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Lisa Zeidner and John Allen Paulos

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Food Fight!

By John Allen Paulos
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 1999, at 11:32 AM ET

Hi Lisa,

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Golden Mean, middle ground, conciliation. Compromise is a notion that we're generally urged to support. But anybody can frame an issue in such a way that compromise allows him to get his way. There's the story of the two siblings arguing about a large piece of cake. One of them, say George, is a bully and says he wants all of the cake for himself. More reasonable, Myrtle is willing to split it 50-50. They continue to argue ferociously until the mother comes in and imposes a compromise: three-fourths for George and one-fourth for Myrtle. It is a compromise, but not a good one.

Or maybe two people can't agree on a cuisine; everybody knows that most arguments are at base about food. One wants to go to a Chinese restaurant, the other to an Italian trattoria. (Sheila and I have variants of this discussion regularly since I always want Italian food.) One compromise is to have an egg roll with spaghetti sauce. Again, a compromise, but not an appetizing one.

There's a humongous mathematical literature on making social choices and some theorems that imply that no way of doing so is perfect. Do we always require a majority, or is a plurality enough? What about run-offs or sequential voting systems or, as is sometimes done, the ranking of preferences and then the summing of their ranks? So-called approval voting is another of a long list of ways to decide social issues. So, of course, is listening to the richest lobbyists.

The moral injunction to compromise is a formal one. How we should compromise is the substantive question. Politicians who are the beneficiaries of a particular electoral system naturally wrap themselves in the mantle of democracy and need to be reminded that this mantle can come in different styles, all of them with patches.

I agree with you about Clinton (not your sex theory). Being a politician requires that one deal with many constituencies who will view one either as a waffler (back to food) or as a conciliator depending on .... The bets are usually not small. Should a certain drug be okayed for use? If not done soon enough and it works, people will die. If done too soon and it doesn't, people will die. Some no doubt will excoriate the FDA no matter what.

A.A.,

J. ;-)