[EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:58 PM 11/15/2010, Forest Simmons wrote:
>When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in 
>election after election. But what other
>possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides "majority rule?"
>
>One answer is that every sector of the population ought to have a 
>chance at being in charge, and that
>chance should be in rough proportion to the size of the sector of 
>the population.
>
>A simple baseline method for accomplishing this goal is the "random 
>ballot" method.

The goal is undesirable, and here is why:

Suppose that a population is evenly divided into two factions, the 
Compromise and the Selfish.

The Compromise faction believes that a rising tide raises all boats, 
and that solutions should be found that will benefit all citizens, to 
the maximum extent possible. The Selfish faction believes that it is 
right, and that what is good for the Selfish is good for society, 
since the Selfish party members are the most important part of the 
population. the rest being no-good, lazy parasites who are, of 
course, only selfish and will wreck things if given power.

If the decision-making power is given to the Compromise faction, 
decision-making will be the compromise that benefits all citizens, at 
least insofar as the faction can attain. It will consider the views 
of the Selfish faction, and attempt to maximize their benefit as well.

But if the decision-making power is given to the Selfish faction, 
only the Selfish faction benefit will be maximized.

The random ballot method damages, and could damage seriously, social 
utility of decisions, and overall satisfaction with decisions. Let's 
supposed that 80% of the Compromise faction decisions are 
satisfactory to the Selfish faction.

And let's suppose that only 40% of the Selfish faction decisions are 
satisfactory to the Compromise faction. It could be worse than that!

If they share decision-making equally, as the random ballot method 
would propose, the average satisfaction level regarding decisions is 
60%, instead of the 80% that would be obtained if the Compromise 
faction always has power.

The goal of good systems is to maximize the power of the Compromise 
faction, which, of course, is not a real faction, it is, in real 
practice, an operating process where factions, selfish and otherwise, 
participate in decision-making, adovcating their own interests, and 
sometimees the collective interest.

Random ballot does nothing to encourage compromise!

The goal of government is not to be "fair," per se, but to maximize 
social welfare. Some people are going to believe that they are almost 
totally excluded from decision-making, and others are going to be 
grateful that this is true for those people!

Democracy begins with majority rule. It does not end there, but 
random ballot discards majority rule, which leads to, inevitably, 
minority rule, at least part of the time. And the damage from that 
can be enormous. Suppose 10% of the population believes that using 
nuclear weapons to get rid of enemies is a fine idea. Would we, to 
provide this faction with a "fair" opportunity to exercise 
decision-making power, give them the button 10% of the time? Roughly, 
if this is a presidential election, once every forty years?

I don't think so.