Why Democracy Is Mathematically Impossible

Veritasium · 10.1M views · 2024-08-27 · 23:34

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Overview

Veritasium explains why no voting system can be perfectly fair, drawing on Arrow's theorem and the work of Eric Maskin. It looks at problems with systems like first-past-the-post and ranked-choice voting.

On Hacker News

Linked when someone needs a quick accessible source for the claim that every voting method has flaws.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2024–2026

Topics

Probability & game theory Pure mathematics US politics & elections

What people said

perching_aix · 2026-04 · Reference
There is actually extensive mathematical history to fair voting, the output of which is super not in use, and of which I do find plenty of the alternative systems more representative: [VIDEO] I do think regular variety elections are generally representative though. I just also see value in keeping these asterisks in mind.
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alecco · 2025-12 · Reference
Yeah. It's complicated. See Veritasium's "Why Democracy is Mathematically Impossible" [VIDEO] And also Idiocracy. This one is becoming more relevant. In all countries and all races.
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thisisit · 2025-09 · Reference
FPTP is bad but other methods are similarly flawed: [VIDEO] Keeping a democracy requires people to understand it as well. At least in US it seems they'd rather elect a dictator wannabe who clearly said he wanted to be dictator for a day than elect a woman.
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Sources

Video by Veritasium, played through YouTube.

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