David R. MacIver's Blog

Democracy Can't Work

This post was originally published at notebook.drmaciver.com.

(Title somewhat overstating the case, but only somewhat)

A challenge for the interested reader: How do you reconcile the following facts?

• Voting theory and social mechanism design is a complicated specialist subject that it is is not reasonable to expect most people to invest the time required to understand.
• People who do not understand the details of the implementation of their particular democracy inevitbaly become extremely attached to it, making it difficult to change.
• Whoever designs the voting mechanism and sets the voting agenda has vastly more power in determining the end results than any individual voter does.
• Whenever you concentrate power in a small number of individuals you create a strong incentive to manipulate those individuals.