Edu/GMantis: I understand that perspective and I share it to an extent. However. Harper hasn't damaged his country very much, has he? I would say Bayar seems to have damaged Mongolia quite a bit. And many other leaders haven't done great things for their countries either. Also, I don't think you can run that argument all the way. One could say that Kim Jong-Il hasn't made North Korea that much worse since he took over, for instance. It is also very hard to judge to what extent various events were caused by the leaders or not.
Bottom line is that while I share that idea as regards say economic performance quite a bit, I don't share it when it comes to things like democracy or human rights. The leader of a country that has freedom of speech and free and fair elections should not be voted off before the leader of a country where these things are not true. I consider your standard so relativist as to be morally bankrupt if it makes it ok to treat your citizens certain ways. You won't convince me that Harper has done things to Canadians comparable to some of the things perpetrated by some of those other leaders.
I don't think everyone is taking the game entirely seriously. I admit that I'm not doing extensive research on all the world leaders and then making my choice accordingly to who is the worst overall. I really have my favorites from the start and normally i try to eliminate some of the worst scumbags on the list, but when i see people ganging up on someone like Harper, Berlusconi, Uribe or Sarkozy who can be a credible opposition to the leaders i like then i try to vote them off. This is a survivor game after all. It doesn't necessarily reflect my views of best and worst world leaders. For instance, i believe that Uribe is better than Chavez, but i tried to vote him off and then defend Chavez.
I replied to you before in response to the Canada issue, i think that the current status of a country that has been considered one of the best in the world for decades doesn't mean that the current leader who has been in power only a couple of years is equally great like the country. Of course Harper isn't murdering half of the people in Canada or taking absolute control over the media and the political process, but as i said before, his country has been stable for decades now and it has a history of freedom and democracy. And i do have more respect for a leader of a country that despite a crap economy and a history of instability and military dictatorships has maintained democracy and human rights despite not being very successful economically or politically. I also don't take dictatorships or countries where flagrant human right abuses are common into account, so North Korea might not have gotten worse in the past decades but the guy is still a brutal dictator.
This is just my opinion, i repeat that it's not a representation of how I'm voting in the survivor threads, when we get down to the final 20 or 30 leaders (who should all be presidents/prime ministers of completely free and democratic countries) then I'll probably start playing more seriously. But as you said, it's pretty hard to judge every positive or negative effect a leader might have in the country and it's even harder to compare them when each and every one of them rule a different country with different cultures, different economies, different people, etc.
