how we can build a government that is actually for, of and by the people
We can only hope. Marx believed that communism would be the unavoidable outcome of capitalism. Neomarxists had to deal with the various failures of communism, and moved on to say that communism is not, in fact, the unavoidable outcome of capitalism, but rather an opportunity that must be seized by raising political awareness. And it would be those who are outside of any power dynamic that would lead this change, ie marginalized groups. Instead, marginalised groups adopted the same power structures used by majorities and now not only use the same power structures, but pretend to do so righteusly. Perhaps Foucault and Adorno were right: escaping power structures is simply not possible, at best you can keep trying in a revolving cycle of ups and downs. Either way it's funny that people started arguing about gender issues, or at which specific point of the supply chain should we burn oil, precisely at the highest point of wealth inequality in history. It's not like a political sciences professor couldn't present you with a better government system that could theoretically work for a long time, it's that to enact it you would need a complete wipe of absolutely everything that is. That's why post-war periods tend to be so "good" for those who are born in them, ie baby boomers these days. They weren't only rebuilding the economy, they were rebuilding every aspect of life.
Let us not ever allow $ to influence gov policy and find ways to keep the benefit of the people more important than raw profit alone.
Money is a power token, it enables you to get someone else to do, give or perform something. In that regard, it's hard to imagine we could ever move beyond worshipping money, even in a post-scarcity scenario. On the other hand, money these days seem to be both as important as ever, and completely worthless. There's more money than ever, and yet there's also more inequality than ever. The UN says that overall the world is improving, but I have to question just how good the life of the hundreds of millions of new "middle class" people are. Living on 200$ a month might be well above poverty line in many countries, but my standard for overcoming poverty would be more than having a bedroll and a bowl of rice a day, environmental considerations aside. Either way since we are not in post-scarcity yet, though close, we can't even fathom a different use of money, and whether we'll be able to post-scarcity remains to be seen. Humans love exerting power, be it as little as paying a dollar to get someone else to whip you up a coffee on your break time. In that regard, money makes the whole ordeal much less of a mess. However, when money is completely detached from reality, ie finance, and becomes a game, even to the point of being devoid of its normal use as power exchange token (anyone cares anymore about public debt now that we've seen all it takes to deal with it is to pretend it doesn't matter?), that's an entirely political failure indeed. Finance, fractional reserves, compund interest, credit default swaps, "sovereign debt", "central banking"... this whole stuff is possibly the greatest evil we've ever concocted.
