The

The Hello and welcome to Brokonomics.

Now, as you are, of course, aware, democracy is the very best thing that humanity has ever invented.

And if you doubt that, just watch any sci-fi program for the last

30 years and you'll discover that the only reason you go to the trouble of conquering the

immense difficulties of figuring out how to travel transgalactic spaces is that you can stand there

wagging your finger at some tentacled mass explaining why they need to adopt democracy

so they can have all their decision-making powers abrogated to San Francisco,

and they can have gay rights pushed down their throat by an Andorian president.

However, I have found a academic who has some words to say to the contrary on this stuff.

So let's get to the root of this heresy.

I welcome Aidan.

Hello. Thanks. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

No, thank you very much for coming on. Now, you are, I can tell, a proper academic. And I know that because I've read your latest substack. And it's got things like confidence indicators or intervals. And it's got it's got the stuff and it's got

regressions and all the sort of stuff that I'd like to be able to pretend that I understand

but really don't so I'm not going to try. But you clearly are a proper academic. But are you

one of the sort of the new age ones who doesn't do it in academia. You do it on your YouTube instead.

Well, I was in academia.

I was a PhD student up until about, I guess, nine years ago now.

And I took a sabbatical from doctoral school because I was so burnt out from it.

But I couldn't not work at the same time.

And so my dad said, well, you're always talking to me about politics.

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