I would submit to you that there are bad ideas that we know are bad without having to throw money at them and watch them fail. (And, look--even if we do throw money at them and watch them fail, that's not a definitive disposition, since it could have been execution errors that caused the failure). I think I made a strong enough case as to why this particular idea was bad, even in lieu of having an actual case study of someone trying it and failing.

But I would be happy to be proven wrong, and I'd bet some cold hard cash on failure...