turn up there for Christmas but I know that will not happen.

How many thousands of years have we been on this planet? How many wonderful things have we discovered and invented? And is this the best we can do work-wise?

All this abstract talk about the economy gives me a headache, but the migraine I get most times I see Mary is much worse!

The term should be anti-greed and not anti-capitalist.

There is a world of difference between socially responsible business and a type of greed that has more in common with gangsterism, than it does with serving people's needs. The basis of trade between each other should always be serving the needs of others and no more. However business and financial empires can become reliant on making huge profits and instead of trade and business being processes to serve people's needs, they manipulate society to serve their own needs.

I think there is a very simple mechanism which would produce most of the necessary reform of the system so it works in a fairer way, rather than being a tool for powerful vested interests to further their own self-interest. It would not require complex implementation. In fact far rather than doing something, it would be a case of not doing something, which is the cause of the problem.

It is simply openess, transparency and throwing open the curtains of secrecy, which allow the establishment and powerful vested interests to essentially collude, and carve up things between them. The establishment and powerful vested interests may differ on many things, they may compete, but they all have a vested interest in things operating as they are now. Public scrutiny is the best regulation mechanism there is. Just think of the scandals like phone hacking, the Liam Fox affair, parliamentary expenses. All these problems were only addressed and acknowledged after the stories broke in the media i.e. they became public knowledge and issues of public scrutiny. Once subjected to public scutiny, the powers that be caught with their trousers down soon clean up that part of their act. The problem is these are mere chinks in this wall of secrecy and it is so easy for the establishment and powerful vested interests to simply dodge behind other parts of the wall of secrecy they have built.

The goings on of the powerful are protect by many means. A legal framework that allows them to manipulate it for their own ends with an army of lawyers. An establishment that bends the rules to conceal what goes on behind the scenes. A media that is intextricably hooked into the establishment, and which often colludes with it, biasing its reporting in favour of maintaining the present established order.

Over time there must be a constant pressure to roll back all secrecy when it comes to meetings, dealings, and decision making that effects the lives of many people. There is a world of difference between private personal matters and someone acting in a way that effects the lives of many. Those with power are fond of telling us that with rights come responsibilities. But they don't practise what they preach. When they get caught out they simply justify themselves or hide behind legal contrivances based on the principle of admit nothing, and deny everything. If people want this type of power they also need to take on the responsibility of ensuring that everything they do, which effects the lives of many, is open to scrutiny. Those in power also like to tell people that they should not object to police scrutiny etc, because if they've got nothing to hide they have nothing to fear. Whilst of course they use their wealth, influence and legal muscle to ensure they are not scrutinised.

I realise that the move towards total openess about decision making and meetings that effect the lives of many, would be a total paradigm shift. There are hostile governments, hostile businesses, and hostile organizations trying to get information. But they all themselves rely on no one knowing what they are up to. It is not about instantly sweeping away all secrecy in some revolutionary act. It is about a sustained trend to roll back secrecy. Evolutinary change, a bit at a time. See what happens, learn from this and proceed with more reform. If there was consensus in many countries there could be pressure for international pressure for the end of secrecy.

We have been inculcated and brainwashed into thinking that secrecy is necessary. But this is dishonest because the people who most benefit from this wall of secrecy are the powerful who use it as a cloak to conceal their dirty dealings. They would say it was necessary wouldn't they. Whilst people would have to change how they did things this does not need a great big plan. It is not about implementing a big plan, but just gradually rolling back something that is being abused to conceal corruption, and corrupting relationships. I am well aware that many will sneer at what I say as being simplistic and naive. But this is just another one of these propaganda party tricks to put down any suggestion that this corrupt system needs reform, and that this reform is possible.

All this dirty dealing that goes on behind the scenes only happens if those engaging in it think the public won't get to know about it. They wouldn't behave like that if they thought we would get to know.

Would you believe it! I have just checked my emails and there is a message from a friend about Mary, who doesn´t know how to use computers. The friend says that Mary felt in need of a good break and she has gone to London on the train. To St Paul´s, in fact. If you do bump into her Tanya, do tell her to put her feet up and serve herself a hot cuppa. It´ll be easy to spot her as she is middle-aged and tireless and she will be in the thick of things on the camp.

