us from financial collapse. But that is where its usefulness only begins. Whom exactly has the state saved from financial collapse? The logic of your statement is that the state, being the collective will of the people, has saved 'us' from the calamity of financial collapse, neatly deflecting attention from the glaring fact that the target of the state's unconditional largesse is the mainspring of capitalism, the banking system. As far as 'us' is concerned, we take on the debt and pay the financial charge (to the people ultimately being bailed out!), in the wide-eyed hope that our generosity will be repaid at some future date in jobs and taxation. Of course, we get the added benefit - the one I think you are really talking about - of not having to face up to the root and branch failure of free-market capitalism and the obligation to think of a better way of organising our affairs. That of course is where the state's usefulness would really begin. We should seek fairness from top to bottom, with the intimate relationship between an effective, fair state and a good, fair capitalism acknowledged and implemented. We deserve no less. Capitalism by it's natyre can't be fair, can't be tamed. Greed and competition should be replaced by compassion and co-operation or the planet will eventually die Kenneth Boulding "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist" Most popular on the Guardian Today