Posted: May 21, 2018 9:57 am
Xerographica wrote:...You want me to consider the possibility that my theory is idiotic. I've considered and accepted the possibility, which is why I wouldn't initially conduct my economic experiment on an entire country. But have you considered the possibility that it's actually your own theory that's idiotic? Have you considered the possibility that democracy does far more harm than good?
What you certainly haven't done is explain the harm of using voting and donating to rank prominent skeptics. The worse case scenario is that we don't learn anything about voting versus spending and only a few bucks are raised for this forum. The best case scenario is that lots of money is raised for this forum and we achieve economic enlightenment. In no case in human history has the potential harm been so much smaller than the potential benefit.
There is at least evidence that democracies can compete and flourish, there are a number of them around. So far, as far as I can tell, there seems to be no actual experimental evidence that your system would work at all, let alone better? Or are there some countries out there which you would regard as being at least closer to your system than to democracy? Which countries would those be? If your other thread (here) is an experiment, has anyone actually donated yet? If not, would this be a result which suggests a problem? Or not? (As far as I know, RatSkep's income these days comes from advertisements; we used to be asked occasionally for donations, but this hasn't happened for some years now, and the Donate button at the top of the page seems to have been disabled.)