I think a single trasnferable vote system would be better. I.E. You can vote for your favourite candidate first and then if they don't get in your vote is transferred to the next alternative. That way people can vote for the third choice in elections without worrying that their vote would be wasted.

I don't think fiat money is inherently unstable... anymore then gold or anything else.  It's just that it's made more unstable by government intervention and shifting policies... like all other "commodities".

The better alternative in that case would be a runoff system for candidates in an election where the winner doesn't accrue a proper majority of the vote

Nah, it means people can actually vote for people like Ron Paul or whomever else without thinking they could be letting the team down by wasting their vote when it could have gone to *insert useless/bought out or otherwise stupid presidential candidate here*

My way would work in that case as well, just so long as there wasn't overwhelming support for one particular party candidate, you could still vote the other way, and knowing you had a chance to vote again, could vote to your heart (and in a close 50/50 race, sapping one vote from one side would force a runoff, so if enough support accrued at the margins, you would get the chance to vote again, at least for the winners)

Do y'all in New Zealand have simple-plurality elections, or proportional representation? Most commonwealths have the former...

Well at least with my way you don't actually have to go to the polls again, you've already cast your supporting vote if you know what I mean. That way you aren't forced to vote for just one person and a party doesn't have to have only one candidate if you know what I mean?

In New Zealand we have mixed member proportional representation. I.E. We have some local electing and some electing based off overall party vote.

Yeah but then you have to pay for multiple elections.

If Russia can afford it, we can.

Yeah, but the russians are known to make use of "cost saving" methods to keep the number of people they have to serve down.

There use to not be a Fed, but after the economy kept periodically collapsing everyone decided that it would be better to have suistanable growth so masses of people wouldn't have to live in squalor every 10 or 20 years.

America's economy has become much stronger after the creation of the Fed in the early 20th century.  Read up on what the Fed does before you choose to disagree with them out of principle and pride rather than purpose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System#Purpose