The term “tyranny of the majority” was coined by Alexis DeTocqueville. The concept had previously been explored by John Locke and John Stuart Mill and also greatly influenced the founders of the United States, who preferred a decentralized, federal republican form of government as opposed to a pure democracy. The concept is simple: without a rule of law that stands over and against the majority, 51% of the population could democratically kill or enslave the other 49%. Obviously, the greater the majority, the greater the risk.
But if this tendency to harm the minority is the centrifugal force of democracy, there is an equal and opposite centripetal force that is less obvious: the “tyranny of the minority.”
We have all seen this in action.
Let’s look at some real-world scenarios.
Coworkers
A project team of eight software engineers has decided to celebrate a successful new release with a fun activity Friday after work at the local bowling alley. This has been the plan since Monday. Morale is high, and the team is working well together. However, Friday morning, Joe starts grousing about the plan. He already bowls in a league. The lanes are too crowded. The beer is expensive. He asks the group to reconsider. How about going to the baseball game instead?
The other seven are unmoved. They have already planned it. They have a reservation. They are looking forward to it. Joe digs in, and says that he won’t be coming. He is going to go to the game. The other guys are annoyed (Joe is always complaining about something). They try to reason with him. They try to bargain with him. This only seems to make the situation worse. Frank is Joe’s roommate. Frank knows that if they go bowling, he will have to listen to Joe complain all weekend. He also knows that if he votes with the majority, Joe will be ugly to him for who knows how long.
So Frank begins to act as the “peacemaker.”
Frank proposes a “compromise.” Maybe they could just go to the game this time instead, and go to the bowling alley for the next release. Besides, the game won’t be crowded this time, and there is a special on beer. But the other guys are not budging.
Except for Bill.
Bill is Frank’s brother-in-law, and doesn’t want his wife mad at him. Bill says that he would rather go to the bowling alley, but it would be better to keep the group together. Fred is the project manager, and is hoping to discuss some testing issues before then end of the day and wants the team working together. Fred is concerned that breaking the group up will cause problems on the project. Fred now suggests the baseball game instead of bowling. George is the new guy who is sucking up to Fred hoping for a promotion – and quickly agrees with the boss. Nobody is now arguing for the bowling alley. The decision to go to the game is “unanimous.”
So within the span of a few minutes, a 7-1 super-majority consensus has been turned on its head. Everyone is puzzled as to how this happened. And everybody except Joe unenthusiastically heads to the baseball game that nobody really wants to go to. Joe is giddy that he was able to get his way. Frank is not happy, but he has selfishly avoided problems for himself this weekend, and justifies it by having proposed a “win-win compromise.” Morale has slumped. Nobody really wants to hang out this weekend.
Family
When the family patriarch Roger died, his wife Anna, their grown children, and the grandkids gathered at an Italian restaurant after the funeral. To take the pressure off of Anna for the family’s weekly Sunday meals, the family decided to have lunch there every Sunday as a kind of new family custom.
Two years later, the tradition was going strong. The family had grown closer together, and a relationship was forged with the owner of the restaurant, the staff, and even some of the other regular customers. Everybody was happy… all except Doug.
Doug has a personality disorder. He is probably bi-polar, but is undiagnosed. His wife Sally frequently gets frustrated with him. Sally’s parents (Roger and Anna) were never very happy with Doug, and his behavior was a constant strain on the family. It seems that there is always turmoil and drama surrounding Doug.
One day, as the family gathered as usual in the parking lot after everyone met there from church, Doug proposes that the family go to the Chinese buffet instead. He insists that the waitress at the Italian restaurant had snubbed him last week. Everybody knows this is not true. The rest of the family blows off his claim. Doug begins to get irritated. He makes up a story about dirty dishes and cockroaches in the restroom. A couple of his brothers-in-law roll their eyes and tell him that no restaurant is perfect. This family gathering is Roger’s legacy, and Doug needs to respect the tradition of the family that he married into. Doug then goes for broke and makes up a story about the manager being a racist. He heard him using bigoted language toward customers last week. Nobody believes this for a minute.
At this point, Doug’s wife Sally – knowing that this is not true, but realizing that she has to live with Doug – begins to waffle. Maybe Doug has a point. Their father was not a racist, and if the manager at the Italian restaurant is racist, the family should not patronize the restaurant any more. She begins to dig in her heels, and also makes up a story about a fly in her soup and a dirty knife. Doug and Sally start to recite a litany of the staff being rude.
Sally’s mother Anna sees where this is headed, and doesn’t want her daughter to be estranged. She knows it isn’t true, but figures that it’s easier to go along and get along – which is how the family always deals with Doug. Alison, the eldest daughter and the self-appointed leader of the family, begins to condemn both racism and dirty dishes, and says that the family needs to respect mother’s wishes. Her husband Ned, for obvious reasons, capitulates quickly. There is suddenly no more opposition to Doug – which is how it usually goes.
The family begins to eat at the Chinese buffet that nobody really likes. Rumors are spread in the community that the manager of the Italian restaurant is a racist and the restaurant is filthy. Doug is pleased that he is the “boss” of the family. Sally is depressed that she constantly has to placate her crazy husband. The rest of the family seethes secretly at Doug and Sally, but says nothing out of respect for Anna, their mother and grandmother. They go along to get along.
