I think it’s useful to model Democracy as a mock war which we perform every so often to forestall the necessity for real war.
That is, the objective in Democracy is to balance interests such that nobody who would win a war in pursuit of their own interests has any incentive to actually go to war—and additionally, with respect to, for example minority rights, that any game-theoretic incentive to engage in a losing war is also eliminated. (An extreme example of incentive-to-fight-a-losing-war is genocide; we want Democracy to prevent genocide, because any potential target parties in the case of genocide have a game theory incentive to go to war, even if they would lose, to make doing so expensive. Less extreme examples will also suffice, but may be harder to argue around.)
Thus, Democracy is a form of cooperation to the net benefit of the participants.
Defection in a Democracy is the majority taking any action which the minority would prefer to go to war than to allow to pass.
Sounds like a stressful model to think about! Maybe I’m just too much of a pacifist for that mindset. But I agree that friction is absolutely a critical part of democracy. A big part of that is giving people a non-violent way to settle disputes and come to consensus over limited resources.
I think it’s useful to model Democracy as a mock war which we perform every so often to forestall the necessity for real war.
That is, the objective in Democracy is to balance interests such that nobody who would win a war in pursuit of their own interests has any incentive to actually go to war—and additionally, with respect to, for example minority rights, that any game-theoretic incentive to engage in a losing war is also eliminated. (An extreme example of incentive-to-fight-a-losing-war is genocide; we want Democracy to prevent genocide, because any potential target parties in the case of genocide have a game theory incentive to go to war, even if they would lose, to make doing so expensive. Less extreme examples will also suffice, but may be harder to argue around.)
Thus, Democracy is a form of cooperation to the net benefit of the participants.
Defection in a Democracy is the majority taking any action which the minority would prefer to go to war than to allow to pass.
Thanks for your thoughts ACrackedPot 🙂
Sounds like a stressful model to think about! Maybe I’m just too much of a pacifist for that mindset. But I agree that friction is absolutely a critical part of democracy. A big part of that is giving people a non-violent way to settle disputes and come to consensus over limited resources.