the watchers

as previously mentioned, i would suggest corruption was a significant cause in the downfall of communism, and is a problem for all other economic systems (including capitalism) as well.  the debilitating, demoralising effects of not only suspecting someone is rorting the system, but often seeing evidence in full view of the public - it would undermine the effectiveness of any system, why would people wish to continue playing if the playing field isn't fair.

to combat this would obviously be challenging.  a couple of points i feel are relevant:
- the two-term maximum that applies to the US president should apply to all elected positions;
- positions in government should have both a minimum (ie everyone should have a mandatory couple of years in government roles, whether armed forces, regional administration, or elected office), as well as a maximum (eg 20 years maximum including a maximum 2 terms / 8 years of elected office.  i would suggest this maximum ensures people can build up good expertise in the public system, yet cannot become a permanent parasite, they must enter the real world for at least half of their working life.  also, 8 years maximum of elected office is in any position - you can't go 8 years local government, then senate, congress, president.  once you have had 8 cumulative years in any elected position, you can have a maximum of 12 years of government work, and otherwise must enter the real world);
- hopefully the above minimum and maximum limits ensures a grounding in the real world and combats institutionalising power in an elite few;

the most important change i can think of, however, is to raise the power and prestige of auditors, expanding their power well beyond the current accounting focus.  in reality, accountants are mostly superfluous, their main purpose currently is to count beans and report on the cumulative beans at the end of each reporting period.  being an accountant myself, i recognise there is minimal benefit to humanity in what i do - the benefit is almost exclusively to the finite shareholders that i serve.

in an 'ample' economic system, where profit is not the driver, where there are no shareholders hoarding their wealth, accountants would largely not be required.  but they would all be able to transfer their skills to auditing, and auditing not just financial reporting (which bucket did you put that bean in during the counting process), but every facet of the economic system.

i envisage private companies providing all goods and services, in competition with each other.  their goal would not be a profit, but to provide a good and/or service as efficiently as possible, to fulfil first of all basic human needs, followed by wants, followed by aspirational dreams.  these private companies would provide the jobs that everyone would need to undertake to qualify to receive various goods and services from the companies.  everyone would need to work a standard number of hours per week to qualify, although the specific number of hours could vary depending on industry depending on supply and demand (ie high demand / unpleasant tasks would probably result in a lower number of hours required to meet your personal quota, thus keeping many of the benefits of a market economy in terms of the signalling of information).

in this system, you would need a high number of auditors to ensure all companies in operation were providing a good or service that was needed / wanted, were providing it efficiently in terms of the materials used, were not rorting the system in terms of people not working their full quota of hours.  same with government departments, same with politicians, same with auditors themselves.  there should be full documentary evidence to ensure everyone is contributing fairly, systems in place to ensure auditors are rotated to ensure relationships cannot be formed and abused between the auditor and auditee.

in a similar vein - journalists should be elevated in both independence and prestige, with freedoms protected so that they can always fearlessly report on any topic, particularly corruption in the corridors of power.  as a case in point, wikileaks.  the ideological epitome of journalism, and the whistleblowing concept.  astounding that they have been made an international pariah for merely reporting the truth.   honest people have no fear of the truth, it shall set you free, am sure there are a whole bunch of relevant sayings and clichés i could insert here if i wasn't too lazy to google.