[yummyfajitas]

What does it mean to like party A 10x more than party B? What I'm questioning here is the existence of cardinal preferences, which are necessary for a "will of the people" to be defined. The only way I can make sense of cardinal preferences is to treat them as dollars spent on private goods [1], but I doubt that's what the OP meant.

As it applies to this situation, it's moot - Portland did not express any cardinal preferences.

[1] Non-private goods introduce other incentives that prevent spending from tracking desire.

[cbr]

Let's say I value thing A ten times more than I value things B through K, and I value them all equally whether I get them together or apart because they apply to different spheres of my life. Then I would be indifferent between getting A or getting all of B-K.

[fugigig]

Why fo you think cardinal preferences are necessary!?

[yummyfajitas]

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem says that ranked preferences are insufficient. One stronger assumption you can make is cardinal preferences, which is what desdiv appealed to.

[asuidyasiud]

The point is that invoking an impossibility theorem oftentimes - and also in this case - demonstrates that the formalization one has chosen to work with is not a desirable one.

For example, if a group of people by some social process comes to a consensus then arguably this represents the "will of the people". Thus it makes sense to reason about this concept without requiring the existence of ranked preferences.

[yummyfajitas]

So for you, "will of the people" represents a consensus preference? And following this idea, if there is no consensus (i.e., at least one person in Portland wants to ride an Uber), there is no "will of the people"?

The whole point of Arrow is that you need some very strong assumptions (e.g., cardinal preferences) to define a "will of the people". The only real world expression of cardinal preferences is a set of supply&demand curves, however - based on this the "will of the people" says Uber should exist.

[asuidyasiud]

You misread, I made the converse claim.

[thaumasiotes]

"If there is no 'will of the people', then there is no consensus"? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Groups make decisions all the time, but that doesn't mean those decisions were all endorsed by everyone in the group. Was splitting off from the Catholic Church to form the Anglican Church really the will of the people of England? Because there was a consensus.