[EM] Monotonicity, but Participation too

Bart Ingles bartman at netgate.net
Mon Jul 17 00:29:31 PDT 2000


Blake Cretney wrote:

> But I never said that candidate A was the better governor.  I said it
> was the better choice for the method.  It's the choice that I believe
> will on average provide the better governor.  Whether A provides
> better government in any particular case, however, requires more
> information than the ballots show.
> 
> Simply put, I am suggesting that if all we know is that a majority
> have chosen A over B, then I argue that on average a method that
> selects A will provide better government than a method that selects
> B.  Maybe you disagree with that.  Maybe you don't.  The choice that
> on average provides the best government for a particular situation I
> call the correct choice.
> 
> I hope that this clears up some of the confusion.  I really don't
> want to have to deal with any more rebuttals that assume I have said
> that the majority is always right, that we can objectively prove that
> one candidate is better than another, or some other nonsense.


I have to agree with Markus on this one.  From a minority member's
viewpoint, the majority choice will *on average* be incorrect, and tend
to provide a lower quality of government.

The point of democracy is not that a majority somehow makes better
decisions in any objective sense (on average or otherwise); rather the
point is that a democratically elected government will make decisions
which are acceptable to more people.



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