Quote by F.A. Hayek. In a democracy where action is "dependent on a majority's being able to agree; it will often be necessary that the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people, because this minority will be the largest group able to agree among themselves on the question at issue." This is a great point that illustrates how a democracy really works. If there are one hundred people each with different opinions on what should be done and suddenly two of them come to an agreement then the majority would be those two because they are the largest number of people that have a common agreement. It is often assumed that a majority means 51% or more but this is only true if there are only two side to an issue. When there are one hundred sides to an issue then the majority can easily be two people out of a hundred.
This phenomenon of democracy is readily seen in many elections. Take for example the 2000 presidential election. From popular vote Bush had 47.9% and Gore had 48.4%. While it is the case that neither the Republican nor Democrat party had a majority of votes in terms of Republicans to non-Republicans or Democrats to non-Democrats, there was none the less a majority in terms of more than two choices. One need only to divide their competition in order to change the outcome of any vote. Two can win against any number of individuals as long as all those individuals remain divided. This is what democracy truly is. The rule of the few who agree over the many who disagree.
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