Drunk With Power

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't written for a while. Let's see how long I can go before I stop again!

The other day I was playing Settlers of Catan with some friends. (Ronnie and his brother in law Baumer(spelling?)) So we were playing and Ronnie went mostly for development cards (like he always does) and got several victory point cards leading him to hit 10 points and win while Baumer and I were still both pretty far behind. We were all having fun, so we all decided to up the winning score to 12. The way the game was going though Ronnie won again in just a turn or two by playing a couple of knight cards and getting the largest army. Again we decided to continue playing, this time just kind of indefinitely.

It was at that time we introduced a new dynamic that, though we didn't know it at the time, would change the game dramatically. We decided to vote to make it so that Baumer and I could build our settlements only one road away instead of the normally required two roads, but Ronnie had to follow the normal rules. All of us had agreed to that, even Ronnie, though he was kind of iffy about it, and we were like, hmm maybe we should only change stuff with unanimous vote. It was working fairly well and we were all still having fun. Ronnie was still ahead by a bit and getting tons of cards especially on one number(5 I think) he would get 6 sheep cards. Well, we decided that we wanted in on that action so we decided to put in a modest tax, Ronnie would get 4 sheep cards and Baumer and I would both get one. This time however, he wouldn't vote for it, but we decided hey, we have a majority, and the 'bank' is over on our side. This changed the voting dynamic by switching it to majority rule.

Once we were allowed to make decisions with just the two of us, we started going a little crazy. First we could make any 2 for 1 card trade in without having to be on the proper port. Next we could have two turns each turn. (none of these applied to Ronnie, he was stuck with the original rules) Since we started to have so many cards, we decided that if a seven was rolled we wouldn't lose any cards. At this point it started getting pretty crazy. We had the whole pile of different resources so often we started counting each card as two resources instead of one. Baumer invented 'mega-cities' that gave four resources each roll. Over this time we slowly increased the tax on Ronnie. It got so bad that he ended up not getting any cards. He would only get a card if he normally received an odd amount. Finally he got enough cards to upgrade one of his settlements (by this point both Baumer and I were far ahead of Ronnie) but right at that time we decided that we would confiscate his cards and split them between us! Not too long after that we decided to stop playing.

Luckily Ronnie was a pretty good sport about it, and we all had fun. The whole time we were making jokes, like at the beginning saying that we could build closer together because we're just the peasants we don't need space while Ronnie's people needed to stay apart for aesthetics and tourism etc. Later on Ronnie was begging for wheat because his people were starving. It brought up some interesting thoughts for me, about majority rule and how a tyranny of the majority can come about. It all started out so innocently, and even with a unanimous vote. Once we started though, whenever we hit a problem we were just like "Legislation!" and Baumer and I would vote yes, not even bothering to find out how Ronnie voted half the time. Early on it was more about making it even, but once we got even and even passed Ronnie, we still didn't include him in the perks of the legislation. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was just a case of the 'it's always been that way' where once we made him the 'other' it was just easy to keep him there.

Thinking about this, I was reminded about how over the last couple years I've heard a lot of talk about majority vote, though not specifically talking about the idea. It's mainly been talk about 'the majority voted, and here is what came of it, and that's just the way it is now'. This bothered me, though to be honest, I don't know if I would have cared as much if I was against some of the things that got voted for to begin with. Thinking about it though, how just is a majority vote? Is it okay for 51% of the population to decide what the other 49% has to live with? I personally don't think so, especially so when the 49% are voting essentially to 'do nothing' rather than add legislation. However, if we say 51% isn't enough, what is enough? 60? 75? 100? Whatever is chosen there will almost invariably be someone opposed. For me, I think Rousseau had the idea when he professed two rules to regulate the relation between equality and unanimity:

"First, the more grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to prevail approach unanimity. Secondly, the more the matter in hand calls for speed, the smaller the prescribed difference in the numbers of votes may be allowed to become: where an instant decision has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough. The first of these two rules seems more in harmony with the laws, and the second with practical affairs. In any case, it is the combination of them that gives the best proportions for determining the majority necessary."<sup>[1]

[1]</sup>Rousseau. The Social Contract. bk. 4, ch. 2.