> Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress.
The problem is not in democracy itself as a concept. In both the open-source world and in society itself, the problems arise only when the demos (the population) either grow disinterested in democracy or is small in numbers.
As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason. In the case of projects such as Debian to reduce the chance of solo maintainers quitting over frustration about being overruled, in democracies to prevent atrocities and hold up human rights for vulnerable people (e.g. disabled).
> As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason.
There is plenty of evidence for the theory proposed by Taleb[0] on this one, he wrote:
"It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences."
There is the political/sociological meaning of the word "minority" that you seem to refer to, and there is the linguistic/logical/mathematical meaning (those who are not in majority or a small group).
I am pretty sure the use in the phrase you object to is of the latter form.
>> As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason.
I digress, but how are these protections an inherent feature of democracies. Even in a democracy (most democracies are representation democracies) people can vote for policies which may discriminate against people. This would be again democracy in action.
In a liberal democracy, it is understood that the will of the majority is not the only thing that matters.
For example, having the majority vote to strip a minority from their religious freedoms is not OK.
The irony is the good parts of "democracy" aren't actually the democratic bits at all, but rather a basic respect for civil liberties (a.k.a. natural laws) which are subject to neither democratic votes nor authoritarian decrees. The key is not to lose sight of the fact that what the majority wills is not always right.
This is why attempts to impose democracy from outside tend to fail. Giving people the vote doesn't automatically lead to respect for their fellow citizens' civil liberties, which is much more fundamental.
I don't compare you with a nazi, but you should understand that minority's can take over a country, that's what the nazis did but also the communists in romanov-russia...china is more complicated. It's something completely different, but maybe "nazi" is a red flag for you in comments...because not comfy.
EDIT: And more actual, the Taliban's in Afghanistan, an absolute minority but the one with weapons, training, connections to local "war/land"-lords and the will to take over the country.
Or the Alawites in Syria, or the Europeans in 18th century North America, or the Mongols, or a hundred other examples. There's a line somewhere between less-violent "minorities taking over a country" and more violent Mongol-like "taking over", but I would say that the situation of a minority group seizing power is not significantly less common than of a majority group seizing power.
Godwin's law is not exactly a law, but an observation. Your comment is justified, because the current zietgeist is "majority wrong and minority right" and your comment is highlighting the dangers of such a process.
If you define majority as 50%+1, and minority as 50%-1, almost all democracies in the world have the minority in the power (unless they get 100% turn out rate with all votes contributing to parliamentary seats). Winning 60% of votes with a turn out of 70% voters is only 42% of the population.
Nah, people staying home on polling day doesn't stop them from being part of the majority opinion. If an option gets 60% of the vote, and there are no shenanigans going on, then that option is almost certainly the choice of the majority.
That's a pretty flexible definition of "choice" ;)
Does this also hold if the vote went 51% to 49% (in dual party system)?
Democracy is there to allow us to express a preference. Not voting is exactly that, a preference to not vote, and reasons are certainly various (including the one you mention of supporting the likely winner).
> That's a pretty flexible definition of "choice" ;)
If you choose not to vote, you're putting endorsement toward what everyone else does. If nothing particularly weird or bad is going on, the people not voting should be similar to the people voting.
And you can pretend I said "preference" if you don't like the word choice. Doesn't change my argument.
> Does this also hold if the vote went 51% to 49% (in dual party system)?
No, statistically that's too close. But when you get 60% of a 70% turnout, to reverse that the rest of the population would have prefer to vote about 3:1 in the opposite direction. That's not likely.
>However, despite waging a campaign of terror against their opponents, the Nazis only tallied 43.9 percent of the vote on their own, well short of a majority to govern alone.
One problem that the Weimar Republic suffered from is that there were too many small parties. Absorbing them is easy if you are the trump of the 30s and are willing to use violence behind the scenes to intimidate anyone who opposes you. Also, it helps to have connections with people who hate democracy in important political positions.
The problem is not in democracy itself as a concept. In both the open-source world and in society itself, the problems arise only when the demos (the population) either grow disinterested in democracy or is small in numbers.
As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason. In the case of projects such as Debian to reduce the chance of solo maintainers quitting over frustration about being overruled, in democracies to prevent atrocities and hold up human rights for vulnerable people (e.g. disabled).