> If both have the same level of political and social influence: not bad at all.

While I don't think money should determine the degree of political influence, I contest two presuppositions here.

1. How much political influence money buys is related to how virtuous the political class is. It is not written anywhere that money must determine political influence. If you believe political means can be used to attain equality (socialist states are the closest this has been achieved, resulting in widespread poverty and a concentration of wealth in a small tyrannical party class), then you have no reason to dismiss the possibility of reducing the effect of money on politics without resorting to some kind of enforced equality.

2. There is no value in equal political influence. Why should everyone have equal political influence? That sounds horrible! We want political influence to be proportionate with authority, which is to say relevant qualifications. The mob has no qualifications. Besides, the mob is easily influenced by those with money. So, if you want to remove the influence of money from politics, equal political influence is exactly what you don't want.

> It's a rough barometer to tell us how close we are to an abusive oligarchy.

We do live in an oligarchy, sure, but recall Plato's analysis in the Republic of how a polity degenerates. What comes after oligarchy? Democracy! So equality is not an improvement over oligarchy. It's the last phase before full blown tyranny.

What you want is to localize politics as much as possible and kick issues up the political hierarchy only as needed. This means political leadership lives closer to constituents and shares the same reality with them. Corruption becomes easier to spot as well. It's easier to lynch your local political leader, and the local leadership will know that.