Maybe you good folk can solve her dilemma?

There is too much hand- wringing in this article and not enough analysis, or suggestion of alternative models. There is a fundamental problem with our current model of capitalism, it operates entirely in favour of the owners of capital rather than than the those who work for a living. I am no Marxist, but it is striking how rapidly in the last thirty years wealth has been transferred from labour to capital.

Our economic life, which is what shapes e fundamentals of our society, is entirely outwith democratic control. Government no longer plays any major role in shaping the economy, it merely operates at the periphery, thus justifying those who say there is no point in voting because there is no difference between the parties. There isn't, really, because they have all accepted their impotence in the face of the markets. Tinkering at the edges, by taxing bonuses and reducing tuition fees, as Ed Miliband suggests elsewhere in this paper, is a hopelessly inadequate response. We need to change the economic weather.

If state ownership on the old model is not the answer - and it probably isn't, though we really should recognise that we have effectively nationalised some of the big banks and start behaving as their owners - then we should look to other models of ownership. Co-operatives can raise capital, but be owned and controlled by their workers, thus bringing democracy and common purpose back into the economic arena. Mutuals can also work well. The energy companies, for example, should be owned by their consumers. If they were, their profits would either be redistributed to those consumers in the form of reduced prices, or reinvested in the interests of those consumers, either to reduce consumption or increase sustainable production.

There's nowt wrong with a few folk putting their savings together and starting a company that is bigger than any could manage on their own, and whose workings are thoroughly understood by each and every one of them.

It is when you elevate that to an '-ism' that the dangers start creeping in.

Similarly, there's nowt wrong with farmers exchanging their surplus production (over and above what their household eats itself) for cash from 'thing-makers' at a market, and then exchanging that cash for 'made-things' elsewhere in the market.

It is when The Market dominates all life that the dangers start creeping in.

I have before me a graph that shows extraction of fuels and ores from Earth in the past and the estimated extraction of what the geologists tell us is left.

Guess what? It rises quickly from 1750, peaks around now, and falls to zero around the end of this century.
The fall is dramatic. Down to a half of the peak in twenty years. Down to a quarter in forty years. Down to an eighth in 60 years..........

Since industrialism/capitalism/consumerism are all only possible when fed by fuels and ores, that graph tells me that we are now just starting on a transition to an agrarian age beyond those '-isms'.

Even in the twenty second century and beyond, there will still be some industry servicing agrarian producers, some folk putting their savings together and running firms that they understand, and some consumption beyond the home-grown.

But the '-isming' will have gone.

What we need now is minds being bent to the formation of exit strategies from the over-dominance of The Market and the ideology of rampant consumerism.
It can be done.

I am so old that I remember folk living lives of well-being with far, far less material consumption.
They were proud to live thriftily, frugally, and within-their-means.

Hooray! Capitalism is broken, kaput, finished.
Time indeed to find the moral compass and design a new society.

We should be out in the streets celebrating.

......clearly if we made it illegal to pay any banker a bonus in the City of London that would surely encourage at least some bankers to relocate to Singapore.

Who thinks that it is clear that Singapore would have them?

It has enough of its own, and has very tight immigration rules.

In times past, it used to let in a small number of 'expatriates' to do high-level jobs that it hadn't yet got 'home-grown' people capable of doing.

Those expatriates (and I was one from 1987 to 1993) were mostly there to train young Singaporeans up to being capable of doing those high-level jobs, and they did so.

The idea that Singapore would let in large numbers of expatriates to compete with its own perfectly-capable high-level workers is risible, and it is time that it was knocked on the head.

For 'daylas' re 2:14 AM: I had a neighbour who was a Bank Manager Monday to Saturday morning, then worshipped God twice on Sundays!

So did I.
Excellent chap, he was.
There was a caricature of him on the television, called 'Captain Mainwaring'.

All the trials and tribulations described by the contributors above set in when that Bank Manager retired and was replaced by one who was a caricature of a television character called 'Arthur Daley'.

In the whole of the article, I cannot find a single one of the participants mentioning the root cause of the problems and of the OLSX protest.

