A Democratic Illusion
https://fee.org/articles/whats-so-good-about-democracy/
This article was very interesting as it discussed voting in democratic institutions from a historical and mathematical perspective. The article’s central argument is that “It Is Almost Impossible to Design a System That Produces ‘The People’s’ Verdict.” Norman Berry cites different reasons for this, including how self-interested rational human-beings have no incentive to vote for the “public good.” He also argues that there is no rational incentive to vote at all given how unlikely that vote is to be decisive. He discusses different democratic voting systems, namely the difference between those with two parties (the US) and those with three or more. He cites specific historical instances such as when Ross Perot won 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992, which was the highest since 1912.
The central argument, however, revolves around Condorcet’s theorem, and Arrow’s proof. He starts by mentioning Joseph Schumpeter, who showed that liberal democracy is in some regards a fallacy because there can be no homogenous will of the people, and instead only competing wills. This means as we discussed in class, that there is not any system that can produce a “people’s” verdict. The logical proof of Condorcet’s paradox we went through in class, where there are choices A, B, and C, which when voted upon produce a cyclical vote, thus has severe implications for the validity of our political value systems. Is it oppressive to produce a group preference? Berry argues that group preferences may only work in homogenous and mostly private-economic societies. A fun part of the article relating to class showcased the difference between our earlier examples with two choices and then three. As stated earlier, in 1992, Ross Perot was a serious presidential candidate. If voters were asked to rank them, Condorcet’s paradox could have broken the United States voting system.