It's a way in which democracy can go wrong, not an intrinsic evil of it. Remember that thing in the US called slavery? Perfect example of tyranny of the majority. It was only like 10-15 years ago that the majority only kinda stopped persecuting gays in western democracies. For almost the entire history of western democracy, the majority has persecuted the minority (gay people in your example) by voting to prevent them from having equal rights. Then you end up with bizarre conclusions like the majority being tyrannical over the minority by voting to recognise gay rights or whatever.

And when you have enough people collectively voting together that way, it leads to tyranny. People routinely vote to fatten up their bank accounts at everyone else’s expense, even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing, simply because there is no reason for them not to. It’s that people simply vote for their own self-interest, and that usually involves subverting the rights of others. It’s not that they “necessarily want” to do it. You misunderstand the concept of tyranny of the majority. Yeah I find a lot of this 'tyranny of the majority' stuff rests on the patently false idea that democracy necessarily entails the formation of this 'majority' that wants to terrorise everyone else and has absolute power. Public forums, deliberation and freedom of speech allowed people to evolve the culture in such a way as to mitigate or dampen systemic oppression, there is still work to be done, but there is no denying that that there has been evolution. The civil rights movement, suffragette movement and LGB (referring to gay marriage) is a fairly decent example of this. This gives minority groups a chance to speak in a public forum and gain the sympathy/empathy of the majority so they are less likely to harm the minority. Market socialism (industrial democracy) wants cooperatives where the workers or consumers which are directly involved with specific businesses have a say in its running, away from the reach of the general population.Īlthough you may have a local majority rule, the system is structured so that the 'real' majority of the general polity does not really have a say in those internal decisions (because they do not need to have a say).ģ: Also, even if it was a majority, its not tyranny Democracy is not just about voting, its also about deliberation, discussion, and negotiation (about what should be on the ballot in the first place). This is related to the age old concept of subsidiarity, where decisions which are best made locally are allowed to be made locally.Īs for proposals for democracy. We have cellular democracy, where only the people in the local area can vote on a local issue, and the rest of the population (which is the majority) does not have input. With score voting or ranked choice, 'majority' becomes even more of an abstraction, since we are trying to find an 'equilibrium'or 'central tendency' between many different preferences and perspectives to find the solution that everyone is at least ok with.Ģ: Democracy does not have to be majoritarian and it usually is not. The 31 may win the vote, but they are not the majority.

If you have 90 people and 3 candidates/ options on the ballot (with plurality voting), you can have an outcome which is 29, 30, 31. Other than the fact that it contains an appeal to emotion (why use 'tyranny', why not use 'primacy'?) Here are some of the problems with that line of critique.ġ: In any democracy where the ballots tend to have more than 3 options, the winners are unlikely to be a majority anyway. 'What if 51% vote to do something bad to the 49%' 'Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep decide whats for dinner.' They use and reuse memes and thought terminating cliches like Cheers.Ī lot of anti-democracy people tend to base their entire criticism of democracy on the idea that there would tyranny of the majority.

Tyranny of the majority