It is 'growth'.
The growth that was a good thing whilst the industrial body was growing and maturing has finished.
Now the growth ----the only growth possible in a mature body---- is a cancerous one.

The OLSX young people understandably have no prescription for its elimination, but a visceral understanding that one is needed.

There is an interesting article in the latest Journal of Futures Studies that examines "The Inappropriateness of Continuous Unchecked Growth" which is seen to be a result of a 'global anxiety disorder' that sees growth as the measure of human success.

The article argues that treatment will require 'changes in education and advertising' to 'lead to a more appropriate worldview creating an optimistic hypothesis for the future.'

Wow! The problem with any system is that it can be hijacked unless legislation and controls are in place to ensure that it remains on the rails and fulfills requirements!

The fact is that the few pieces of legislation which may have done this were removed in1986, the since that time other intricate cogs have been added to enable those who wished to make even more money and change the world economy where they thought fit, to do just that. A recipe for disaster!

The question is, now what are we " all" going to do! The simple thing would be to re legislate knowing what we now know to be factual! As there are countless trillions which have misappropriated since 1986 what do we do about that? Find the common factor, this did not just happen it was orchestrated, beautifully, but by whom? Common denominators, then why which should be self explanatory as the rational will almost certainly have been political and economic principals for good or bad, probably bad.

Finally the repatriation of any funds which have been misappropriated. Maybe a paper exersise but if you look at the markets there is little truth in them any more it is all bluff and counter bluff.

The annoyance of most is that a bunch of jumped up hyperactive idiots have hijacked the worlds economic platform to sway the norm and to make themselves rich, when it went wrong and politicians were misguided eneough to help them out of the hole with other peoples money merely to allow the silly game to go on. That's when people got mad. Futility has that effect on folk!

Solving the problem is easy once you acknowledge what the true problem is, finding people who will accept the truth could be difficult!

@Great Grandad

We must have been in Singapore at the same time. I note that the university English department where I worked is now 92% staffed by Singaporeans.

Yes, growth in mature economies is like growth in mature bodies--cancer. It threatens the life-support systems of the body politic.

Please, whenever someone mentions the need for economic growth in already rich economies ask them to substitute 'cancer'. They will then see how foolish they are.

In that case I would blame the person who ran up debts they could not pay off rather than the banks.

A tedious and sterile debate, unfortunately. Hutton comes closest to a systemic analysis of the problem. But the rest is anecdotal, hand-wringing and shallow.

Capitalism isn't "broken". The machine has very efficiently done exactly what it was predicted it would do - create a systemic lack of final demand; commodify, destroy and consume all it touches including social ties and moral norms; whilst also creating a tiny uber-rich elite monopolisng capital wealth; and a massive alienated woking class with falling living standards (when you remove the temporary fix of easy credit from the equation).

Result - conflict.

But of course, that's Marxism - and we've been taught sneer at Max, haven't we? I wonder why they taught us to do that?

*Max = Marx. Guffaw!

Louise Cooper -

those that supply capital and those that supply human capital

The 'human capital' supplies both, where does she think the capital that the 'capital suppliers' 'provide' get their capital? Outer space? It comes from exploiting the 'human capital'.

because I was hardworking and smart. What the City is very, very clearly is a meritocracy. If you are hardworking and smart it will give you an opportunity.

But we are not all City traders etc are we? There are for instance hospital workers, artists, musicians, rubbish collectors, all of which are important. And where did all the smartness go (in general)? Did it just disappear overnight? Is the humble taxpayer now deemed the smart guy because it has bailed-out the City? Strangely, no. Strangely, in fact perversely, we are still told that these are the smartest and the rest of us benefit from their actions, they still get massive bonuses. It is clear that this is based on class, and that as a system it is socially unjust.

Capitalism won't last forever, history doesn't support that thesis. Things change. Given that they must change, we have to think of alternatives. Anything else is burying your head in the sand.

For 'zerozero' re 8:00AM: Things change. Given that they must change, we have to think of alternatives.

Yes------think of alternatives.

Let us think about sharing out the remaining work more equitably, and reducing our dependency on money and markets.

