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Comment by FreedomToCreate | Hacker News Reader

This is great and all in words, but in reality a lot of democratic decisions end up with really close counts like 51% against 49%. If you look at it like this, a majority is forcing the minority into something even though there is actually a significant number of people it effects who are against the motion. This is far better than a dictatorship, but it is a flaw and something that human society still needs to find a solution too.

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What's the alternative, assuming that you can't reach into peoples' heads and change their positions on an issue? Regardless of the decision, you would still have 51% of the population in support of it and 49% opposed (or vice versa, if the system were minority rules).

If I could reach into peoples' heads, there's a solution: "mind your own damn business". If we didn't care so much what other people did, then we wouldn't disagree so much. And in general, I think the world would be a better place if more people did this. But some fraction of issues will always affect multiple people (that's the whole point of government, after all).

And besides, nobody's yet invented a mind-control ray, and it would be pretty icky if they did. (There's a certain irony to altering peoples thoughts so that they care less about what other people think...)

As I stated, there is no alternative as of today, and that is the flaw. Its not terrible flaw, and I think that the democracies on this earth are far better than any other form of government, but maybe one day someone will think up the alternative. Mind control though would just be an uber-dictatorship.

I think there's an alternative already available and sparingly in use today: certain decisions can require 2/3rds, 3/5ths etc. majorities.

For instance, any decision that will last for generations and impact profoundly in everyone's life, like secession or a "Brexit" should require slightly more votes than a majority one. Unfortunately it's only typically used by parliaments, courts and senates for constitutional change, never for popular vote on issues.

No, some countries use referendums for lots of things, like Switzerland. Including quite small things like whether or not to build new tunnels.

Simple majority has the advantage that it's fair. If you're going to start claiming that decisions that will "profoundly impact everyone" need higher than majority you're just going down the road to totalitarianism. Anyone can claim a decision they think they're on the losing side of is too important to leave to majority decision making. Then it's just about ramping up the threshold until you win.

If 51% and 49% cant come to agreement they should live separately. I am not advocating full secession but something like Hong Kong (HK handles everything except Defence and External Affairs).

(I think) In democracy, voters are less likely to compromise. This is result of weak discussion between >1m.

Unfortunately ideology and geography have a correlation that, while positive, is less than one. There will always be a minority that gets overridden. And while it is a good thing for people to have freedom to move to a place that supports their values in extreme cases (some are even talking seriously about it this election), in most situations that isn't practical.

Still that does not stop me from solving 90% of the problem using seperations. For example I would like to have greater say in where my taxes are spent. If we can all agree on this, this would be great.

But likely technology (as always) will come to rescue before democracy. This is in reference to rise of renunciations, AirBnB etc.

> What's the alternative, assuming that you can't reach into peoples' heads and change their positions on an issue?

Supermajority voting on all legislation & referenda? After all, 2/3 of the population forcing 1/3 to obey a law is much more reasonable than 51% forcing 49%.

And making amendments take a 3/4 vote is even better: if 75% of people think something is a good idea, then it probably is.

First, I think you might be overestimating the number of decisions that come down to 51% vs 49%.... there are countless actions that the government takes that have a much higher societal-agreement rate than 51%. It only feels like everything is 51v49 because those decisions are the ones people spend their time arguing about; we never talk about the things we all agree on.

Secondly, for spectrum decisions (e.g. what tax rate we should have, how much to spend on defense and education, etc) getting as close to 51v49 for the decision is probably the most equitable outcome.

> a lot of democratic decisions end up with really close counts like 51% against 49%.

America (and the few other remaining non-proportional systems) suffers from this problem much more than the more advanced democratic systems. If America is all you know, you shouldn't generalize too much.

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