Ranked voting: Difference between revisions
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== Majority rule as an approximation of utilitarianism ==
It is important to emphasize that majoritarianism and cardinal utilitarianism are not opposing principles. Majoritarianism can be understood as an approximation of utilitarian principles under certain conservative assumptions.
Within a theoretical framework using strictly ranked preferences (ordinal utilities), as in many models in modern neoclassical economics, all one can hope to achieve from a collection of social preferences is what is referred to as a ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency Pareto equilibrium]'': a situation where no individual can be better off without making at least one individual worse off. This concept is used, for example, to establish the Pareto equilibrium within free markets and their usage of available resources. For a given set of individual preferences many such Pareto equilibria may exist, forming what it is called a ''Pareto frontier''.
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