Not that it is a new suggestion. Polanyi wrote about Our Obsolete Market Mentality in 1947.

I am so old that I remember the last time (the early 1970s) when it looked as if we should think of doing things a bit differently.

Limits to Growth (Meadows et al, 1972) had woken us up, and the OPEC put the screws on.

There was serious discussion and predictions from futurists such as Tom Stonier that, by now, there would be generally a 3-day working week, much earlier retirement, and a great expansion of leisure-time vegetable gardening.

But along came Thatcher and Reagan who persuaded the Saudis to pump out the oil and so we have ended up where we are.

I continue to maintain that it is downright daft to have one person overworked and stressed out, with another completely out of work but stressed out by searching for a non-existent job, when both could be on a three-day week and each could have a productive allotment.

There's a lot more pride and satisfaction to be had by living thriftily, frugally, and within-one's-means than being a consumption-slave to advertisement-led fashion.

I've said it before, but here it is again: "There's more well-being in producing a well-grown cabbage than in producing a well-driven golf-ball"

We see that usury creates:
i) a dependence on perpetual growth (which is, and always has been untenable on a planet with limited natural resources),
ii) continuous concentration of wealth into the hands of the lenders,
iii) a tendency towards corporate monopolies.

All of these features of the "usury-capitalist" financial system are impacting on the present:
i) The effective end of growth - brought about by resource depletion and multiple environmental crises including climate change - brings wider realisation that existing debts cannot and will not ever be repaid. In theory this need not concern the banks as they are able to sieze from borrowers assets of equivalent collateral value. Masquerading inflated valuations of [such] assets on their balance sheets has become widespread, and apparently acceptable practice! However, when their cashflows/profits are impacted by interest payment defaults - most visibly in the case of Greece - the situation becomes more urgent. Could it be that the derivatives (of which the financial industry has been so smug in using to "control" risk over the last 2 decades), in particular Credit Default Swaps, are about to blow up in their faces?
ii) Combined with a flagrant use of public money to bail out financial institutions in 2008, neoliberal governments' propensity to cut those expenditures with greatest impact on the poorest in society and [furthering] a worsening malaise in the real economy, the Occupy movement has taken root.
iii) A stifling of consumer choice and price-fixing/profiteering by the corporate giants.

Likely impacts being:
i) Another, more severe, credit crunch. Potential escalation of a deflationary spiral (contracting money supply) leading to business failures, mass unemployment and a "Greater Depression"?
ii) Increased wealth inequality brings greater misery to all - ironically including many of the very richest individuals.
iii) With corporations enjoying such favourable conditions in taxation and existing law, sinister scenarios of corporate facism can be foreseen if this is allowed to continue.

All is not lost because solutions are at hand:
i) Adopting complimentary currencies has proved an effective way of continuing the real economy in many historical settings. This could be a critical tool in the Occupy armoury. Combined with moves to establish co-operatives as the prevailing business model instead of corporations, establishing (alternative) money "by and for the 99%" is like taking the football away from the playground bully. This will bring about, in no short order, a much-needed cultural reinvention of our relationships with money. Greed, envy, overwork, consumerism, and the entire shift from inherent social values to pure money values would be affected in positive ways.
[work in progress]

The elephant in the room here is Karl Marx. It is becoming obvious even to the non specialist that he was right about the problems of capitalism and the kind of crisis to which it leads. These crises get bigger and can lead to revolution, or other social traumas. Ok there are many criticism of actual socialism, socialism put into effect. But the questions Marx raised and the truths he wrote remain, they will not go away.

The commentators above almost all end up supporting capitalism and blaming a 'bad' capitalism and materialist attitude to life. This brings the 'blame' for the crisis back to people in general, as if we are all sinners, although one made the very good argument that those in positions of authority and responsibility cannot now wriggle out of it. I think this position can only be held on the baisis of the myth of a raw unfettered and thus innocent capitalism, one that fits with our 'instincts'. It always comes back to this assumption of a natural essential perfection at the bottom.

This crisis has severely challenged this myth of capitalist perfection. The very proponents of this ideology have been badly affected, such as Lehman, but it is still a strong ideology, it still fuels the idea that the .master of the universe. remain exactly that, and we are wrong to question that idea.

