[lbo-talk] Arrow (Was Re: law)

John Adams jadams01 at sprynet.com
Thu Sep 9 20:38:44 PDT 2004


On Thursday, September 9, 2004, at 11:24 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> By way of illustration, the economist Kennth Arrow has
> a theorem -- a mathematical proof -- that four or five
> absolutely fundamental and completely obvious
> conditions for democracy are inconsistent.

If I remember correctly--seems like David Duke was running for Senate that year, so it would've been '90 when we had the seminar--Arrow's work is specific to voting systems. This was given by the math department, though, so I can't swear whoever presented interpreted him correctly. (Didn't Arrow get a Nobel Prize in economics for this? There was some discussion during the seminar about whether the math of it was worthy--I seem to recall suggesting it was the cleverness of his application of the math that was being recognized, but then, that's the sort of argument I make around people more knowledgeable than myself.)


> That doesn't make us think, oops, better go with
> dictatorship. It makes us think there is something
> funny about Arrow's proof, although no one has been
> able to say just what.

I recall the interpretation of his work as being a bit different--more that no single voting system can be guaranteed to accurately represent majority will given all possible election results. It's been a long time, though, and I was busy that fall, so I'm not shocked if I misremember.

All the best,

John A



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