A Majority rules in Democracy, don’t they? A silly question at face value, but one worthy of consideration as dark money and voter suppression receive greater and increasingly schismatic analysis in the context of our great democratic experiment. One could lay blame at the feet of the wealthy and privileged and call it a day, but doing so would be a disservice to both the well-to-do equally concerned for our democracy’s future and the crafty statesmen responsible for our dilemma. Considering the whole of the United States system is beyond the scope of a mere article, so in lieu I submit for your consideration a hypothetical system which appears on the surface to serve the needs of the majority but in fact turns greatest yield for a select minority.
Consider a system composed of people who get equal share to make decisions in the system. This system has unequal partitions, perhaps a majority or at least a plurality above several minorities. The people in these theoretical partitions have both group interests, which align with their partition, and individual interests, which have in-partition conflicts and occasionally override group interests. Suppose there is an arbitrary limit on what decisions may be pursued by an individual and that the larger a partition is the more individual interests are likely to have conflicting personal interests regarding these decisions.
At face value one might take such a system and say “the largest partition always gets its way.” In a Democratic system, like the one above may be described as, the decision of the majority rules--under a very simplistic consideration. But a distinction here must be made. Earlier in the consideration it is proposed that there is an arbitrary limit on what decisions may be pursued by an individual. Additionally, we are considering a system where members of a partition may have individual preferences that conflict with the partition’s goal. Furthermore, the larger the partition the more diverse the goals. The more diverse the goals the more likely they are to conflict with the goals of the partition.
Increasingly the largest partitions will find themselves engaged in internal struggles to cope with dissent while smaller partitions funnel the lion’s share of their decision making capacity towards their own goals. If you break the arbitrary decision metric and tie it to wealth, then generate partitions for the system on the basis of wealth, you very quickly have a middle class that grows less potent the larger it bloats and an executive class of nouveau aristocrats wielding hegemonic power.
Fascists suggest the whole thing is to be done away with in favor of an individual tyrant, who may at least offer consistency. Anarcho-syndicalists would say that only consensual systems should be formed, such that a single-partition system based on mutual consent and self sorting could be established. Lovers of legalism and bureaucracy would seek to impose rules and regulations to prevent the issues that may arise. Ultimately, whether any of them is right does not serve the cause of American Democracy. At the core of our society is the Democratic Will to Change, and the true solution to this political Gordian knot is to selflessly cut through the ropes tying political power to personal interests and decide to self sort into a polity that desires that which serves the whole of our society rather than our own partition. No matter how large or small, how wealthy or poor, marginalized or privileged our partition may be, we paradoxically must be able to set aside its unique interests if we are to insure the rights of its members. Because a system susceptible to any form of tyranny is a system in which no one is safe.
