Social Decision Making

Even with ethical rules in place, there will still be many situations where decisions need to be made. These may be decisions, for example, on the management of common resources where it is not possible or useful to have the specific situations covered by general rules of conduct. Or it may be that new rules of conduct are needed or that existing rules need to be formalized as laws.

Since there will be multiple interests involved in these decisions, there will likely be conflicts of desire. How will the decisions be made? There are several possibilities: the powerful choose, the rich choose, the few choose, the majority choose, the elected representatives choose, all choose.

Sometimes one strong person takes control and he or she decides. Others follow for protection. The strong person becomes the chief or monarch or dictator or chairman of the board. Access to force, access to skill, intrigue, ability to convince others to follow define their strength.

Sometimes the rich decide because they can pay the strong to enforce their wishes and they can create dependency on the part of the weak by spreading their wealth around.

Sometimes groups of the powerful and the rich form ruling blocks and these few decide. They may add in those who have special access to the sacred to give the arrangement some added legitimacy.

These methods have predominated throughout history, but as time has gone on some decisions have been made more widely. It is difficult to control so many people. They simply have to be able to make some of their own decisions individually and as groups.

In groups debate and voting become important. Debating all of the problems takes a lot of time, so some become specialists, to proxy for our votes or to carry out group actions as needed. This leads to elected representatives.

Still some decisions can be made by all of us. For example, in the market individual decisions to purchase or not to purchase products and services accumulate to make decisions on the value of those products and services. A more direct example is referendums where the specific issue is decided by a direct majority vote.

This sketches our some of the main alternatives. Now we can look at some of the advantages and disadvantages.

Having one or a few people make the decisions has some advantages in terms of efficiency, but basic issues of fairness come into play. What gives them the right to rule over us? Also, there are more practical issues. The more power someone has the more likely they are to abuse that power. Despite all of the hopes for a philosopher king or a benevolent dictator, mostly these rulers have become tyrants. And even if they really were benevolent, there are too many decisions that need to be made. Decisions need to be decentralized. Then the ruler's subordinates often become mini-tyrants.

Eventually more people need to be involved to guard the guardians, which gradually expands the franchise. Each group that is left out then demands to be included. And there does not seem to be any legitimate reason to leave them out. So after many struggles we get to universal franchise.

But people also fear mob rule. They want to make sure that they are not treated unfairly just because they are in the minority. One way to address this is to assure as much individual freedom as possible. Only bring essential decisions into the group decision making process. When it must be a group decision, try to assure that the electorate is as informed as possible so that they can make good decisions.

As described earlier, when there are decisions that can be understood by most people, they can be decided directly using referendums, but for many decisions, there will need to be more time to study the alternatives. We all do not have time to do that, so we hold elections and choose our representatives to decide for us.

But here is where the rich and powerful can sneak back into the process. They can influence our representatives. Of course, we can vote them out again, but we need, again, to be well informed, so we know what they are doing.

Another concern related to mob rule is that the rights of minorities may be abused by the majority. Each of us is a potential minority in different situations. To address this problem, we need to enumerate some essential human rights. These need to be guaranteed in law so that they cannot be overruled in the heat of the moment.

Government in general is not very efficient. It cannot manage very complex systems effectively. Democracy is even more inefficient because of how many people need to be involved. So it should only intervene in the big issues. This is where the market can be more effective. The market provides a mechanism where conflicts of desire can be worked out through competition. Everyone can try out their idea if they can get the investors and if their idea makes money. This way many different approaches can be tried out. The government needs to step in only when the competition becomes unfair or the commons is being infringed on.

To further deal with complexity, decisions should be made at the level of democratic government closest to those affected. This allows a better decision to be made because local knowledge can come into play. Also, it is more fair.

Efficiency is also affected by the degree of consensus. If everyone has to agree, then the decision will likely take longer. On the other hand, if fewer people agree, then the decision may be reopened when the dissenters can get the votes together. Therefore, the broader the consensus the better. And here again, consensus seems more fair.

So there are problems with democracy. It's not perfect. We need to patch it where it has flaws. But here we fall back on the standard defense: it's better than any of the alternatives.