The argument about materialism (in the sense of love of material objects to own) refers again to this innate greed that we are all supposed to have, this 'original sin'. But the very system that we end up in, that this ideology champions, seems to deflate this myth - we have a system where a very small minority have practically all the wealth, and yet people are quite accepting of this, they do not attack violently and selfishly this situation, they seek peaceful solutions, and these peaceful solutions are surrounded by riot police dressed more as if they are going to war than soldiers. In Cannes, protest was not even allowed in the same town. It is coming to an authoritarian solution by default, and this is dangerous, especially if we do not listen to Marx.

.

Of course it is broken, as it is shere GREED. THat is the system. Just look at advertising since WWII and the need to drug the masses into CONsumerism. The manipulation of the masses at Xmas to spend.

The Evils of the invention of B2L and the social polarisation it causes to create debt slaves by forcing house prices Up or enslavement of the many as hosuing supply is managed down to create a commodity supply issue. All deliberate acts of the current capitalist system.

We need a socially responsible form of capitalism that rewards investment risk, entrepreneurship, invention, not in riches but in social beneficence and less riches.

We are drugged into greed as that is the system for the greedy. Like sheep it is so easy to manipulate the weak to spend spend spend..... buy more, eat up the green belt, kill more trees as this is growth and growth is good!

Yes where greed and profit exists, of the wrong sort, the corrupt, criminal greed follows.

It aint that difficult if we fix ourselves 1st

Bad headline and description beneath.

Most protestors want captilalism. They don't want klepto-capitalism, financial fraud and the most powerful corporations on earth HQd in the Caymans paying 1% tax.

We need a complete change of direction starting with the removal of any financial influence in our political system and strict limits on the corrosive effects of lobbyists.

This will produce a fair and transparent democracy that takes care of the majority of the population and not just an elite group.

Then we need the introduction of the Tobin Tax along with greater moral accountability in the way all financial and corporate institutions operate.

We require an equitable tax system that does not penalise the poor and shuts down tax havens that continue to flourish in the Cayman Islands.

Finally we need a global dialogue concerning the health and well being of the poor most of which live on a dollar a day and have no access to health care, education and justice.

Phase one has been initiated.

GreatGrandDad
6 November 2011 8:31AM

Lowering working time to spread labour out can happen, but capitalism does not support it (as is proved by experience) because it needs the competition for work to drive down the cost of labour power and increase the rate of exploitation of those in work. Capital expansion is the key. Self employment in an allotment is great but it does not (very directly at least) expand capital, so is regarded as at best a trivial leisure activity. In fact the allotment is socialist, and the market regards it as minor competition to mass, capital expanding, agricultural production.

.

What all the debate fails to recognise is that we are carrying out the debate from within a paradigm that no longer exists. We are now in a situation globally where energy and physical resources are constrained, the One Planet World 1=P*C*RI. The Earth will balance this 'mind model' whether we choose to ignore it or not.

At SystemUK level, the Resource Intensity of Society (RIoS) includes the cost of doing the right thing as well as the wrong thing (failure demand) monitised this is GDP.

In a resource constrained society we can np longer afford mechanisms of governance, publically and privately that have no learning or a way of capturing and appying this learning to the paradigm we are now in.

In the limit, whether we do it creatively or not, the the Resource Intensity of SystemUK will be:-

Resources able to be afforded by SystemUK / Essential value added.

The Quality of Life and cohesiveness of SystemUK depends on how creatively we approach this limit.

Assuming no Doomsday, Societies and Economies that are sucessful in this have a chance of survival.

But as W. Edwards Deming said "survival is not compulsary"

The ideas of a Robon Hood tax are ridiculously weak and would do nothing. Imagine, this functioned as a universal tax on global financial transactions. Fine. The money goes back to some central authority and it is then alloted somewhere. Where do you think it will end up?

