My memories are of my dad taking me to football on Saturday mornings and my mum taking me swimming. Those are the things I remember from my childhood not sitting around the table debating capitalism and the profit squeeze.

From computers to information technology to airplanes it has been America's unique blend of republican government and free-market capitalism that has allowed us to surpass all other nations in history.

The waste of capital in proportion to the total capital in this country between 1800 and 1850 in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation was enormous.

I had some vague memory of visiting Canberra as a lad when we came up with my father by car. But when I made the long train journey from Sydney to Canberra and arrived at the little stop I did wonder slightly whether this really was the national capital.

The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year he said there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad.

I think we've been dulled by capitalism. We're just blobs now - we're so worried about how we can keep paying the lease on the car the mortgage the lease on the toaster and all that. You can't really think about much else. If you lose that you lose the whole lot.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got bringing all these new inventions into the works before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Our combination of great research universities a pro-risk business culture deep pools of innovation-seeking equity capital and reliable business and contract law is unprecedented and unparalleled in the world.

In the coming years if not sooner social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility - and I suggest move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.

I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.