Agree that this bit isn't relevant to the title, but MAN, I wish politicians had this sort of longterm vision in mind. But I suppose Musk, being the CEO, is politically like a benevolent dictator of SpaceX, so he can afford to plan longterm :)

This is perhaps the major argument for monarchies, or republics that are less attuned to "the mob", i.e. the masses. If you want long term thinking, don't attach political power to a vote by "everyone" every 2-6 years.

Following that line of thought, it is actually a major argument for dictatorships. After all, they can command a whole country to operate towards some single unified goal.

If fewer voters is better than 0 voters is optimal!

A nice illustration is that most open source projects that are based on democracy are always torn apart by inner power plays but those that have a 'benevolent dictator' seem to flourish.

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised that the other extreme is also bad, if not worse. Especially since "dictatorship" as it's used excludes monarchical systems, in some cases fairly absolute, but that include formally passing on the reign to one's heirs,

I'm quite uncertain how useful it is to observe systems like open source projects where the stakes are so very low compared to governing a polity.

The extreme of dictatorship says nothing about the middle, such as a republic with a limited franchise (e.g. own land or pay a hefty poll tax), or adding other types of bodies to government. Such as the US Senate back when its members were picked by state legislatures, or a power sharing arrangement between a monarch and a legislative body or three, like the U.K. of long ago.

Is much harder to fork a country if the dictator goes nuts.

Of course, removing accountability means that much more often than not, the single unified goal is 'the value of my Swiss bank account'...

I have always thought that a benevolent dictatorship would be the best form of government. The trouble is that word, "benevolent," and how to deal with it when (not if) the dictator goes off his rocker.

Or simply dies. Then you get a power vacuum and the replacement dictator is rarely as benevolent as the one preceding.

See Singapore for the best exponent of this argument (with all its pros and cons).

Hmmm, Singapore is another example of a "middle", although rather far in the direction of "dictatorship". Not sure if we've seen much of it before the 20th Century, then again they're a modern form of oligarchy.

It's definitely not the best exponent of what I was trying to get across, but I didn't say all that much initially. At least when they're not fighting wars, or are degenerate cases like the Saudi royal "family" (15,000 members, 2,000 with wealth and power per Wikipedia), there tend to be limits to their rapaciousness. Much less so with traditional oligarchies.

The political environment all but makes it impossible. Can you imagine a congressman or senator going out on a limb to fund a 10-15 year project that starts with three failed launches? God forbid one of their employees donated to that congressperson's campaign, Issa would have the CEO in front of a committee and in front of the cameras within the week..