Veritasium - 2024-08-27
Democracy might be mathematically impossible – here’s why. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial and get 20% off an annual premium subscription. If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically. https://snatoms.com/ ▀▀▀ Massive thanks to Prof. Eric Maskin for helping with the script. Thanks to Chris Dong for inspiring this video. Massive thanks to Latif Nasser for being part of this video. Massive thanks to Curtis Gilberts, and to Radiolab -- listen to their great episode on voting systems here https://radiolab.org/podcast/tweak-vote ▀▀▀ A few great proofs of Arrow’s impossibility theorem: Yu, N. N. (2012). A one-shot proof of Arrow's impossibility theorem. Economic Theory, 523-525.- https://ve42.co/Yu2012 Geanakoplos, J. (2005). Three brief proofs of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Economic Theory, 26(1), 211-215. - https://ve42.co/Geanakoplos2005 References: Arrow, K. J. (2012). Social choice and individual values (Vol. 12). Yale university press. - https://ve42.co/Arrow2012 Arrow, K. J. (1950). A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare. Journal of Political Economy - https://ve42.co/Arrow1950 Black, D. (1948). On the rationale of group decision-making. Journal of political economy, 56(1), 23-34. - https://ve42.co/Black1948 Black, D. (1969). On Arrow's impossibility theorem. The Journal of Law and Economics, 12(2), 227-248. - https://ve42.co/Arrow1969 Maskin, E., & Sen, A. (2014). The Arrow impossibility theorem. Columbia University Press. - https://ve42.co/Maskin2014 Gehrlein, W. V., & Valognes, F. (2001). Condorcet efficiency: A preference for indifference. Social Choice and Welfare - https://ve42.co/Gehrlein2001 Dardanoni, V. (2001). A pedagogical proof of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Social Choice and Welfare, 18(1), 107-112. - https://ve42.co/Dardanoni2001 McCune, D., & Wilson, J. (2023). Ranked-choice voting and the spoiler effect. Public Choice, 196(1), 19-50. - https://ve42.co/McCune2023 Santucci, J. (2021). Variants of ranked-choice voting from a strategic perspective. Politics and Governance, 9(2), 344-353. - https://ve42.co/Santucci2021 Kaminski, M. M. (2018). Spoiler effects in proportional representation systems: evidence from eight Polish parliamentary elections, 1991–2015. Public Choice, 176(3), 441-460. - https://ve42.co/Kaminski2018 Brams, S. J., & Fishburn, P. C. (1978). Approval voting. American Political Science Review, 72(3), 831-847. - https://ve42.co/Brams1978 Other references and election results - https://ve42.co/IODRefs Images & Video: Minneapolis 2013 Debate Images: https://ve42.co/Minn2013Debate 4 Images from this article: https://ve42.co/MinnDebateMPR Arrow Nobel Prize Image from NYT Article: https://ve42.co/ArrowNYT ▀▀▀ Special thanks to our Patreon supporters: Adam Foreman, Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Bill Linder, Blake Byers, Bruce, Burt Humburg, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, I. H., Jack Cuprill, John H. Austin, Jr., Josh Hibschman, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, TTST, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, gpoly, john kiehl, meg noah, wolfee ▀▀▀ Directed by Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller Written by Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller Edited by Trenton Oliver Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek and Ivy Tello Filmed by Derek Muller Additional Research by Gabriel Bean Produced by Petr Lebedev, Derek Muller, Gabriel Bean, Rob Beasley Spence, Emily Lazard, Luke Lewis Thumbnail contributions by Jakub Misiek, Ren Hurley, Peter Sheppard Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images Music from Epidemic Sound #democracy #voting #mathematics
Good video, now let’s watch it
😂
Another banger by riot kassadin
🤣
Not if I watch it first
@@gustavosedano294 "The balance of power must be reserved" - Kassadin F. Kennedy
The pivotal voter thing doesn’t make sense, because it’s not actually an individual person. You shuffle up the votes, and one random ballot happens to be the pivotal voter. No one knows who it is ahead of time, and even more important, that vote being pivotal relies on all other voters having made a specific decision. Had they voted different, that would no longer be the pivotal vote.
You don’t need one when it’s rigged…. Biden should be president for another 4 years. Long live King Joe.
Yeah, the "dictator" ends up being a random person, who doesn't even know they're the dictator for that election.
It's one of those math things that doesn't translate to real life as well. Having one determining vote is how voting works sometimes, that's why you always use an odd number of voters, so in the event of a tie, one vote will break that tie.
Why do you want to prove that dictator Trump is a way to go? Russians money again?
In this field it's hard to make the explanations make sense intuitive, because the conclusions are sometimes not but also the terminology is confusing. Unfortunately Arrow's theorem does mean that it's not just a pivotal voter who is unknown before the election. It means that the rule of the election is "look at how this person voted, and say that is how society votes". Unless it is such a rule (the dictator can be selected randomly, but it's not just a coincidence, it is a pre determined person outside of the vote counting process) you cannot have both unanimity and independence of irrelevant alternatives. It's a looser rule in special cases, but no generalized ranked system passes.
It does make sense, though it is difficult to highlight constructively. First you show that any 'dictatorship' (i.e., a voting system with a pivotal voter) satisfies the other 4 conditions. Then, you assume that a voting system satisfies all rules except potentially the non-dictatorship rule. You can then show rigorously (with the type of argument that was presented in the video) that there MUST be a pivotal voter. You can't know which person it is because you are making a general argument for all voting systems. But you did show that every such voting system must have a pivotal voter.
1:17 I think you made a mistake by including Belarus here, as a Belarusian I can say that it is more a dictatorship. We had the same presidents for 30 years and it is not because everyone wanted him to stay, but because he wanted to stay and the majority didn’t.
I have a friend from Belarus, an online friend whom I met on reddit. Her descriptions were errie, at least i felt that way for her as uni students are restricted by vile system, policies, and corrupt authorities.
I hope the situation becomes good in the upcoming time. Hare Krsna..
In Belrus votes are not counted. You can vote for whoever but when votes are not counted all that is doesn’t matter.
Бело-красно-белое либеральное дерьмо, спокуха.
