Democracy is also the Tyranny of the Majority
Dawn Butler has a suggestion:
Walking down their local high streets, people in Britain are increasingly unlikely to come across a local butcher, baker or grocery shop, and more likely to find betting shops, casinos, adult gaming centres (AGC) and so-called bingo venues, where traditional bingo is muscled out by money-sapping slot machines. These establishments are taking over our town centres at an alarming rate. From talking to my constituents in Brent, west London, and residents across the capital, I know that people have had enough.
That’s why this summer I have launched a campaign for urgent reform of our gambling laws. Ministers must give local authorities and people greater power to tackle this issue and reclaim our high streets. Currently, billionaire-owned overseas corporations have too much power, and local people have none. That needs to change.
The argument then becomes that the local council should be allowed to refuse permission to open a gambling establishment. The implication of this is of course that the sainted bureaucracy will be the burning arrow of democratic desire and only what the majority wants will ever happen.
Well, yes, there is that then.
But that is that insistence that this democracy is the tyranny of the majority. The people who own a property may not use it to run a perfectly legal gambling business. The people who wish to gamble may not gamble. Simply because the majority in that area wish to deny both sides that pleasure. This is a tyranny - it’s a denial of the rights of other people. It’s of the majority because it is, the whole idea here is that 51% of the people should be allowed to stop other people doin’ stuff.
Now, about gambling shops this is perhaps something for Mr. Snowdon. But don’t forget there are those campaigning, loudly, for that truly democratic economy. Which would be to subject everything done by everyone to that self-same tyranny.
To remind, liberty does indeed mean that folk are allowed to get on with what they want without the say-so of everyone else.
Tim Worstall