In response to Vorlath's recent post, Steal The Free:

I don't see how there is a money issue in the world that needs fixing. The patent system is broken, yes. We don't have a reasonable solution to the copyright problem, yes. But money works. What makes people poor isn't the money. The money makes nations richer, and it does uplift the poor as it does the rich. This might seem tedious and a cliche, but I have observed it in practice when, several years ago, working as a successful programmer in Slovenia, I earned less per month than a disabled single mother in California and her kid got in social security benefits. They were calling themselves poor while the kid had a digital camera and a laptop. That isn't poor to me. If that's what poor is, then there aren't any poor people in the States. Most people in Slovenia are still satisfied to get that amount of net income, and the prices are no lower here.

There is a tax system problem that needs solving, yes. Look at www.fairtax.org. There is an education system problem that needs solving. The old are incredibly prone to neglect the crucial education needs and how they increase with each new generation. Not treating education as the MOST CENTRAL investment, the health of which is crucial for the long-term well-being of the state, is criminally negligent; it's worthy of contempt. But the money system works. It is neutral. It gives more money to those who have shown themselves capable of making a profit in the past. Making a profit should generally mean organizing things so efficiently, or providing such a valuable service, that not only costs can be covered, but even money can be made. The profit then belongs to the person who invested, because obviously the person can organize things well, therefore more power should go to that person to organize larger things still more efficiently. If the person is unable to do that, they lose the money, they lose the power, and all is well.

Crucial to the health of the economy is that a sentence in the above passage is true: that making a profit indeed means organizing things efficiently and providing a valuable service. This isn't true when a person makes chums with politicians who pass laws in favor of that person's business. Honorable profit is when you adapt your business to the landscape, creating something valuable and new in the process. Dishonorable profit is when you adapt the landscape to your business, destroying and overriding other valuable things. And in this second endeavor, politicans are most often and most certainly involved.

It's the democracy that needs changing, not the economy. I suggest looking at SD-2 - Structured Deep Democracy.