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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress.

The problem is not in democracy itself as a concept. In both the open-source world and in society itself, the problems arise only when the demos (the population) either grow disinterested in democracy or is small in numbers.

As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason. In the case of projects such as Debian to reduce the chance of solo maintainers quitting over frustration about being overruled, in democracies to prevent atrocities and hold up human rights for vulnerable people (e.g. disabled).

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> As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason.

There is plenty of evidence for the theory proposed by Taleb[0] on this one, he wrote:

"It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences."

[0] The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

There is the political/sociological meaning of the word "minority" that you seem to refer to, and there is the linguistic/logical/mathematical meaning (those who are not in majority or a small group).

I am pretty sure the use in the phrase you object to is of the latter form.

>> As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason.

I digress, but how are these protections an inherent feature of democracies. Even in a democracy (most democracies are representation democracies) people can vote for policies which may discriminate against people. This would be again democracy in action.

they are a feature of _liberal_ democracies.

In a liberal democracy, it is understood that the will of the majority is not the only thing that matters. For example, having the majority vote to strip a minority from their religious freedoms is not OK.

The irony is the good parts of "democracy" aren't actually the democratic bits at all, but rather a basic respect for civil liberties (a.k.a. natural laws) which are subject to neither democratic votes nor authoritarian decrees. The key is not to lose sight of the fact that what the majority wills is not always right.

This is why attempts to impose democracy from outside tend to fail. Giving people the vote doesn't automatically lead to respect for their fellow citizens' civil liberties, which is much more fundamental.

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