There are two distinct forms of democracy, one is inclusive, the other is exclusive.
Winner-take-all is of course the exclusive form of democracy. It means that voters are represented by the majority of voters only.
Full representation is the inclusive form of democracy of course. All voters are represented at the table.
If we look at the large history of the modern world, then we can see how nations with winner-take-all ended up dominating the world. The UK and France, for instance, occupied half the world.
Smaller nations could not compete economically, and both Italy and Germany ended up coming into being as a reaction to the economic imperialism of Britain and France. If they wanted to get ahead, they had to start doing what the Brits and the French were doing. They had to become large nations and they had to start occupying parts of the world, just to keep up with the Joneses.
When Germany and the UK had become the same strength economically in 1914, the two struggled, competed and the Brits did not give up any of the space they were occupying; they did not share. The reality of one bully establishing another bully and then neither giving way to the other became the reason for WW I. The British Empire is the reason the Germans needed lebensraum. There was not enough space for another bully in the world.
The German bully was pushed down by the other bullies, UK and France (aided by the US), and the German bully did not like that. They wanted the same the other bullies had, and so WW II was actually easy to predict because the UK and French bullies had not been reprimanded. Their imperialism had not been rejected by the world yet.
After WW II, the USA is the hero, because the US takes sides with the colonies, standing up for independence of the colonies. The UK and French bullies ended up being humiliated because they ended up losing 'their' empire, which was of course nothing but bully's claiming things they should not have claimed in the first place.
Why is winner-take-all bad? It presents itself as being a democracy, but it leads to dominance of the majority. And that leads to fascism in Britain and France, going into other nations as if it were their natural right. There is a disconnect in winner-take-all. The top goes somewhere it should not go because the bottom is not in the room. The bottom is not represented at the table and can therefore not speak up.
Winner-take-all can also explain the Wall Street crash of 1929. Instead of investing their monies in societies, the disconnect of the winners-taking-all with society means that those in top with money would invest in Wall Street instead of Main Street to the point that Wall Street is overvalued beyond the norm. A disconnect that is part and parcel of winner-take-all (because it splits voters into represented and not-represented) ends up haunting society. The split is real, and it can come out in weird manners.
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One cannot excuse the Germans for what happened to Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in WW II. They have to accept that very nasty stain because it will not go away. But the finger can also get pointed at Europe as a whole, where winner-take-all ended up fighting with full representation and full representation losing to winners-taking-all. All because the winners wanted it all and did not want to share with anyone else.
Thank you for your article. It was an interesting read, Hailey.