The problem is, every poll that was ever made shows that Lukashenko is head and shoulders above everyone else, so how do you know he isn't popular? Oh right, it's because of anecdotes, some of them are personal, others spread by MSM. Of course it works other way too, all of these polls are state controlled, so technically they could be manipulated.
As for 30 years in a row, given an opportunity, people tend to vote for the same president. In Finland we voted Kekkonen for 28 years. But this isn't an outlier, we always voted for the incumbent, it's just most of them pre 1991 term limit, didn't even run for the second term. But this status quo preference isn't mathematical.
Which elections are made up is a can of worms for a different video on entirely different channel, here he showed correctly what voting system are in use.
Boycott democracy voting system....only religion scholar should select the PM via consultation (shura)
I absolutely loathe the first-past-the-post voting. My entire life we've ended up with a system where everyone votes AGAINST the candidate they dislike the most rather than voting FOR the candidate they actually support the most. The amount of disinformation that has been spread when we've tried referendums to move to proportional representation or alternatives is infuriating.
why is that a problem? Sometimes that's the choice you face as a country - it says more about the political climate in your country than your voting system. And arguably getting rid of the guy you don't want to be in charge is the single most important requirement of a voting system.
Exactly, Biden should be president for another 4 years.
Like this comment if you want a man in office
US or UK?
you can only have one unified entity that is the administration. it can never be representative. so called representative systems are not representative at all, since there is coalition building that is entirely out of control of the voters.
18:40 that pivotal voter isn't really a dictator though, because he requires all the other voters to set up the scenario in which he would become, unknowingly, the pivotal voter. That pivotal voter would never know or be able to abuse their dictatorial status in practice?
The grain of sand that tips the scale isn't a dictator. Edit: I understand that this question is largely philosophical and has little bearing on a scientific debate/discussion but I felt it's worth examining for the sake of the larger conversation about where autonomy of the voter ends.
They become, mathematically, the dictator that changed the outcome for everyone.
Doesn't matter if there's only 2 choices, you'd never know who the pivotal vote would be, but with 3 or more choices you can construct scenarios where you can find the single ranking that influences the outcome (which is what is shown in the video, the position doesn't matter).
Doesn't mean it has to happen every time, heck the more voters there are, the less likely it will be. But if you can mathematically show the case can exists, the voting system isn't "perfect" enough to adhere to that condition.
@yak-i4c this is exactly what I was thinking while watching. Ignoring the definition of "dictator" to prove that one exists.
I hope this comment gets more traction. Can't ignore the definition of dictator in order to prove that a dictator exists.
100% agree. One can only be a dictator with the foreknowledge that their vote is pivotal. If you can't leverage your "power", you have none. You're best off just voting your heart.
The pivotal voter only becomes a thing if there's discussion and negotiation where everyone knows how many votes they have (like what happens in Congress) versus just having an election day where everyone goes in and votes and nobody has any idea what the vote count is. Even in the first case, that only happens if only 1 voter is willing to negotiate and the others are immovable. But that's more a testament to how negotiating in politics can get you favors.
The worst problem with FPTP is that the current two parties will forever block changing it.
yep it's quite contradictory. how do you vote for a better voting system under a bad voting system?
Well in Australia the 2 party preferred system is worser that FPTP, the current dude only got 30% of the votes and got in.
Exactly this.
Support the Equal Vote Coalition and help us get past this challenge! Ballot initiatives, city council ordinances and pressure from citizens can make it happen.
The good thing is not all politicians staunchly align with their party. City council members understand the issues with FPTP and some are open to change.
@@rasta77-x7o You mean 30% of the FIRST PREFERENCE votes. Preferential voting will always be objectively better because it considers multiple candidates for individual votes. If you believe in a democratic society then you should not be rooting for fptp...
Thanks!
You're welcome
Thank me
14:13 Imagine being awarded a Nobel Prize for essentially saying, "Look everyone, I've mathematically proven why we can't have nice things."
Introducing 5 axioms, misinterpreting one of those axioms to show a contradiction and get a Nobel prize for it.
What a joke
@@sweatyeti good summary of 20th century voting malaise? In any case, better tests are here…
@@lukamiler5824 Which one? The one about the pivotal voter or...?
@@lukamiler5824 Could you explain the flaws in the theorem please?
well his work did lead to us now understanding why rated voting systems are probably the only systems that work- it may not have been his intention but it was informative enough for us to avoid the slander that rated voting systems could have accumulated, people will criticise anything without any understanding of it just because it could inconvenience them. It is like how when you do a multiple choice question it may be easier to prove why everything else is wrong than to prove why the answer is right.
In Europe, with proportional voting, parties form coalitions after elections, because it's very rare for one party to win a majority of districts. In the US, coalitions are formed IN parties. That's an inevitable results of 'winner takes all' elections, and the fact that it's impossible to get a majority to agree on every significant issue.
@@caldodgethis is a total myth. Even duverger himself noted that countries which use a top two runoff tend to escape duopoly. There's absolutely zero reason to expect single winner districts to produce a duopoly. What produces a duopoly is the plurality voting method.
Plus the person put in charge is not voted for directly, but the coalition selects them. They can't go against the will of the government or people, and the government reflects the mix of the people in the country much better, even if the voting system would be slightly off.
I was looking for the words but you summed up my thoughts perfectly.
I think the American perspective on democracy is culturally different from some of the Europe and prone to misunderstandings. It's complicated to explain every system and would probably take a lot of videos to cover I believe.
Who needs districts if your country is x times smaller than the average US state?😅🥳 Still, election results can go against the will of the majority, albeit partially. Forming a coalition can mean that the least liked party will be in government for example and the second most liked is not.
Speaking from experience, having no say in who becomes prime minister or who takes a seat in the senate can be a bit of a bummer as well.
Looking at our own version of MAGA-ism, even though our guy has been bothering our parliament for far longer than Trump, our version of democracy is definitely far from perfect at this moment. But that has more to do with the way people "do" politics these days and the ways people (don't (care to)) inform themselves i guess.
Now, can you guess where i'm from?😅
This. Everyone's vote is heard proportional to the number of people who voted for the party. It's only winner take all that is stupid.
