I’m no economist but I’ve often thought that once the capitalist genie is out of the bottle it’s nigh on impossible to put it back it back in.

And the bigger the genie the smaller the chances of taming it.

We need to be careful re freedom – the key is to question, as you say, the shallow version that is often portrayed as the most important kind. This comes down to Freedom of Choice – what might be called ‘freedom of consumption’, whose proponents tend to see all constraint as tedious denial at best and coercion at worst . But it is far from clear that maximising this freedom does anyone, let alone society overall, as much good as we think. (And Will Davies has made interesting comments elsewhere on the pathological nature of the very idea of ‘maximisation’ in economics.) There is a neglected freedom that comes from narrowing of one’s choices. Other freedoms are more important, and all freedoms need to be seen as virtues that we learn, rather than licence that we are granted or individual self-expression that we ‘maximise’. Freedom understood as a virtue is a matter of negotiation of desires and impulses through relationships with others in society.

In the 21st Centaury the state is becoming less and less important. Ideas, resources and people transcend boarders. Members of communities you belong to are as likely to be based in Shanghai as in the next street along. The new world is fostering a new political debate. This debate is about how the community of communities should interact with each other. The 20th Centaury was static, the 21st Centaury is fluid.

Since then I’ve enjoyed the facilities in London, and more recently have been one of the projects supported by the Catalyst fund. I’ve today got back from meeting with a funder who is supporting a development of that project and in our discussions I referred to the animated version of Matthews speech about enlightenment. I’ve followed most of the discussions about this but to be honest struggled to grasp the concept until that animation and the particular things that resonated were the references to empathy and self awareness around which we’ll be basing our work with young people within the project.

So going back to the quote Judith mentions I think there’s merit in helping fellows link the various work they are involved with and how they fit with the broader projects the RSA is working towards.

I think the left has a big challenge getting to grips with what we think of finance and the state. I wonder whether the first stage for us economic laymen is to admit, rather like any addict, that we have a problem with an overblown financial sector and we don’t know what the solution yet.

I haven’t read Ha-Joon Chang’s book, and I’m sure his analysis is more subtle than this, but I instinctively dislike the idea of simply banning complex financial instruments unless they can be shown to benefit society in the long run. Such a “simple” idea requires a heavy-handed and vigilent regulator. And isn’t the problem with so many financial products and social policies that we only have a hazy idea of what will and won’t benefit society in the long run? If we accept the importance of positive risk-taking in social policy why can the financial sector also benefit from this for social good? I’m thinking about products like Social Impact Bonds here.

While we’re searching for solutions I think it is important to think about what could be done to engage with complex financial products for wider social benefit. This includes education, but also changes to the system itself to make finance more democratic and devolved.

Though the URL makes it sound like a conspiracy theory, the site http://newfinancialorder.com/ has lots of interest on this.