[stable-point]

Does the government require this arbitrarily, or because that's the will of the people?

Here in the UK, we have Sunday trading laws which limit how long shops can be open on a Sunday. These are reasonably popular (but not unanimously) because they ensure that shop workers have some guaranteed time with their family.

[pjlegato]

... whether they want to or not.

Whether some would prefer to have Friday, or Wednesday off instead of Sunday is irrelevant. The state has decided that having time off on Sundays is the only acceptable way of organizing one's life, and it is imposed by force on everyone uniformly.

A democracy by definition is the will of the majority, the tyranny of the majority -- not the will of all the people in general.

To the extent that a democratic society does not wish to be oppressive, its participants ought to choose to maximize respect for individual rights and personal decisionmaking -- not arrogate to themselves a paternal decisionmaking role that dictates moral virtues from above to everyone, whether they like it or not.

Edit: incidentally, Sunday trading laws were not created to give people time with their families; that's a modern leftist retcon of the motive. Sunday trading laws are a relic of the medieval legal system, where they were created so that everyone could be required to attend church and receive moral instruction and sermonizing from a state-approved minister.

[dragonwriter]

> A democracy by definition is the will of the majority, the tyranny of the majority -- not the will of all the people in general.

No, its not. A democracy, by definition, is exactly what it seems by etymology, rule by the people in general.

Pure majoritarianism is one means of operationalizing the concept of "democracy", but its one that's pretty much been rejected as an undesirable means of doing so for, at least, most of the modern era.

[pjlegato]

Not so. Even in ancient Athens, with direct democracy, decisions were taken through majority-rules voting. Direct democracy itself has not been a feature of any major democratic instance since then.

Nor has any modern democracy (at least one operating at larger scale than your local food co-op) ever rejected "operationalizing" democracy through majoritarianism. The word "democracy" as it is understood by the vast majority of people today, other than a tiny fringe of leftist intellectuals, empirically refers to "majority-rules representative democracy."

The only people who reject majoritarianism are a tiny number of "theory"-steeped leftist academics with little connection to or knowledge of how things actually work in the real world (but have an outsized notion of their own intellectual qualifications to promulgate decrees on how things ought to work.) Such people can be easily detected through the use of pompous neologisms like "operationalize," which are almost exclusively used by that group of people.

[dragonwriter]

> > Pure majoritarianism is one means of operationalizing the concept of "democracy", but its one that's pretty much been rejected as an undesirable means of doing so for, at least, most of the modern era.

> Even in ancient Athens, with direct democracy, decisions were taken through majority-rules voting.

"Ancient Athens", you will note, significant predates the modern era, and illustrates nothing about what has been rejected in that era.

> Nor has any modern democracy (at least one operating at larger scale than your local food co-op) ever rejected "operationalizing" democracy through majoritarianism.

You dropped the word "pure"; yes, most modern democracies incorporate some majoritarian elements, and yet, they almost universally reject pure majoritarianism where policies are decided by whichever preference gains an infinitesimal degree greater than 50% support in the general public.

Indirect democracy itself its a deviation from pure majoritarianism, and most modern democracies operate largely or entirely as indirect, representative democracies.

Bicameralism in which one house has longer terms or indirectly (or un-) elected members, or staggering elections within a single house, is a further departure from pure majoritarianism within an indirect democracy (and some forms of this are quite common in modern democracies.)

The idea of fundamental limitations on the powers of government that require something more than the normal legislative process (which itself usually resembles majoritarianism, within the legislative body) -- whether it is confirmation by additional bodies, supermajority votes within the same bodies, or multiple votes within the same bodies separated by a specified time interval -- is a further departure from pure majoritarianism (and one frequently adopted by modern democracies.)

Representation models that are not strictly tied to population, such as ones where subunits are given equal representation irrespective of population, are another departure from pure majoritarianism.

Models in which officials at any level are elected by an intermediate body rather than the public at large, (and, a fortiori, those where the body itself is not apportioned strictly proportionally to population) -- such as an "electoral college" -- are further departures from pure majoritarianism.

Every modern democracy (on the national scale, at least) departs from pure majoritarianism through some degree of indirect democracy, and virtually all depart from pure majoritarianism in other ways (most adopt some of the departures previously discussed in this post, some -- e.g., the U.S., adopt all of them.)

> The only people who reject majoritarianism are a tiny number of "theory"-steeped leftist academics

This is radically untrue. Rejection of pure majoritarianism is not only not limited to either leftists or academics (much less the intersection of those groups in "leftist academics"), its probably more common and more strong among theorists of the right than of the left.

[paddyoloughlin]

No claim was made about the motivation for the creation of Sunday trading laws.