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TheOtherDave comments on How to Build a Community - Less Wrong
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Is this sort of thing not standard in democracies?
Imagine a family with five children. In a pure democracy "Candy for dinner" wins 5-2. In a real family, there's no vote because candy ain't for dinner.
Not that our actual governments are pure democracies. I don't argue they should be, but there is a veil-of-ignorance / Schelling point / first-they-came-for-the-trade-unionists argument for most anti-majoritarian laws. I don't think the argument would work with children.
I 100% agree that in a real family, candy ain't for dinner.
And I suppose I agree that in a "pure democracy" (insofar as such a thing is even a cogent thought experiment) whether candy is for dinner or not is, as you suggest, subject to a one-mouth-one-vote kind of decision procedure.
But, as you say, there are no pure democracies in the real world. My point was that in the real governments which we ordinarily refer to as "democracies," not only are some people (including minors) not permitted to vote in the first place, but even among adults some (most!) choices are removed from consideration before voting commences at all.
So it seems no more wrong to say "Sam's family is a democracy" (even though the children don't get a vote, and some choices are not even subject to vote) than to say "Canada is a democracy" (ibid).
I was mostly reacting to shminux's assertion that a family with children might be just about anywhere on the scale between democracy and tyranny. Whereas I think a functional family is about 3/4 tyranny, and Canada is much closer to 3/4 democracy.