We don't need perfection, we need improvement. An outcome more reflective of the will people will be better than the one that is less reflective.
In a time when voter confidence in our election system is at an all-time low, the title of this video is very irresponsible. "It's crooked, but it's the only game in town?" Why not just regurgitate everything Fox News says? 🙄 You're the Ralph Nader of this election.
at the very least I don't want my ballot to essentially be a true or false between two parties.
Exactly this.
All problems with better way to vote are like "But imagine there is only 3 people voting, and they exactly line up with this or that!"
It never happens IRL. And in the so very unlikely even that it does, just redo the vote, people will change their mind. Heck, maybe even remove the least favorite one.
But, yeah, that's the problem with maths, they forget the real world application.
Country population are counted in millions, one person won't change a thing because such a huge number of people can't think the same thing.
And voting for one candidate only is really bad.
Even more if you have, like here in France, a two turn based election!
It's awful really.
@@williamyoung9401 definetly
@@williamyoung9401 You leave MSNBC out of this!
I think you have achieved wisdom. I don't think anyone here will put one and one together, for the videos you've made during this year. You have my compliments.
Title: “Why Democracy is Impossible”
Video: “Why ranked choice voting only works 99% of the time”
and they actually left out a key potential issue with ranked choice too, in Australia a few years back a candidate with only 17 number 1 votes was elected to the senate due to preference deals. He served with honour, but that's the clearest actual real world problem with the system, preference deals between candidates
My thoughts precisely. I mean YEAH there are SOME inaccuracies, but then again it's not like first pass the post system ACTUALLY reflects the will of the people.
Heck, make it simple: As many Candidates as people present themselves, every voter gets 3 choices. 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, 3rd Choice.
The one with the most points wins. Simple as that. Afterall while that person might not be the MOST favourite candidate, they ARE the candidate that most people are reasonably happy with.
Heck, give the people the choice to forgo their 2nd and 3rd choice, a la 'Bernie or Bust!' style if they REALLY want to.
But in that case they shouldnt be surprised if they end up with a candidate they dont like at all.
It's getting sad to see how greedness is affecting good science channels...
Conclusion: Derek's cIickbait strategy works 99% of the time.
I mean if you watch his videos, you know it's usually involves math or science. Thus his title makes sense within the context of his video. Mathematically a democracy would be something where it's free and fair every time. 99 percent free and fair would not make the mark of a democracy. He didn't even cover the peciluar way that the US elects its president. The electoral college works 93 percent of the time.
The truth is, in reality, all the methods he talked about are practiced by many different democracies we all recognize as democracies, whether they use first past the post, ranked choices, or an electoral college system. If you actually clicked on a Veritasium video and expected the host to make a political argument that democracy is impossible, you must have never seen any of his videos before. I knew when I clicked on the video he would make a mathematical argument why, not some actual political argument that democracy is impossible.
What's Mathematically Impossible is to have a winner-takes-all voting system that's representative of the electorate. If you want to represent the electorate accurately you have to let go of the winner-takes-all system and adopt a representative democracy where parties are awarded seats in parliament proportional to their vote share in a general election.
Yes. Imagine 100 candidates... A winner would then be determined by 1% + 1 vote. Clearly not the choice of the majority of the population.
United States is not a Democracy.
Good idea BUT if there is no majority in parliament then none of the law can be pushed through
@@Nonixificationthey could just push the laws that a majority does agree with. You know, like getting pizza, indian or Chinese food... You can still get a majority.
Lost of countries have systems that don't use the "winner takes all" system. And it also leads to less extreme choices. But it means that multiple parties will need to work together, and negotiate, to get something they all can somewhat agree on.
The "winner takes all" will always lead to a two-party system, and always to very bad politics IMHO.
@@Nonixification I really hope I am misunderstanding you here, because what you said is very silly
Cool, but doesn't this (especially Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) assume that the votes of the citizens are known ahead of time, so that the 'pivotal voter' can change the vote one way or the other? In reality, elections wouldn't actually hinge on a single voter, as they wouldn't be able to know how others ranked their choices exactly.
In the end, the problem with the current system is not really certain people affecting the vote more than others, but the outcome does not really represent the majority's wishes, especially when you consider the Electoral College and gerrymanderin in the US (Europe and other places luckily doesn't have Electoral College, but I believe gerrymandering is still a problem). Particularly with approval voting, both problems disappear mostly, but it is crystal clear that ANY ranked choice method is almost guaranteed to be better than (meaning, a more representative democracy than) what we have now. So it is INSANE to insist on the current system.
The only logical argument would be that it is 'easier to understand', and that makes this that much more insane! Hundreds of millions of people, afraid of primary school level maths and logic...
It's not about changing votes or outcomes (or actually exerting the power of a "dictator"). It's just about those 5 demands being mutually incompatible. There cannot exist a voting system that satisfied all of them. That's all.
No it becomes apparent after the fact (or rather during the counting).
A basic outline of the proof:
1. You assume you have a voting system where IIA and transitivity hold for any possible combination of votes.
2. You show that in this system, by transitivity and IIA, if every vote ranks B either at the top or the bottom, so must the social welfare function.
3. You show that given step 3, there is some “pivotal” voter that determines B’s ranking relative to AC. Note at this step, the “pivotal” voter is just a tipping point (point of no return), not a true dictator.
4. Now, you show that regardless of how every other voter ranks A relative to C, by assuming IIA the social welfare functions relative rank of A and C must mirror this pivotal voters relative rank of A and C. This shows that there is some voter that fully determines the relative rank between A and C, regardless of how anyone else votes (i.e. is a dictator over AC). Call this voter voter x.
5. By similar logic, there is some voter y that fully determines the relative rank between A and B, and some voter z that fully determines the relative rank between B and C.
6. Without loss of generality suppose voter y has A>B, voter z has B>C. Then the social welfare function has A>C by part 5. But this means that voter x is not a dictator over A and C, contradicting part 4. The only way to resolve this contradiction is that voter x is voter y and voter z. But this means that voter x is a relative dictator over AC, AB, and BC, making them a full dictator.
The dictator in this sense isn't consciously choosing to manipulate the voting, but their individual vote has more meaning than every single other vote which is against the common rules set out (that all votes are equal).