One malcontent thus overrides the choices of 23 otherwise happy people.
Politics
The people of the Republic of Populania are 45% conservative and 45% liberal. This 90% of the population is culturally and politically tolerant. They are of the same ethnic background, culture, and religion. The country also has a 10% minority that has a different religion, worldview, and philosophy of politics. They are not committed to peace at the expense of their cultural identity.
Every election, the conservative and liberal candidates square off. Each one garners 45% of the polling data. Without the help of the 10% minority, neither candidate can win. So the conservatives and the liberals both outdo each other in pandering to the minority – whose demands become increasingly shrill, intolerant, and unreasonable. The majority is unhappy at being taken for granted by the politicians, but that changes nothing. The liberal and conservative candidates often don’t even show their faces in majority provinces, spending all of their time, money, and promises on the minority.
As a result, the parliament grants the minority group special set-asides, tax exemptions, their own museums and narratives in school, and special representation and jobs in the government – while the majority is first ignored, then disparaged by the state-run schools, universities, government bureaus, and other state institutions. Ancient Populanian monuments to war heroes are toppled, street names are changed, and even history books are rewritten in order to placate the militant minority.
Populania prides itself on its “democracy,” but it is really an oligarchy ruled by a small but vocal minority and the quislings who ride the backs of the oligarchy to power.
What’s the Deal?
Antagonists in the Chu...
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I figured that I could not have been the first to observe this “tyranny of the minority” phenomenon in action. This is common in groups of friends, teammates, churches (see Antagonists in the Church by Kenneth Haugk), civic organizations, and other situations of groups of people gathered together. It seems like the ones who complain the most, who are the most obnoxious and inflexible, the ones who are the least civilized and most abrasive – actually run the show. Such people seem to go unchallenged, and groups and institutions decline or even collapse, all the while, there is actually a strong majority that could have kept the organization going along just fine.
The minority seems to bully the majority more often than the opposite.
But it does seem like the minority has to be inclined to bullying (or at least rather inflexible), to be able to rule over the majority.
For example, if 90% of a mostly Christian community supports the ringing of church bells in the neighborhood, but 10% object, almost certainly, the church bells will be curtailed or abolished. But if the situation were to play out in a Muslim community, a 10% Christian or Atheist population would have no chance of getting the Islamic call to prayer on the loudspeakers cut back or stopped.
Muslims tend less toward compromise than Christians.
In western countries with a strong democratic tradition, even tiny minorities wield inordinate power. Very small sexual minorities have succeeded in changing the biological science-based definition of marriage with thousands of years of cultural and legal precedent – all while amounting to no more than 5% of the population. The trend continues, as the drum beats to normalize incest, polyamory, the use of sex robots, and even to move toward the normalization of pedophilia by pressure to reduce the legal and cultural age of consent. European governments are in the position of having to recognize child brides among small minorities in migrant populations. Even bestiality is now on the table.
In the US, a small but vocal – and often violent – minority of radicals, many quite young, who openly oppose free speech (and will use threats to shut it down), support Socialism/Communism, oppose the second amendment, and espouse intolerant and often race-based ideologies (ironically while decrying fascism and racism) seem to control everything from universities, to the display of public art, monuments, and historical antiquities. There is a push by a minuscule minority to eradicate the legacy of Thomas Jefferson, and even to change the name of the nation’s capital, the national anthem, and the flag of the United States – over and against a strong majority that opposes them. And the revolutionary minority may well get their way in due time.
Skin in the Game
My search for a discussion and explanation of this phenomenon ended when I discovered Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book: Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life.
In this book, the author makes the bold claim that “minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.”
Chapter two is entitled “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority.”
In it, Taleb examines what he calls “the minority rule.” He demonstrates the economic incentive for food producers to make everything kosher or halal, rather than not. Although practicing Muslims are a fairly small minority in Britain, it makes more financial sense for fast food restaurants to oppose the tastes of the majority and refuse to sell pork products.
He also runs through what he calls “renormalization,” a scenario in which a small intransigent minority gradually influences the people around them to gradually become a bloc to be reckoned with, then a plurality, then the majority (though not really). This essentially gives a minority of only 3-5% a veto on the actions of the majority. He looks at examples from history and from the writings of Kurt Goedel and Karl Popper to explain how this works.
In a footnote, he says, “All it takes is, say a 3% minority for ‘Merry Christmas’ to become ‘Happy Holidays.'” He explains that when the numbers are more equal, there seems to be more tolerance for the majority.
He concludes: “Society doesn’t evolve by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meetings, academic conferences, tea and cucumber sandwiches, or polling; only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is an asymmetric rule somewhere – and someone with soul in the game. And asymmetry is present in about everything.”
What to do about the Tyranny of the -Oraties?
Given that we live in a republican social and political model that has been increasingly shifting towards democracy – especially in the last hundred years – how can a majority protect itself from the tyranny of the minority? How can the dominant western culture – which brought the world equality before the law, tolerance of ethnic groups and of diverse ideas, and a culture of liberty – protect itself from both the Scylla of the tyranny of the minority and the Charybdis of becoming the tyrannical majority?
Taleb’s book is quirky and provocative. It challenges conventional wisdom while pointing to phenomena that most of us have seen, experienced, and are at a loss to explain – and to counter.
