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There are a myriad of opinions:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://areomagazine.com/2019/04/02/the-tyranny-of-the-minority-and-how-to-prevent-it/[/URL]

The number of complainants can often be quite small. For centuries, theorists have worried about the potential of unrestrained democracy to lead to a tyranny of the majority, in which majority groups ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. What we often see today is instead a kind of tyranny of the minority: a system in which a particularly extreme and motivated fraction of the populace can wield outsized power in the face of a majority which is either too indifferent or too scared to oppose it.

The claims of the activist minority often draw much of their strength from a tacit assumption that they represent a far larger body of opinion. Complaints about cultural appropriation, for example, rely on the usually unchallenged idea that one representative of a group can speak for all or most of that group.
But the question of how many people the complainants actually have on their side is even more fundamental than that. That’s because numbers are the only thing that can ultimately adjudicate one of the key principles of liberalism: the harm principle, formulated by J. S. Mill. Put simply, the harm principle states that we should all be able to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. As generations of Mill’s critics have pointed out, what counts as harm is often a matter of interpretation.

What other things might help us get a better sense of what people are really thinking? One crucial issue for pollsters is sampling: that is, making sure that they get information from as broad and representative a cross-section of society as possible. They need to do that to get a sense of what the average person is thinking, not just the small sub-set of people who are particularly motivated to speak up on a particular issue. Self-selected polls, which rely on people coming forward, are widely seen as junk for precisely this reason. The people who step forward voluntarily may well have a heartfelt view to express, but they may also make up only a tiny fraction of the population.

There are very good reasons why we make decisions based purely on how many people like a certain option, not on how strongly its supporters feel about it. With one person one vote, there’s no possibility that anyone will be able to get more power than anybody else (at least as far as the vote is concerned)..

<blockquote data-quote="sptrawler" data-source="post: 1244799" data-attributes="member: 28038">There are a myriad of opinions:[URL unfurl=&quot;true&quot;]https://areomagazine.com/2019/04/02/the-tyranny-of-the-minority-and-how-to-prevent-it/[/URL]The number of complainants can often be quite small. For centuries, theorists have worried about the potential of unrestrained democracy to lead to a tyranny of the majority, in which majority groups ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. What we often see today is instead a kind of tyranny of the minority: a system in which a particularly extreme and motivated fraction of the populace can wield outsized power in the face of a majority which is either too indifferent or too scared to oppose it.The claims of the activist minority often draw much of their strength from a tacit assumption that they represent a far larger body of opinion. Complaints about cultural appropriation, for example, rely on the usually unchallenged idea that one representative of a group can speak for all or most of that group. But the question of how many people the complainants actually have on their side is even more fundamental than that. That’s because numbers are the only thing that can ultimately adjudicate one of the key principles of liberalism: the harm principle, formulated by J. S. Mill. Put simply, the harm principle states that we should all be able to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. As generations of Mill’s critics have pointed out, what counts as harm is often a matter of interpretation. What other things might help us get a better sense of what people are really thinking? One crucial issue for pollsters is sampling: that is, making sure that they get information from as broad and representative a cross-section of society as possible. They need to do that to get a sense of what the average person is thinking, not just the small sub-set of people who are particularly motivated to speak up on a particular issue. Self-selected polls, which rely on people coming forward, are widely seen as junk for precisely this reason. The people who step forward voluntarily may well have a heartfelt view to express, but they may also make up only a tiny fraction of the population.There are very good reasons why we make decisions based purely on how many people like a certain option, not on how strongly its supporters feel about it. With one person one vote, there’s no possibility that anyone will be able to get more power than anybody else (at least as far as the vote is concerned)..</blockquote>

[QUOTE="sptrawler, post: 1244799, member: 28038"] There are a myriad of opinions: [URL unfurl="true"]https://areomagazine.com/2019/04/02/the-tyranny-of-the-minority-and-how-to-prevent-it/[/URL] The number of complainants can often be quite small. For centuries, theorists have worried about the potential of unrestrained democracy to lead to a [I]tyranny of the majority[/I], in which majority groups ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. What we often see today is instead a kind of [I]tyranny of the minority[/I]: a system in which a particularly extreme and motivated fraction of the populace can wield outsized power in the face of a majority which is either too indifferent or too scared to oppose it. The claims of the activist minority often draw much of their strength from a tacit assumption that they represent a far larger body of opinion. Complaints about [I]cultural appropriation[/I], for example, rely on the usually unchallenged idea that one representative of a group can speak for all or most of that group. But the question of how many people the complainants actually have on their side is even more fundamental than that. That’s because numbers are the only thing that can ultimately adjudicate one of the key principles of liberalism: the [I]harm principle[/I], formulated by J. S. Mill. Put simply, the harm principle states that we should all be able to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. As generations of Mill’s critics have pointed out, what counts as [I]harm[/I] is often a matter of interpretation. What other things might help us get a better sense of what people are really thinking? One crucial issue for pollsters is sampling: that is, making sure that they get information from as broad and representative a cross-section of society as possible. They need to do that to get a sense of what the average person is thinking, not just the small sub-set of people who are particularly motivated to speak up on a particular issue. Self-selected polls, which rely on people coming forward, are widely seen as junk for precisely this reason. The people who step forward voluntarily may well have a heartfelt view to express, but they may also make up only a tiny fraction of the population. There are very good reasons why we make decisions based purely on how many people like a certain option, not on how strongly its supporters feel about it. With one person one vote, there’s no possibility that anyone will be able to get more power than anybody else (at least as far as the vote is concerned).. [/QUOTE]

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