That would imply our system is actually democratic and not just democratic by name. You are correct in saying that we have the technical ability, but the political will is not there, in my opinion, because bureaucrats actually want the system as convoluted as possible to hide the fact that our democracy has been subverted by special interests.

Since many people who posted here did not bother to read the article, and just read the title like good time conservative Americans would do, I will point out that the title is a little misleading. The author is not asserting that there are no good ideas to be had but rather that the body of people willing and/or capable of contributing to the development of those ideas is dwindling at a time when our population is growing more rapidly due to advances in communications, transportation, medicine and other technological fields. The ever growing amount of distractions presented by consumerist popular culture don't stop people from thinking, or exhibiting intelligent behavior, most people are just too distracted by entertainment or the rigors of working to survive to contribute to the communal consciences in the form of relevant ideas that impact large numbers of people for the "better". The issue we are presented is that problems are evident but large portions of the population have been lead to believe that they are too disenfranchised to even make an iota of a difference in any of these issues, so they have fallen into the realm of apathy for lack of affecting mechanisms (capital, organization, policy).

I understand how nostalgic it can be to play with older hardware, but I find that there is a disturbing undertone to the comment David Carter made when he said 'It's not like the math was changing.' The financial industry, while dominated by complex mathematical solutions to its problems, is not fundamentally a mathematical science, like arithmetic for example, where the math truly isn't changing. The fact of the matter is that this comment exemplifies how dated our financial industry is and that is in dire need of being changed. There are only a handful of industries that can use 22 year old machinery, and most of them are blue collar industries. Every other facet of our economy has evolved as a result to greater and greater technological advances to produce more real results, finance on the other hand uses dated practices that have been proven over time to be detrimental to the vast majority of practitioners.