The system is not working it benefits the few at the expense of the many. In my opinion the markets are not free because the corporations have become to big and to powerful to the point where their subsidiaries are able to engage in price fixing and its once again the people who pay.
I think all MP's should be forced to live on a minimum wage whilst they choose to serve us in Parliament.
We have millions of people living on benefits, and what ever they claim the figure is that figure is a lie.
I have been unemployed now for 2 years and at 51 I feel I will never find a job again. No practical help is being given for people in my predicament. Instead we are forced to sub-exist on a pittance, in my case it is 65 pounds a week. On top of that I was forced to have my benefit paid into a bank account and it seems that my benefit for the next two weeks has been robbed. With no money to live on I am now compelled to travel to not the nearest town to participate in a scheme that will not ultimately help me. I have been told I must travel to a town much further and to be honest I am at my wits end and lowest ebb.
I feel it is time for the people of Albion to rise up and have a revolution, with the caveat that its done through peaceful means. Violence will allow the puppets in government to implement more Draconian laws, robbing us of our freedoms.
I support the protesters but protesting is not enough, we must refuse to comply with this nefarious system. I am a man of my word, and I have refused to register for the vote because I now know that all elections are a sham. We do not have democracy anywhere in this world. We are being run, governed and manipulated by a secret cabal who decide who the next PM is going to be. The elections are only there to give the plebs and hoi polloi the illusion they have a choice, when the reality is they have no choice they don't even have free will.
And the banks being privately owned are allowed to create fiat currency out of thin air, which they then allow the government to borrow at exorbitant interest. Which means we will never rid ourselves from debt, we are all slaves to the system.

``It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and
monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before
tomorrow morning.''
Henry Ford

Multi dimensional theory and 3E...

The first is a 100 year old idea, that says we should cut society into three sections, top middle bottom if you like, top being the rulers , academics and big thinkers a group of majority elected elders and trustworthy persons, second will consist of the bulk of the people in a system much like we have now the driving force behind growth and tech, and the third is what normally would be described as the lower class, would actually become a paradise of green sustainable living, where people are not expected to join the traditional capitalist rat race, but where people can live free (as can be) , green and sustainable lives. So what you would end up with is a interconnected society of societies, that all represent the various isms.

On top of that you would have to introduce a tobin aka robin hood tax like monetary policy, but those two were / are products of this currently broken system, and will not work sufficiently, so my idea is called 3E its simplistic in its nature and due to its simple nature its not only able to pay for inequality in the markets but also able to expand and contract in sync with individual economies. 3E represents the Environment, Education, and Exchange, all receiving 1% of monies collected, and as the societies grow so too does the tax. This idea comes from the famous sustainable business image of three interconnected rings.

Hard to explain a complete paradigm shift on here, but my picture captures both ideas, feel free to study it.

it is an offence to the British people that in 'an age of austerity' when we are meant to be all in it together that the CEO's of the top 100 companise receive an average of £18m income representing a 50% pay rise whilst the workers have their conditions and pay eroded the sick have health and social care provision reduced the poor have their benefits cut and the disabled have their small amount of DLA forcibly arbitrarily removed from them without practical course of appeal through a system known as 'migration'. It is offence because the british people traditionally support the underdog and a sense of fair play. Thanks to costa for the water and Paul for the bread strange friends in a strange place

If the private banks own almost everything via debt, and they then become owned by the state via bail-outs, and if this happens across the board, the debt then belongs to everyone and thus to nobody. It disappears, or, it no longer matters. Of course it requires a fully functioning welfare state, but as the whole is owned by the whole that is no problem, nor is funding small enterprises. Private enterprise, however, no longer exist, they become a branch of the state, but they still exist in fact. A maximum and minimum salary would need to be enforced. Yes, all the smartest might leave, but smarter people would join, since the former were not smart, in fact, except to line their own pockets.

This is a fantasy of socialism, but it is getting closer, we can even see its outlines emerging in the capitalist crisis.

In my view, with a competing capitalism in China being run by a Communist Party, our only real defence is such a Communist System run by a Capitalist Party. Maybe the capitalist party will be more communist than the communist party.

Unfortunately our capitalist politicians have not understood their own historical dilemma.

Or they have, and they are in the process of setting up fascism as its response to China's capitalism. China, on the other hand, will not be immune to the problems of capitalism, Tiannamen is there for the future, and they will have to have welfare reforms, and they will arrive where we are only too soon.

