A fun social experiment might be to do something like the following:
1) Announce the creation of PnDcoin, which is 4x FeatherCoin or something...
2) Announce that the P stands for "Pump" and that the D stands for "Dump".
3) Announce a viable staged marketing plan for the coin, stating very clearly what channels you're going to hit when, etc...
4) Outline a plan of when to sell out to maximize profits.
I'll bet people would still jump in, on the greater-fool reasoning... After all, many of Pirate's "investors" knew that it was a ponzi, but figured they'd just get out before the next guy.
Making the pump-n-dump process and plan as explicit as possible up-front and seeing what kind of activity results would be amusing to watch.
This kind of rhetoric is becoming really tiresome. It applies the same exact way to BTC as it does to its forks. That it was first doesn't mean squat.
The principle remains the same.
Thought experiment: If two coins have exactly the same properties, but one has existed longer and has significantly more adoption, in terms of users, merchants, financial services, etc, which has more utility? This an obvious network effect. I assume you're now going to tell me that the network effect is irrelevant; that's fine, please educate me.
For the record, I think other coins that bring new features to the table (eg, PPCoin, Namecoin) are genuinely interesting and have a place, and perhaps an innovative alt may ultimately dominate. I just see nothing interesting or compelling about coins that are direct forks with some constants changed, either intellectually or from a market perspective.
Yes I think that innovation is an important factor for alt-coins, but that doesn't mean they do not have a place. And most importantly they are no more a pump&dump scheme than BTC already is.
There are some coins with malicious features like pre-mine, taxes or else (Solidcoin, Freicoin, ...) which should be avoided, but other than that they have their place, if only for a short time.
I get the point of things like feathercoin, china coin, ru coin,.. aren't particularly useful if they do not include any new unique featureset. They are often short lived see IXcoin and I0Coin but that doesn't mean they have to.