In a capitalist democracy I believe it is the duty of those in power not to peddle their own political myths, but to maintain the balance of wealth. Its the consistent failure to accept this responsibility that I consider to be the cause of many of the problems bedevilling human civilisation in the 21st century.

By ‘those in power’ I mean not only politicians, but captains of industry, and those who control the media - whether they are newspaper magnates or individuals with a large blog following. Democracy devolves responsibilities as well as rights.

By ‘wealth’ I mean all those things that support a vigorous and healthy human population. If growth and prosperity is ‘good’ it follows that decline and destruction is ‘evil’.

Money is the enabler of growth and prosperity, so it clearly is not the root of all evil. However, the correct Biblical quote, “Pursuit of money is the root of all evil” , does hold true. Nothing trends more towards the decline and destruction of general wealth than the ruthless individual pursuit of money. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the collapse of the banking industry. Pandering to human greed is destructive, not constructive. Back in the days of Captain Mainwearing, the bank was a staid and conservative institution which looked on loans as a serious business requiring careful evaluation of risk. ‘Living on tick’ was frowned on as a somewhat dodgy practice. Contrast that with the credit mania of the 1980s and 90s. An economic theory based on ‘buy now pay later’ coupled with the crazed optimism of a compulsive gambler is pretty well guaranteed to be a recipe for disaster.

Yet we seem continually bemused by the increasingly apparent fact that the ‘monetary theory’ propogated in recent decades simply doesn’t work. Its a fiction. It does not take into account what wealth is, or how it is created. It sometimes seems to me that peoples’ individual ability to think declines as the level of comfort and security increases. We have collectively allowed ourselves to fall for the myth that a good TV presence makes for a good statesman. We let newspapers feed us scurrilous nonsense about peoples’ private lives and look to media outlets to tell us what to think about everything from crime to clothing. We revere airhead celebrities, and pay court to numerous unclothed emperors. I suppose living on the edge of starvation does focus the mind. But it seems a shame we can’t retain the ability to think, question and challenge just when we gain the wealth and security to allow us to make a real difference to the present and future of the world we live in.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is no victimless get-rich-quick scheme, and ignorance, far from being an excuse, is inexcusable for those who have access to education. Money is the oil in the machinery. Its an enabler of wealth; it is not wealth of itself. Used wisely it enables an effective economy to deliver growth and prosperity to the human population as a whole. Used unwisely, the best it can do is enable some individuals to be miserable in comfort.

Wealth is created by five capital flows. There may be more, but so far I’ve found thinking in terms of five types of capital works.

There are two kinds of wealth that we inherit. Fundamentally, we inherit the planet on which the human race evolved. Without air to breath, water to drink and food to eat, without the natural resources that provide us with heat, light, shelter, and motive power, we would enjoy little in the way of health and prosperity. Stewardship of our planet is therefore crucial. Environmentalism is not about fluffy pandas and tree hugging, its about human survival on this planet. We no longer have the excuse of ignorance. A failure to hand on to future generations at least as much natural wealth as we inherited from our forebears is wilful destruction. Aka ‘evil’.

We also inherit the work of our ancestors hands and intellect. Systems of agriculture, and the landscape it crafted. Buildings, and enduring engineering structures. Systems of communication, government and law. Closely linked to these systems is the heritage of knowledge, seasoned by time into wisdom.

Managing and applying knowledge wisely is about sustaining human civilisation. In the so-called ‘information age’ we somehow seem to have lost sight of the need to qualify information in our obsession with the power of the microchip to process data. Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom.

Finally, the effects of a consistent lack of investment in social capital is brought home to us all too forcefully here in the UK today, with sporadic criminal rioting erupting in towns and cities across the country. Social capital is the warp and weft of individual interactions, collaborations, alliances, rivalries and arguments that weave the history of mankind. Each individual is one drop in the vaste ocean of humanity, but the ocean is made up of individual drops. We are all subject to the gravitational pull of our psychological make-up and the swirls and eddies of our cultural heritage, our genetic inheritance and our personal histories. It is the responsibility of each and every individual to manage that complex inheritance to the best of their ability and direct it towards the generation of wealth and not the destruction of wealth. The more wealth you inherit, the more your responsibility to nurture and grow it. So often its the case that those who inherit the least make the greatest contribution, giving selflessly to further the comfort and prosperity of family and community.

It is time to recognise what true wealth is. It is time to give true and meaningful respect to those who invest their time, talent and passion to the stewardship of natural resources or knowledge, or to building the fabric of a functioning society.

It is time for holders of the balance everywhere to show some humility, set aside political mythology, and examine objectively the root causes of the world’s ills. If we do not recognise our mistakes we do not learn from them. If we are really incapable of learning, the information age will never mature into an age of wisdom.