How Minority Rules

The non-obvious effects of minorities

To understand complex systems, we can’t just study the individual components. To understand society we can’t just study individual people. 

There’s a non-obvious phenomena that happens in large groups of humans where the intolerant minority rules the majority. This happens through a process called renormalization, first used to explain social matters by Serge Galam. To understand renormalization, let’s walk through an example.

Why ‘Non-GMO’ is So Common Today  

A family of four has one kid who refuses to eat foods with GMOs. After many arguments, the entire family agrees to adopt the same diet, never eating GMOs.

A friend hosts a barbecue for four families. Knowing the family who doesn’t eat GMOs will be there, the host buys all non-GMO foods to accommodate. Because everyone will eat non-GMO, but not everyone will eat GMO. 

Then the local grocery store sees the trend towards non-GMO foods and decides they may as well only provide non-GMO options. Because everyone will buy them, as opposed to the GMO items that an intolerant minority will never buy. 

Finally the grocery store chain’s corporate headquarters notices and decides that all their grocery stores will only sell non-GMO products. The majority of people do not care about the GMOs. However, in group dealings, it’s preferable to accommodate the intolerant minority because everyone else is tolerant of their intolerance. 

This is how we end up with a place like London, where muslims are 15% of the population but 90% of lamb imports are halal. Anybody can eat Halal but muslims will only eat halal. 

This is the subtle way that intolerant minorities shape society. I want you to really think on today’s question of the day. It’s a good one. Straight from the book!

The Best Q.O.T.D. YET

Can democracy - by definition a majority - tolerate enemies? The question is as follows: ‘Would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning of freedom of speech?’ Let’s go one step further: ‘Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?’ (Skin in the Game, 86)

Your Biggest Fan,

Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski