I believe societies would be more prosperous if wealth was not funneled upwards as it currently is – even if that allows a few people the ability to do really neat things with their power over concentrations of wealth. What we as a community do economically would be way more useful to us, far more in-line with our values & interests – if everyone who made wealth could have their fair say in how/when they worked, for what means, rather than their employers & speculators. But seeking a means to make society more prosperous is not at all what drove me to conclude we need serious restructuring of our economic system.
(Was a very straight-forward matter of ethics & logic… it’s so unstable & harmful to exploit all the people our current system does; victims of profit-driven wars, the sweatshop workers who make most of our stuff, even those of us lucky enough to be able to enjoy the material fruits of all that exploitation… we don’t see much of the wealth we earn, and usually endure insecurity & lack of control over our own working conditions.)
In the operative sense, at the moment my own economic activity is mostly supporting local & fair trade businesses/farms and making an effort to be thrifty, self-sufficient and environmentally responsible… using basically allowance money :-/
@squirbel I highly recommend the book Divine Right of Capital… it’s not an expose of the specific bad things a number of corporations do/have done, nor a socialist polemic, but rather a really novel angle on their basic structure, and its flaws, (plus ideas for improving them).