The video isn't a value proposition of FPTP vs RCV (and any other single winner election). Just that all of them are flawed whenever there are more than 2 choices.
Of course PR doesn't have any of these specific issues (but does have multiple other issues).
nice to see you here
Why does it matter, anyhow?
Conflating "democracy" with "deciding who wins an election" is missing a major point when the politicians will just do whatever they want once elected regardless of "promises"...
The main issue with Ranked Choice Voting is that voters will not be able to make educated guesses of each candidate and the possible combinations of runners. Also, a lot of people will not rank more than two candidates, so there will be a faux majority, because others did rank more than 2.
So when they say "we must protect our democracy" they're just referring to protecting the power they already have and suppressing anyone who tries to take that power away.
As a European, I was patiently waiting the entire video for him to mention that of course, democracy can take completely different forms wherein you don't have to elimimate a list of individuals down to one final victor, so that democracy does not necessarily have to stand or fall with this issue, but I was sorely disappointed.
As an American how do things tend to work over in Europe?
@@keltzar1 If party A gets 48% and party B and C gets 26% each, then party B and C can make a cooperative government and win, or if they cant agree, then Party A wins..
There will be alot more than 3 parties and there is alot of negotiation too see who will cooperate. If noone wants to cooperate, you might end up with a "minority government" wich would be is Party A ended up winning in the first example. Party B and C are not the rulers of the country, but they have a majority for votes and such, while the ruling party has a minority.
It can also happen that Party B and C cooperates, but decides to stop cooperating after a few years, then suddenly the winner is Party A.
All that being said.. I know nothing.. They teach us nothing in school, and what i believe i know i have deduced and infered from the elections i have voted in.
Thanks, that's 20min of my life I'm saving.
@@keltzar1 Imagine there's 100 seats up for election. If I get 2% of the vote I get 2 seats. etc. So you end up with a much more diverse Parliament. This type of system also has its problems and critics and on occasion lead to pretty chaotic and unstable Governing.
how anarcho syndicalist of you
Love the CGP Grey Cameo
"Hexagons are the bestagons"
More like CCP Gay
@@mphRagnarokskibidi toilet
@@mphRagnarokyou’re not sigma lil bro
Time stamp?
My man said "It's the best thing we got and only game in town" after a whole video of showing how there are many different ways of doing democracy, the worst possible one is used in most places in the world and the best we could figure out is not used anywhere
He’s referring to democracy as a system.
Not the winner takes all nature of American politics
Democracy good because everything else not as good
Exactly.. he was completely right with everything and then spat into the face of it at the end.
CLEARLY a better way is available but everyone just says “uhhh bad German man!1!!” without even looking into it.
@@loslingos1232 Not sure what you mean about the bad German. The video also hasn't mentioned direct democracy, referendums, council rule etc. Or anything about lobbying, media capture, manufacturing consent etc.
The practical problem of a hierarchical democratic organization of the whole state (federal government at the top, then state governments, then local governments, then companies and large families, i.e., clans) is more interesting than these theoretical musings. let's hope we get another video on this topic. After all, in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
“Holding many elections is a hassle”
Bulgaria with their 8 or 9 elections in the last 4 years:Amateurs
All this assumes that we are voting for a singular position to be filled by just one person. There is still proportionally representative voting.
could be different parties too tho
Exactly, proportional representation is a proven and effective form of democracy. Unlike the winner-takes-all system, which often distorts the true will of the voters, proportional representation ensures that the distribution of seats in a legislature more accurately reflects the percentage of votes each party receives. This results in a more representative and inclusive government, where even smaller parties and minority voices have a chance to be heard. The winner-takes-all system, on the other hand, often leads to disproportional outcomes and can entrench a two-party system, stifling diversity in political representation. In contrast, proportional representation encourages a more balanced and fair political landscape, making it a far more democratic approach.
The thing about proportional representation is that proportional representation can also result in extremely disproportional effective power. In the extreme case you can end up with a small party and two large ones just shy of 50% of the seats, and despite this, the small party has the same amount if effective power as the large ones, as any combination of 2 parties has a majority, and no single party has. Now imagine the two big parties being opposides that barely agree on anything, and the small party representing some narrow interest group that only carss about that and nothing else, and you end up with a small "kingmaker" group with way more influence than it's proportional vote.
@@kobyma2 In Denmark, the political landscape is both diverse and dynamic. There are approximately 14 political parties to choose from, at the moment, each offering a range of candidates that you can vote for personally. This personal voting system allows you to give your preferred candidate a significant boost, even if they are not at the top of the party list.
Coalitions in Denmark are highly flexible. If a party cannot secure the necessary mandates within its current coalition, it is free to seek support from other coalitions or parties. This flexibility encourages continuous negotiation and compromise, making the Danish political system both inclusive and representative.
Isn't this all assuming that by voting for a party, you support all their stances on all political issues/topics at this exact percentage? A voter's opinion isn't represented correctly in the first place since you don't vote for each topic separately
I am an engineer, not a mathematician. Let's not make practical the enemy of perfection. We should use the method with the least chance of undesired results. After all, little in life is perfect.
Exaclty, especially when we don't even agree on which necessary/sufficient conditions.
The least one with undesirable results? Tell me, how is democracy helping White people to secure their borders, any of them for that matter, on all of our countries. How is it the fertility rate? Happiness? Health? The safety of our families? It would be one thing if we just stopped having almost any children, but we are bombarded with legal and illegal immigrants across the whole of the West. We are 7% of the human population world wide, we are the minority and we are closing in to 0% in a 100 years, or becoming a tiny r4ce of sl4ves for 100's of years more. I don't understand this cheap, weak and cowardly 3rd rate philosophy which older men cling on to. You are leaving us with nothing but D3ATH.
So we don't Even try to make better things? I'm also an engineer, and I think that things that can be improved should be.
The least one with undesirable results? Tell me, how is democracy helping White people to secure their borders, any of them for that matter, on all of our countries. How is it the fertility rate? Happiness? Health? The safety of our families? It would be one thing if we just stopped having almost any children, but we are b0mbarded with legal and illegal immigrants across the whole of the West. We are 7% of the human population world wide, we are the minority and we are closing in to 0% in a 100 years, or becoming a tiny race of sl4v3s for 100's of years more. I don't understand this cheap, weak and cowardly 3rd rate philosophy which older men cling on to. You are leaving us with nothing but D34TH.
