Empirical evidence tells us that most marginal ideas (ranging from PETA's "Your kids ought to drink beer, rather than milk, because beer isn't ripped from a cow's udder" campaign to the libertarian "Privatize the roads" campaign) are typically ignored or ridiculed by popular culture and non-intellectuals. If we stick to the assumption that 'people make rational choices,' the obvious conclusion would be:
Evaluating crazy ideas requires more time / effort than would likely be rewarded.
Yet, there are crazy ideas (defined as ideas that were once thought as completely unrealistic) that become accepted -- e.g., the earth is round, freedom of religion is not disruptive or, say, "the White Pine Tree Act was not strong enough".* Why these and not others? Do we have to resort to information-cacade explanations?
-JP
"In the long run, John Maynard Keynes is dead."
God for us!
* A British law that allowed the seizing of pine trees on the colonists' lands before the American Revolution. As Jim Bovard notes, this was nothing to the power that environmental laws give the current American tyrant.
PIERRE LEMIEUX
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