Capitalism is globalised, monopolised, bankrupt and glutted. All it can offer now is to roll the film off backwards to a new Dark Ages.

Karma is coming .... Expect It

What you have in this Guardian piece is a division between those who think capitalism is not broken but just needs tweaking a bit, and those who think that capitalism isn't broken but just needs tweaking a bit.

Peaceful means (occupation, demonstration, encampment) versus non lethal weapons (tasers, horses, tear gas, hoses, batons, containment, armoured vehicles), one force versus another. Who will turn to outright violence first? What is happening in Syria? What is happening in Oakland?

The Hellenic Republic is becoming a good lesson in how these forces stand in relation to each other in a standard capitalist liberal democracy. If it is fixable, nobody in the traditional lot seems to want to do it.

Globalisation and big business capitalism are NOT the friends of the people
Wake up!
vote these bastards out before its too late and the only saviour is a fascist.
The rich are richer than ever but where have all the west's jobs gone?

Capitalism comes in many forms, but what we see in many countries is a subverted form dominated by large banks. The so-called land of the free market, the US, bails out banks with state subsidy; in the land of Thatcher, business losses are socialised.

"CAPITALISM WORKS IN CHINA".....China has not endorsed the free market as we know it entirely. They are not that stupid to allow their currency to be flogged to death like JAPAN that have seen their currency over-valued against the USD.

AMERICA demands a cheap dollar in order to produce hyper-inflation. Also CHINA forbids short-selling of shares. China has a command and control central government that intervenes at all level. Even CNBC noted the success of such an economy compared to the USA. Another day another US hedge fund goes down.

In CHINA state permission is required to buy VOLVO of Sweden from the FORD MOTOR COMPANY. Anyway China is rapidly coming to the conclusion that American type markets peddling toxic debris is counter-productive to real wealth creation..bankers just laugh at us.....an opinion shared by most OWS protesters. The day of the locusts trading trash is over....at least it will be when (they) stop printing more money...quantitative easing is not working! Who are they?

The Hellenic people are in a dangerous position. The politicians, ineptly, want a coalition, actually an emergency government with universalist credentials, simply to spread responsibility for the measures they are imposing and to be able to impose draconian cuts with impunity. The people appear to accept that this is in principle an ok idea.

But it is effectively leading them to accept a leadership of technocrats imposed by the (now formalised by the G20) Troika, in other words they are being invited, slyly, to relinquish the democracy that they only recently won from the Junta. It is a trick.

If we watch this play out, I suggest we see our own future situation. The only 'fix' being mooted in this context is not an economic one or a social one but a military one - authoritarianism. This is the only card being played, economic punishment supported by state violence.

To give it some credit, the UK Tory Party is not so inept as to go full throttle down this road, neither are the Labour Party, but the absence of any other idea than austerity from all the parties in the UK, it is not so different in quality, it is just a question of the stage of the crisis.

What has happened to the Indignados in Greece? Do they not accept the protests of the unions and working class as also relevant? Have they evaporated? Greece needs a popular front. We can see this is having trouble developing. Why? Because of the media, because of vested interests that prevent association, and because of lack of a theoretical grasp of what needs to be done. And the local communists?

They have some good ideas, but their approach seems dated. They have MPs in parliament, but are thus tainted by collusion with the existing political mess. They have separated their struggle rather than united with others, and people fear a dull Stalinism (whether true or not) might result.

Yet at the same time an authority is needed desperately and the Indignants (so far) have not provided that. However, the basis of peoples assemblies is there, and this is a remarkable step. These have grown globally, in some cases in spite of 'communists', particularly those eurocommunists who are integrated with the existing machnery of the state (like France) and are vestigial communists who have enjoyed this position too much (corrupted).

There is a good basis here for a real 'fix' of the problems of this crisis, but only if the blockages to action are overcome and people unite (imo).

"Is capitalism broken... and what is the world going to do to fix it? "

Is capitalism broken.... no, but systems and structures will eventually adapt to cope with the turbulence.