The least one with undesirable results? Tell me, how is democracy helping White people to secure their borders, any of them for that matter, on all of our countries. How is it the fertility rate? Happiness? Health? The safety of our families? It would be one thing if we just stopped having almost any children, but we are b0mbarded with legal and illegal immigr4nts across the whole of the West. We are 7% of the human population world wide, we are the minority and we are closing in to 0% in a 100 years, or becoming a tiny race of sl4v3s for 100's of years more. I don't understand this cheap, weak and cowardly 3rd rate philosophy which older men cling on to. You are leaving us with nothing but D34TH.
Now lets introduce a term "coalition" to this video.
I was going to mention that. It doesn’t has to be: winner takes all.
What if candidates get power in proportion to their vote? They can rule by consensus.
The real problem I see with Democracy is weakness against other powers ruled by Autocracy.
@@atscub you are on the money! I vote for A because I like rules from A and no one else, likewise for people who voted B etc etc
OH WAIT that's called a free market, lets skip voting and just pay for goods/services from people who are servicing us the way we like
@@shawnradkeExcept then you immediately deny the principle of democracy by ceding power to people with the most money. Not to mention the free market fails at providing ideal choices all the time.
@@bminecreeperyeah and also monopolies exist, they will just bankrupt anyone trying to offer a service so they are the only one that people can purchase from
ok yes that solves the parlament election problem but what about the presidental election? of course there can be a multiple round system but there are many problems with it which he talks about in the video
0:18 that’s a clip of the House of Lords in the U.K. parliament, famously known for not being elected but hopefully soon to change
Good catch
Thing is, all you got to do is look at the other chamber to really question "will that make it any better at all"
@ all you have to do is look at who Johnson elevated to the lords and then tell me if it will be better
@LiveDonkeyDeadLion my counter to this is look at who the population out in the commons.... to be clear I am 100% agreeing thsyswe need to clean house in the Lords, especially the ones you mentioned, but remember that very same baboon was voted in by the people you want to give control over it (the public). Loose loose
The house that built the World and the UK.
7:55 idk if I agree with this. Cuz if bohr gives a bad speech and gets less votes, presumably a portion of curies voters would also be dissuaded from voting bohr as second choice due to the bad speech. That is to say, I don't think it'd be a 50/50 split of curies votes in round 2
Well i think it would make sense to assume that before bohrs speech the second choice of curie voters was distributed 25:45 (Same as the initial ratio of first votes between Einstein and Bohr) and after the terrible speech it was closer to 50:50 (Like the Einstein Bohr First Vote Ratio after the speech). So while you're right that some Curie voters switched their second Vote from bohr to einstein it still makes perfect sense as long as the second votes of curie voters are similarly distributed as the First votes between Einstein and bohr
Maybe I'm missing something, but I definitely disagree with what is presented in the video. "Clearly this isn't something we want in a voting system"...? I don't see this as clear at all. Thats kind of the whole point in RCV, even if you're not the people's first choice, you are more closely aligned to how people want you to govern.
It also seems like the example has two first rounds of voting. No one would know what the numbers are before Bohr gave his bad speech or whatever.
i'm also not buying the example. the voters had 2 rounds to move away from Bohr
Also, why are Bohrs voters going to Einstein and not the more moderate Curie? If a candidate performs poorly, voters tend to go to their 2nd choice, which tends to be close to their political position. This example assumes voters swing all the way to the other side which makes no sense.
I disagree with that example also. Why did those voters who were turned off by Bohr's speech all go over to Einstein (who was vastly more unpopular overall) and none go to Curie? Even if just a third of the switching voters went to the centre, Curie would have still won.
love the CGP Grey references, he introduced voting systems to my mind sphere. Thanks Derek for further expanding on the topic, would love to see different scenarios for approval voting and +/-10 points voting
STAR voting is a nice system of rated voting
But one man alone is going to destroy it
or, just vote for any candidate you want. +10 and -10 adds complexity which isn't needed for approval voting
every scenario has problems, they want a winner not just several choices
3:39 I love that CGP Grey reference, perfectly fits with his voting videos. Great video!
Hexagons are perfectagons. :)
3:40 I see CGP Grey there haha
of course a hexagon shape too
I liked the CGP Grey reference. His videos about voting systems are phenomenal. They’re quite simple, but I love how he talked about them. Good job Derek! This is a great video!
Glad that someone else noticed the reference!
Veritasium even made him a hexagon!
CGP Grey's video was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this on my home page and the reference made me so happy while watching!
Not only the 'Hexagons are the bestagons' comment, but the hexagon having the similar glasses as Grey was nice touch.
Here is a better title: "Why Winner-takes-it-all Democracy is Mathematically Impossible".
The first theorem only applies if there is a single winner in every district.
Having actual proportional representation does not have these flaws.
Not quite true. The underlying problems still exists even with proportional representation, if based on rankings. It's just less noticeable because the PR "simulates" cardinal information in aggregate.
I was thinking "Why democracy isn't an abstract, rational, mathematical problem, but if it was we'd have a problem"
JOIN THE FIGHT FOR SUPER EARTH AND MANAGED DEMOCRACY!
It’s not about that, humans are humans period. We have terrible traits as a species and those have been exploited for so long we are programmed to it.
Less clickbaity you say?
That approval voting actually excites me. When you started explaining it I started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. That's pretty cool I would totally participate in that type of election
exactly!
@willcarter7079 (🤸 Like Approval? You Will do Carter -wheels for ⭐STAR! 😉)
I really hope you read this, even after 3 months. If Plurality, the way we vote now, is an F-minus (), Approval voting is a B+ or A-. There are still some ways it can be unfairly manipulated. However...
A better method, and a permanent solution to the USA's political issues, is ⭐ S.T.A.R. Voting! ✨ It's like this:
1) Rate as many or as few candidates you want out of all of them on a ballot, like a 5-star online review, from best (5) to worst (0, so actually 6 stars each on ballot 🙂), same rating is allowed;
2) Candidates with the 2 highest Score(s) Then Automatic(ally) Runoff (S.T.A.R.), with each ballot that rates a candidate higher than the other going to that candidate;
3) Most ballots wins!
