Posted: May 13, 2018 4:56 pm
I don't think anyone here feels democracy is a good system, rather the least worse. Further it is not based on no evidence, rather the evidence is limited e.g. considerable work on the superiority of collective decision making.
Potential issues with 'spending' as a metric are: those with spare cash have an advantage, those with the strongest beliefs (e.g. pressure groups) have an advantage and can also 'buy' the support of others directly. There may be others, so I would suggest the first thing you need to do is design, carry out and report on experiments that tests your hypothesis - clearly the 'gold standard' will require work.
Potential issues with 'spending' as a metric are: those with spare cash have an advantage, those with the strongest beliefs (e.g. pressure groups) have an advantage and can also 'buy' the support of others directly. There may be others, so I would suggest the first thing you need to do is design, carry out and report on experiments that tests your hypothesis - clearly the 'gold standard' will require work.