The question whether the majority should rule on everything has already been asked. The protection of minorities and the rule of law are meant to balance 'the majority rule'. The exceptions to the majority rule are though extraordinary in nature. Democracy itself as we define it today is based on the majority rule and sometimes described in a pejorative manner as being the tyranny of the majority.
The majority rule implies a restriction of the individual freedom justified by the need to prevent some sort of harm to occur in the predictable future. Any thoughts on this matter?
All democracy are representative democracy. The majority is a majority of representatives. But how representative are the representatives? To what extend do the majority of the representatives really reflects what the majority of the population would want? The evolution of the Social Networks will eventually allow a government by the people for the people.
Karol Zyczkowski and Wojciech Slomczynski
"calculate that all citizens in the EU would have
the same voting power if each member state were given
a weight that was proportional to the square root
of its population, and if new legislation required 62%
of the votes at the council."
http://scienceblog.com/3163/physicists-reveal-flaw-in-eu-constitution/
http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0405396
Reagards,
Joachim
The usual sense that is being conveyed by 'majority rule' is misnomer in terms of the realpolitik involved inside the mechanism of the so called 'majority rule'. Those societies where the average level of cultural growth is either stagnated or too sluggish, a few individuals can device ways to formulate policies and get the resolutions passed which might promote tyranny of a small circle by the endorsement of the so called 'majority rule'. However, those societies where cultural growth has already reached a commendable height, research attitude is promoted in every walk of life, anybody can question anybody and anything without the fear of being hushed up or terminated, sanitized, annihilated or whatever term you think best suited to describe the common psyche, the attitude of ruling a set of people by another set of people itself loses its classical meaning. Nothing can survive in a society, tyranny included, without a fertile political economic and cultural ground. Societies are in different stages of socio-cultural growth, principally due to uneven development of capital. If the crux of the matter is to check tyranny, there is no alternative to a series of cultural revolution and things can be started from anywhere, any position in today's world. Viable alternatives are in plenty and that definitely needs more intense form of discussions and research.
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