Tuesday, November 4, 2025

No political system that depends widespread agreement will work: a simple mathematical proof

Let us say that 99% of people agree on a particular statement of moral principles. It doesn't matter what this statement is we'll just call it statement X. Statement X says things ought to be a certain way on this particular topic. 

Now let us say that you start with a small group of people and you Begin to scale up to larger and larger numbers. If you have a hundred people and the probability of them all agreeing to the values of statement X, and 99% of them agree, then the probability that every single one of them will agree in a population of 300 will be 4.86%, or 297 out of 300.

At 1,000 people the probability they will all agree is only 0.00432% and at a million people is is almost impossible for them to agree, and the number who disagree is about 10,000 people give or take a couple of hundred. 

In real life the rate of agreement for most political values is much lower, and thus the rate of decline in probability of universal agreement is much steeper. This means that any political system that requires agreement on any set of values is destined to encounter resistance. It also means that the more values it expects to impose on people the more resistance it can expect to receive. The values themselves are factorial, so expecting people to agree on three values is exponentially less likely to occur then expecting them to agree on two values, which is exponentially less likely to occur than agreeing on one value.

Thus, all political systems employ force against those who disagree. Also the more people are expected to agree the more force the system requires to achieve harmonious conduct. These people do not actually agree, they just shut up. Universal agreement has never been achieved and never will but lots of authoritarian regimes achieve lots of silence. 

The mark of an authoritarian is expecting everyone to agree. The mark of a totalitarian is expecting everyone to agree on more than one value. This is because the inevitable result of expecting agreement is using force, since the probability of achieving universal agreement is vanishingly small in large groups, and even more vanishingly small when multiple values are involved.

Expecting every person to agree that racism is bad is a delusional expectation. One might only get 99% of them to agree. Expecting them to agree that both racism and homophobia are bad it's exponentially less likely. Expecting them to agree that racism and homophobia are bad, AND that they should submit their children to gender changing castration, is even more exponentially improbable. Expecting them all agree that racism and homophobia are bad, AND that castrating their children is acceptable, AND that replacing them with migrants is acceptable, is even more exponentially improbable.

If even one of these values you expect them to have achieves agreement at only like 50 to 70% it throws everything off.

As the number of agreed upon values increases the probability of violent pushback exponentially increases. This is because the values were never actually agreed upon and only silence was achieved. Each additional moral imperative involves an exponential increase in the probability of disagreement and pushback.

If 50% agree on value X 
If 70% agree on value Y
If 65% agree on value Z

Then the probability of universal agreement is 50% * 70% * 65%, or 22.75%.

In a democracy you need 50% + 1 to win elections.

23% does not a winning coalition make. 



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