"Money wins. Always wins. The mobile will become unbalanced toward money. Whatever is most profitable will ultimately predominate. That includes monopolies and governmental taxation backed by armies. People will sell themselves out, sell out their co-religionists, sell out the other interest groups for money."

I don't often agree with you, Bowz, but this is one gross oversimplification that is hard to rebut. Perhaps the way to engineer a humane political/economic system is to neither see money as the ultimate expression of evil, or as the source of all virtue and decency.

We should recognize it as a force of nature, like gravity, and simply adjust to it; mitigating its evils as best we can and taking advantage of its power and inevitability and dynamism.

"The US did a splendid, evolving job of achieving that balance until money declared war on the Middle Class. Unions and small businesses were attacked or finessed, and it headed back into an oligarchy, where we probably are now. "

As I have mentioned before, I think the USA has historically managed this tension between democracy and capital very well, by negotiating a compromise between the two which takes advantage of the benfits of the latter and the humanity of the former, while minimizing the negative aspects of both. As for the oligarchy, they have had their day and failed miserably, even by their own self-serving criteria, the pendulum is swinging the other way. No doubt, it will swing too far.

But we did it without a good and wise king. The founding fathers, after all, were decent intelligent men, but they were all businessmen, too. It is what convinces me of the ultiumate good sense and decency of the collective subconscious. As long as the people have access to their government, through democracy and law, and to free speech, they can be trusted to work out a suitable compromise suited to the times. It will not be perfect, but it will work.

But beware of he who has all the answers and knows he is in the right.
It is not his message I fear, it is his determination to silence or exclude all those who refuse to share it.