I started writing about stupid things that stupid people have said, but I accidentally navigated away from the page and the idea seems somehow less important now that I lost my original draft because I was too into it to remember to save my work.
Economy in the form of (Laissez-faire) capitalism seems like a great idea on paper, works excellent in theory, but the pure existence of human greed and desires makes it too flawed for it to work in everyone's favor. Ignoring the spending of a nation as a whole, capitalism is a working economy, but because of how it works, it eats the bottom earners alive, creatiing poverty. Marxist Communism is the closest modern concept of a real working economy that I've read in the past six or so years; I've done quite a bit of looking into it, and nothing else makes as much sense. The problem is that, in theory, it doesn't work because of human desire and greed; the doctor that spends all of his many young years learning his craft wants more share of the wealth than a high school drop-out working for a grocery store, and we need doctors to survive as long as we do (although most of us would say during younger years that we don't want to live to be eighty). But in practice, I would believe that a government enforced sharing of wealth - based on the concept as long as you work you get your share - works. Small-scale capitalism would still exist; people still want to buy imported goods like game consoles, coffee makers, illegal drugs, but everyone's needs are provided for by their own contributions, but it may end up interceded by barter.
People are closed-minded to this kind of idea these days. A lot of it is stupidity, because they either associate communism with totalitarianism government because of early- and mid-1900's propaganda (I have to admit that they did a good job of diverting people away from real communism with this) or because they think that capitalism is perfect (and they think so because capitalism means they have a chance of getting rich on their own means (at other people's expense)). A lot of it is just fear of change, which is honestly understandable; we have a system that we can at least prove most people will survive on and some people will excel with, so chances are pretty okay. A number of problems exist, however, including that there are fewer jobs every day, the value of American money is constantly dropping, and the poverty line is slowly rising. Also, as a capitalistic state, we are prone to throwing money away to the easiest source of gratification - ie. alcohol, video games, drugs (idea for another day's rant, why legalizing marijauna is a good idea, from the point of view of someone who doesn't use), so we in fact have less money after easy gratification on real survival and happiness.
Yes, I'm focusing on the bad things. I'm also doing my best to leave the good things within the perspective, and there aren't a whole lot of up-sides to begin with, in my opinion. So now we have a lot of drug-hungry, addicted, poor people that are barely managing to scrape by and stepping on each other to make it happen (which is honestly pretty accurate). On the other hand, we have the people that are barely even aware of the first category, because they are well-off and eliminate the jobs instead of losing them, and they are the ones driving the first category into their hole in the first place (other than the drug habit enablers of course).
Now I want to picture how it would be if everyone learned whatever craft or skillset that they want to pursue before money becomes an object, and just contributing to the pot means getting back what you need. If you're a bum by choice and don't want to work, then you don't get the benefits. Everyone that works gets what they deserve, not because of how much school it takes. Hell, maybe we would even see school as a completely equal-opportunity system instead of a money-gouging one.
Maybe I'm a dreamer, like John Lennon would probably have said, but everything in me says it makes more sense.