Simple, Accurate, harder to cheat, harder for crazies to win. Less need for money & mudslinging. In fact, candidates that mudsling are more likely to lose, even more so than in Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Many more have heard of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), but that only gets a "C", maybe even a "D". Still way better than the "F-" we have now with the "classic" First Person Plurality Voting (or First Past the Post, FPP/FPtP). STAR Voting gets the highest "A" I've seen of many other A & B grade voting methods, including approval.
All it takes is State law or Federal law, not necessarily both. Call your congress(wo)men!! Legally and respectfully demand The Truth about ⭐STAR Voting and other methods until you get it!! --J
@willcarter7079 (🤸 Like Approval? You Will do Carter -wheels for ⭐STAR! 😉)
I really hope you read this, even after 3 months. If Plurality, the way we vote now, is an F-minus (), Approval voting is a B+ or A-. There are still some ways it can be unfairly manipulated. However...
A better method, and a permanent solution to the USA's political issues, is ⭐ S.T.A.R. Voting! ✨ It's like this:
1) Rate as many or as few candidates you want out of all of them on a ballot, like a 5-star online review, from best (5) to worst (0, so actually 6 stars each on ballot 🙂), same rating is allowed;
2) Candidates with the 2 highest Score(s) Then Automatic(ally) Runoff (S.T.A.R.), with each ballot that rates a candidate higher than the other going to that candidate;
3) Most ballots wins!
Simple, Accurate, harder to cheat, harder for crazies to win. Less need for money & mudslinging. In fact, candidates that mudsling are more likely to lose, even more so than in Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Many more have heard of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), but that only gets a "C", maybe even a "D". Still way better than the "F-" we have now with the "classic" First Person Plurality Voting (or First Past the Post, FPP/FPtP). STAR Voting gets the highest "A" I've seen of many other A & B grade voting methods, including approval.
All it takes is State law or Federal law, not necessarily both. Call your congress(wo)men!! Legally and respectfully insist they explain why they either haven't heard of, or are willfully ignoring ⭐STAR Voting and other methods until they answer honestly!! --J
18:01 help me im drowning
7:32 If Bohr becomes more unpopular why would his voters switch to Einstein and not Curie who is closer to Bohr ideologically but with none of the baggage of his controversial comments? In that case it would be Einstein who gets eliminated in the 1st round instead of Curie.
Because the video has to make contrived circumstances for ranked choice to not be obviously superior.
@@F0XD1E There's something to that -- I think it's worth asking, when identifying flaws in a system, how likely those flaws are to affect the outcome.
One example of this could be in the recent UK election. You have Labour, Conservatives and Reform. Some reform voters would be more inclined to vote Labour than Conservative because they were unhappy with the Conservatives who were in government at the time.
"The political spectrum is a U, the ends almost meet" - quote by some guy, I forgot who.
I'm from Germany and especially in the easters states, voters frequently switch between the far left and far right. Those two parties share the "anti-establishment, blame [insert part of society], anti-institutionalist, propagandistic views". One just blames the rich, the other blames the immigrants. So, it's definitely not impossible.
The movement of votes is unimportant. The point is that if the distribution is 25-30-45 curie would win, but if the distribution was 31-30-39 Bohr would win, even though Curie got the same amount of votes.
15:45 I don’t understand? By changing position of A and C such that all A are below C, aren’t you either not changing A at all or making all A worse than B by a larger margin or narrowing the margin such that A is now only slightly preferable to B?
To me, the clear winner is C; they have first choice on half and never last choice. Meanwhile B and A both have last choice for half with A never having first choice. C > B > A. Because half say B>>A. And half say A>B. Half say C>>B and half say B>C.
Please somebody explain differently?
The video is just stupid
It’d work as you said if you were using a Broda-like ranked system (point based - where the “distance” matters). They are using the Condorcet method where you only look at the head-to-head matchups. I agree here it’d feel more fair and natural to use the former here.
Thank you, I'm not insane. The example doesn't work. He arbitrarily puts the final ranking as A-B-C, but then the voting on the left shows a pattern that would only allow for C-B-A. And if you change the final ranking to that, then there is no contradiction.
So glad I found this comment this was driving me crazy 😂😂. It’s clearly just ranked C B A there’s no contradiction
I spent an 1h rewatching this part and trying to figure out what I'm missing, thinking I was crazy. Thank you.
This feels like a mathematical proof that suggests problems in edge, corner or point cases make an entire system unusable. I’ve never interpreted “impossible” to mean “it only works 99% of the time”.
The recent 2022 Alaska special election had Palin spoil the election for Begich. There's not even any need to speculate about what voters would have done, since it's all in the voting data. Begich was preferred to both Palin and Peltola but Palin stole too many hardliner votes away from him.
It's more that real-life voters are not accurately modeled by the assumptions of the theorem. People act illogically!
@@DavidRoberts The theorem makes no assumptions on how people act. It's only concerned with showing that 5 random demands are mutually incompatible.
When it comes to first past the post, it's looking like the whole thing is edge.
Veritasium makes rage-bait to help people click and engage. It sucks, is probably very effective, and I hate it and him on every level for it
I live in a "first past the post" country that forces a two-party system and penalizes voting your conscience unless it aligns with one of those parties. While there may be flaws in Ranked Choice Voting that could emerge in fringe cases, it is so obviously superior to our current system that it is hard for me to worry too much about the nuance of how it might not be 100% perfect 100% of the time. Any (democratic) system is better than what we have now.
The rated voting system sounds even better imo
The US has had first past the post for over 250 years and only had a "forced" two party system for fewer than 100. Coincidentally the prevalence of the "two party system" began around the time universal suffrage was introduced.
RCV solves the spoiler problem, but it does not solve the representativeness problem. It just makes smaller parties inoffensive to the "big two". It actually performs terribly and erratically when more than two parties are competitive, which is exactly the scenario where you would want a better voting system to matter.
@@scopeguywhat do you mean by this? With very few exceptions, we’ve only ever had two parties really in contention for races.
