to be more blunt, the bullshit jobs are those chasing returns for capital disconnected from commensurate return to the public good, leaving little to tackle meaningful issues.
corrupting forces work relentlessly against economic systems to break the tie between capital returns and returns to public good (a key tenet of capitalism, incidentally), to serve the former at the expense of the latter.
we keep failing to directly face this most critical distortion to incentives in economic systems. fixing that would lead to a better world for us all, not just the selfish and greedy.
We will never eliminate human greed or selfishness. It is a common thread throughout all societies and historical eras. Our challenge is to build a political and economic system that will produce optimal outcomes no matter the "moral fortitude" of the agents working within the system. At its most basic, it probably requires a re-work of currency, though I think we need innovations throughout our economy and government. It's clear to me that this "ism" has't been invented yet, because once it is, it will quickly dominate the world economy as it organizes our labor more efficiently.
yes, the ingenuity of capitalism is redirecting selfishness and greed toward societally productive uses, rather than attempting to eliminate them. but that mechanism has largely been subverted from a relentless onslaught over the last many decades (cartels, regulatory capture, etc.).
but i'm not sure why currency needs reworking? unless you mean the central banking system and where and how money gets injected into the economy?
(having just watched hamilton, the interesting bit to me how instrumental he was in the creation of our financial system as much as anything else--something that didn't stick from high school history apparently)
I mean money is a synthetic concept and can function however we define and people will continue to chase large amounts of it. Bitcoin was an interesting thought experiment but seemed on a trajectory to convert the planet's crust into mining hardware. Money should probably have some kind of variable decay factor similar to inflation or maybe some kind of antipolarity to prevent it from clumping into large, passive collections. Maybe it should decay faster in large accounts than small accounts or decay faster if it hasn't passed through a tax system recently. Maybe small amounts should automatically earn interest to encourage individuals to save emergency funds and very small amounts could grow rapidly to provide basic income. I see no reason that the rich should be able have generational wealth without much incentive to take risks.
but why not also question the role of inflation as (economic) motivator? this tenet forces us to consider monetary factors more than we might otherwise, given the limitations of money to represent everything we value (an idealized premise of economic system as efficient allocator).
the regulatory route is certainly fraught, but a steeply progressive tax on wealth (along with eliminating all the loopholes, like the lower capital gains tax) could drastically reduce money clumping. done well, it could encourage wealth building to a comfortable threshold, say $1MM, and then start to discourage greater wealth hoarding (without discouraging it completely or setting a max).
corrupting forces work relentlessly against economic systems to break the tie between capital returns and returns to public good (a key tenet of capitalism, incidentally), to serve the former at the expense of the latter.
we keep failing to directly face this most critical distortion to incentives in economic systems. fixing that would lead to a better world for us all, not just the selfish and greedy.