The Mathematics of Democracy
15 January 2021 Shouldn’t everybody have an equal vote? Isn’t majority rule just an excuse to keep minorities down? Is a truly fair democracy even possible? This week on Philosophy Talk, we’ll explore answers to these questions! Rousseau said that the law (when it’s legitimate) expresses the general will; it’s what people in general want. But how can we determine the general will under conditions of widespread disagreement? We should probably take a vote. But that doesn’t settle the matter; we’ll still have to decide what to vote on, and how to tally up all the votes fairly.