Third parties have EXISTED, sure, but their main effects have been bringing new ideas to the two major parties’ discussions, and splitting the vote between more moderate and more extreme members of the same “side” of political thought
What’s the country?
The funny thing about voting is that most of the time we don't get to pick the options we're voting on, rather we're delivered a curated selection of options and are left to choose the one we find most palatable.
The establishment wins no matter what. All the "options" you get to "choose" from help them regardless
Then join the body that curates the options?
For example, here in the UK, join your local party. Then you’re one of the ones picking the candidates. In fact, since we have a lot of safe seats, joining the local branch of the party that controls your seat effectively makes you one of the few dozen or so people in that constituency whose vote counts for anything.
I’m sure there are similar possibilities in the US and other places.
You can just stand in the election and wala u picked a choice
we do though, its just every finds the 2 big ones and never even try to support the others, especially in the west and even more in the US
"The funny thing about voting is that most of the time we don't get to pick the options we're voting on, rather we're delivered a curated selection of options and are left to choose the one we find most palatable."
and the ones who arent curated are smeared endlessly by the establishment and the media, so to th extent that they often become the most hated people in the country
3:52 CGP grey (hexagons are the bestagons)
While it's perturbing that the current voting systems might be fundamentally flawed, I'm intrigued by the prospect of approval voting systems. I hope we soon see more real-world trials for the same.
Check out S.T.A.R. Voting.
Score Then Automatic Runoff. It came about in the last decade and shows incredible promise.
This video only speaks about Winner-takes-them-all voting systems. Most democratic countries don't use them. If the voting distributes about 4 parties like this: A: 35% B: 30% C: 20% D: 15% that's a totally fine result. You can fill the seats of the parliament proportionally. Then A and B can work together or A and C or even B, C and D can work together if they can agree on the same laws. Many democracies work that way and it's not mathematically impossible.
Besides that you could have even other ways of democracy. You could for example get rid of votes and instead pick random people for a parliament. Put people in groups of 6 and throw a w6 dice to choose one. When you have reduced the candidates to 1/6, do the same again with that group until you have enough people for the seats of your parliament.
Approval has a serious flaw. In the election between Ms Loved, Mrs Hated and Mr Indifferent, you obviously approve Loved and don't approve Hated; but if polls are close you don't know if you should approve Indifferent (which might beat Hated) or not (because he might beat Loved). This is called "later no harm" and can cause approval votes to behave as if they were FPTP.
The real best solution is something the video doesn't even mention, proportional representation.
As a spanish comedian puts it: Democracy is the system that ensures we're not governed better than we deserve
That's cute you think you deserve something.
@@jessicastevens538 don't we all?
@@jessicastevens538 You do realize the joke is saying we deserve to be shafted, right?
@@RottenFishbone i think they lack the facilities to do that
Funny, but the point of the video was kind of the opposite. It's math - not morals or any real division - that prevents us from having good representation.
But it doesn't have to be.
I find it interesting that every problem presented relies either on the premise that the voters need to elect only one winner or on the idea that a candidate who wasn't anyone's first choice but was everyone's second choice isn't a good compromise. These things are just presented as facts without establishing why this should be necessary.
I hoped that in the end, Michael reflect how this theory could really represent real elections struggles. And how power dynamics fumbles with the math principles in the "fairness"
It also makes a huge assumption that “democracy = elections with voting” and excludes any other form of collective decision making, of which there have been many throughout history (like lots of indigenous societies in the Americas, or the Catalonian Anarcho-Syndicalists who used systems of mandated recallable delegates, or a variety of activist groups who use some form of modified consensus, etc)
@@shredded_lettuce The drawback of these other forms of democracy is that they even further empower the masses and disempower the individual. Democracy was a bad word until the rise of mass society in the 19th century. What we need to work toward is a world without "the masses." In mass democratic society there will always be a tyranny that manipulates social reality to guarantee its hold on power. People who live and think locally are free to organize themselves however they please. Most of the time, it turns out this is some combination of monarchy and aristocracy. Everyone in such a local world exists in an organic matrix of direct obligations and privileges, duties and benefits. It's how families have always operated. I would dare call it the natural mode of human organization.
@@shredded_lettucehe's either clueless, or more likely, pretending to be so he can get views by making people outraged that democracy is actually "mathematically impossible" when it isn’t. It's perhaps his weakest video yet, certainly the most repugnant.
@@shredded_lettuce if it was used by indigenous americans, its probably worthless then.
Maybe a defeated and crushed people arent the one to take advice from.
3:40 I see you Grey
Whoever does your animations, those pencil-looking drawing parts, great job
The Bohr-Curie-Einstein example is odd. The example assumes Bohrs poor performance leads to votes for Einstein and not Curie, despite Curie being much more closely aligned politically to Bohrs voters. Obviously this cooouuuuld happen, but its very unlikely; far more likely Bohr's loss is Curie's gain.
And ultimately, the voters still expressed their preferences, and that person was elected.
Preferential voting has flaws (too many candidates for voters to reasonably assess for one, like that Minnesota example; also potentially causing a candidate that almost no one liked to become elected due to weird preference flows), but tbh I'm not sure this example demonstrates them super well.
Yes, I felt that this example was contrived and unconvincing. If that's the best argument against Instant Runoff, it looks like a resounding endorsement instead of a criticism. Can't be worse than FPTP.
Arrow's impossibility theorem shows weird things CAN happen, but not how likely it is to happen. The condorcet loop for example, is pretty much impossible in practice and that's presented as the methods big downside
Odd as it sounds, such a scenario is easy to write (based on US politics). Imagine a third party, the Liberals, who united the disaffected into a 20% voting block. We'll also say that everyone kinda likes the Liberal, while everyone else dislikes the Democrat and Republican candidate.
Thus, the candidate with 20% who will drop out handily, is the one everyone was okay with. And the winner will be despised by 60%.
Step 2: now the Democrat does a solid (if dirty) attack on the liberal and takes 5% of the vote from him (D45, R40, L15). Looks like he's golden, right?
Well, no. The Liberals now all switch their second choice to Republican. Which means that this 5% gain ensures a 45-55 loss against the Republican.
