My latest mental dog-chew toy is: The Tyranny of the Majority. There is a big problem with Majority Rule (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_rule) and yet Im finding it difficult to even imagine how another kind of democratic decision-making could work, at least for binary decisions. Im not even trying to think of a whole country yet, just a group of 10-20 people in a room, some voting chips, and a series of issues. Is there a more utilitarian process that could make more people happier with the final outcomes of cooperative decision-making? Or do we *want* majority rule so as to minimize the votes of an insane minority? But what if they get too big? (Or what if they are a minority group with an unfair advantage over the majority by all voting in lock-step with fundamentalist fervor?) Heres a semi-balanced This American Life episode about a school district where the Hasidic population grows to far outnumber the blacks and latinos. The Hasidics take over the school boards and gut the public school systems in favor of their private yeshivas; they claim they arent using the public schools so why are they paying for them? It creates bad blood and bad economics all around, but the dynamics of it really interested me. 1. thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority 2. forward/articles/196685/is-hasidic-board-to-blame-for-gutting-public-schoo/ We seem to champion democracy as a nation and with the internet we can finally move towards a more direct democracy rather than one buffered by representatives (who supposedly are there to protect us from ourselves.) If you watch this video you see how the electoral college system is completely broken. It doesnt even make sense: https://youtube/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k Yet the alternative, a direct democracy, might end up with better choices than our self-serving politicians come up with, it certainly wouldnt guarantee the best outcomes for all. [Even in Richard Wolffs latest podcast democracyatwork.info/radio/2014/09/corporations-are-the-problem/ he talks about making corporations democratic, which is an idea that I love, but if each corporation did get a mega-council vote you could easily garner more votes/game the system to a side by splitting like-minded corporations into smaller ones, each with one vote. Is a division like the house of representatives (population size based voting) and the senate (every entity gets one vote) really enough checks and balances to guarantee fair decisions?] Any binary majority rule system acquiesces to the larger portion of the population and completely discards the votes of the smaller portion as if they didnt even exist; meaning, we dont even let them influence the final outcome (e.g. Majority chooses a whole number integer and minority picks the fractional part.) Should the minority get some influence or would that just end up with a tug of war stalemate or decisions that nobody likes? Imagine our great nation as a giant robot made up of decision-makers all gripping on and deciding which limb to move, where to go next (e.g. The Mega-Mr.Smith-bot in The Matrix Game: https://youtube/watch?v=J1XhcSyVr-A) ~ should we be forced to have a tug of war stalemate until we can agree on where to go? Or is compromise horrible for everyone? Are we rewarding the most right/logical/beneficial for all positions or just the largest held/most mass-produced belief systems? Is there a way to reward the most repeatable, altruistic, and beneficial decision-makers and vault them to a position where they have more influence than regular votes? I call that a system of advocates as their power in certain fields of influence (food, animal rights, energy decisions, etc.) could be on loan (or withdrawn) from people who trust that advocate as an expert to handle their voting powers. Or is that just more majority rule all over again? Hrmm...
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 15:49:16 +0000
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