What is the world going to do to fix it..... the world cannot fix something which will require individual nations to devise solutions which reflect the demands within their own culture. Unfortunately, if policy makers are obsessed with survival of an inappropriate and rigid Regional Currency Arrangement, such as the Euro, viewing the survival from the premise of being a vanity project, it is going to take longer for solutions to emerge.The obsession is worse when the likes of Sarkozy (for example) become conflicted and suggest that if Greece wants to leave the Euro then they have to leave the EU.

Why do you never allow comments on articles written by Ed Miliband?

a division between those who think capitalism is not broken but just needs tweaking a bit, and those who think that capitalism isn't broken but just needs tweaking a bit.

My feelings exactly. And the chances of even that 'tweaking' seem to be fading. The political system's been systematically nobbled to prevent it being anything but an efficient conduit for capital's instructions to the state. Transnational capital, that is - the few hundred largest corporations, more and more independent of any political jurisdiction or authority.

Whether this all represents capitalism unfolding as it should -- and everyone making a pointless fuss just because they've realised that any notions of it sustaining a relatively open, egalitarian, democratic, intelligent and humane society were thoroughly deluded....

...or whether this is capitalism broken and lurching along in an endless series of crises, as the dictates of finance capital frustrate all attempts to revive the relationships between buyers and sellers, users and makers that once reflected it sort of working...

...either way, what we see now is almost certainly the beginning of the new normal.

Unless we have clearly defined capitalism and agreed on that, how can we ever be certain about what to do about it?

Robin
Real Reform
gco2e.blogspot.com
50 St Pauls Curchyard
Occupy London

@ daylas

"Actually, what´s to stop the government from circulating its own currency, a sort of "social currency", as valid as money; but it would be better than money, wouldn´t it, as the government would not have to go into debt by borrowing it from a private bank?"

Most people believe that the government (the Bank of England) does circulate its own money, the national currency, but it does not. The private banks do, for their own profit.

Most people think the banks lend money that people have deposited with them. They don't. They create it every time they grant a loan. If they are reckless and create too much we have inflation. If they don't grant enough we have recession.

The government has allowed the private banks to privatize our national currency. They could take the privilege of creating money out of the hands of banks and take it back, so that we have a debt free currency. Every one would benefit, even the banks because they would not then be able to create the financial mess we are in.

This "debate" is surely a spoof of that Bird and Fortune series of skits , in which a bunch of middle class Londoners at a dinner party maunder on in a self obsessed way. I did particulartly like the Financial Speculator person's self obsessed self justifications. I'm sure the slave masters on the jamaican sugar plantations could have claimed that their job provided THEM with an upward opportunity career path - BUT what about the impact of their job ON THE WIDER SOCIETY for goodness sake ?

Will Hutton obviously has useful insights to bring to bear, but he is still completely pro capitalism. There are alternatives to the present set up - from old style radical mixed economy Social Democratic ones to Marxist ones. I think the panel needed to be from a broader spectrum, and (with the exception of WH), simply better informed.

As it was this discussion was a Private Eye spoof on a Guardian "debate".

Poor stuff

Why has my post on the nature of banking and the creation of money been taken our of this discussion although it did appear temporarily?

If the financial causes behind this discussion baffle you, do a search for 'The Crisis of Credit Visualized' on Vimeo.

It's a short and witty animation that explains the entire crisis very clearly.

How do we start to redress the balance between rich and poor when the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer?

It is this imbalance of wealth which is causing global financial meltdown. To try to redress the problem by taking away from the poor with 'austerity cuts' and giving more to the rich bankers is simply obscene and will only make matters worse.

We need to turn from being a voracious society into being a more caring one and learn to share and manage our resources more effectively - for we are all co-dependent upon one another right across the globe.

We are One World and we are all in it together.

Most people think that the government already creates its own currency, sterling. It doesn't, private banks do. Most people think banks only lend money that already exists that has been deposited with them. They don't. They create it out of thin air every time someone goes into debt with them by borrowing.

Banks only lend if they think they can make a profit. If they lend too much (creating the housing bubble) we get inflation. If they don't think they can make a profit, we have a recession or worse.

Our national currency has been privatized. It should be the government that issues it free of debt.

I