Step 3: The LIberal now points this out, and tells blue voters that their party has zero percent chance of winning. However, if they vote Liberal, they'll win. Not everyone is convinced, but he gets his 5% back, and an additional 10%. So now the polls say R40, D30, L30. That is to say, the very fact that he lost votes, is the reason he now draws even.
So now consider: it's a dead heat between L and D. If the Liberal scrapes ahead, he'll gain all the D-votes and the Republican will lose the final round in a 40-60 landslide. But if the Democrat picks up a few votes, then the Liberal gets eliminated, and even if the Democrat gets his 10% back, the Republican will still beat him in a 60-40 landslide.
A few votes, therefore, will decide whether the Republican wins in a landslide (against D) or loses in a landslide (against L).
Finally then consider their optimal strategies. The Democrat may be wisest to just drop out. He can't win, his best chance is to back the liberal and ask for some concessions.
The LIberal's best option may be to demoralize Democrat voters who refuse to switch. If a few percent don't show up... sure, he'll lose those votes in the final round, but he'll make the final round in the first place.
And the Republican's situation is the strangest: ideally, he would give some of his own votes to the Democrat, so that the Democrat passes the first round, only to be smashed in the final round. The GOP may use a well-selected faux-pas that only the small portion of his base that picks D second will switch for. If it's close, GOP operatives may even vote democrat to make sure the GOP wins.
I think all of that is correct. And I think you'll agree, this is a realistic scenario. Yet it has several strange results in it.
I came to comment on this too. I felt this wasn’t a very good example of a problem with ranked choice voting. In the instant runoff example at least everyone who voted was able to have their vote counted toward the eventual winner. Can weird things happen? Sure, but at least your vote wasn’t completely invalidated & affected the final outcome.
@@valentetorrez3398
I found some stuff confusing, but the overall point is that there are various things you'd want in an election (particularly where one guy gets the job)... and you can't get all of it.
So you're gonna have to decide which needs are most important.
18:30 a thought: if the election is confidential, it means you cannot really know if you are the pivotal voter or not. Everyone is potentially the pivotal voter. So can't you then say that everyone is 1/15 th part dictator, so everyone is basically the same again? Meaning: the collective is the Dictator, which is sort of the translation for Democracy?
or put differently: if an election is close, there is always one voter or small group of voters that would count as dictator. But since there is no order of votes, all those votes are equally 'dictatorial'.
Which is usually the Majority
Given an election system, the pair-dictator is unique. Anyone can just study the mechanism to find out.
@@nimrod06 unique, but interchangeable. If you have a certain amount of equal votes you can interchange them all.
@@mistasomen that's totally not true.
No, this is incorrect, and Veritasium did a terrible job finishing up the proof (which some other commenters and Wikipedia clarified).
The dictator is part of the election system. The proof shows that any election system satisfying the 5 postulates has the same one guy as a dictator, regardless of what everyone else thinks. Who the dictator is can only depend on the issue we're voting for (so you could e.g. have a dictator on taxes, a different dictator on food, a dictator on the military) and not any of the voters' preferences. Which means you could theoretically analyze the voting system before the election and figure out who the dictator is.
Now it's true you could randomly select the dictator for every election so nobody would know who it is and voting would still be worthwhile, but random systems were excluded from consideration earlier in the video.
I've seen lots of comments about the Bohr voters switching to Einstein. The reason he gave of why people switched distracts from the point. The real problem being highlighted is that the system incentivizes "strategic voting". Suppose that in polls leading up to the election, the results are 25% - 30% - 45%. If we assuming that people are voting according to their views, Curie would win (as explained in the video). So, the Bohr voters could (in theory) organize to have 6% of them rank Einstein 1st, which would result in Bohr winning. Obviously it's not good when voters can deliberately down-rank their preferred candidate to make them win.
polls could become illegal
This all comes down to if his critique of the RCV is a purely mathematical one or does it have any real life value. For one, the example he gave is completely illogical, even in purely mathematical terms, it will never happen. Bohr voters will never switch to Einstein. I am disappointed that a scientist would ignore logic just trying to make a point to fit his thesis. The explanation you gave, while perfectly logical, are so difficult to achieve it in real life, it might be almost impossible. Even without considering polling errors, the amount of effort needed to ask a CORRECT portion of your voters to hold their nose and strategically vote for another candidate is so huge, it's not realistic, purely theoretical. This, and the pivotal voter paradox, plus the terribly misleading title, makes this video one of the worst video this channel has put out. I mean, I still love this channel, but he can and should do better.
@@zhenfengliu8032Yes, there's a logic error thwre. Assuming that most of the voters jumped from Bohr to Einstein but still more of Curie's 2nd choice would move to him rather than to Einstein suggests Bohr is the moderate candidate, not Curie. And Bohr wins as a moderate, as more people oppose Einstein.
This comment chain needs more upvotes. Thank you for explaining better than the video or other commenters.
3:53 of course CGP Gray is saying Hexagons are the best-agons 😂
ACKTHUALLYYY they are not the bestagons. Saw a really good video by Con Hathy debunking CGP's and saying the bestagons were instead, generally speaking, triangles.
3:52
Hexagons are the bestagons 🔥🗣
PENTAGONS ARE THE WENTAGONS 🔥🗣️
Looks to me like he is trying to summon someone.
Yes, yes they are. That is most definitely the most iconic CGP Grey phrase.
I saw too 🤩 +1 for CGP Grey!
did someone just mention benzene?
3:50 Hexagons are bestagons THANKS!
@kentslocum - 2024-08-27
My city voted against STAR voting (a Rated Voting system) because the people who were lobbying against it were the ones in positions of political power--and they benefit from first-past-the-post voting. They knew that if we used STAR voting, their extreme views would be likely supplanted by more moderate candidates. 😢
@Irondragon1945 - 2024-08-27
STAAAAAAARS
@Feefa99 - 2024-08-27
@@kentslocum Class struggle continues
@johnreese7973 - 2024-08-27
RAAAAATS
@jerrygreenest - 2024-08-27
More moderate candidates is good isn't it? Why go extreme?
@justjay3750 - 2024-08-28
@@Irondragon1945 resident evil nemesis??