When I climbed on this soapbox, I had intended to take a lofty, high minded intellectual view. Alas... Last night I was watching the TV Show "Orville" episode 7 "Majority Rule" and it spoke to exactly the ideas I've been thinking about, so I couldn't resist sharing it. Orville, a Seth MacFarlane project, is a humorous take on Star Trek. Obviously, spoilers ahead... Majority Rule Imagine a society guided by an absolute democracy. The population can vote yes or no on everything. There are no fixed laws. Actually, the only laws guide how votes are organized. At the age of 18, all citizens are issued and required to wear a little gadget on their chest with an up or down button and a running counts of "likes" vs "dislikes". At some level (500,000 dislikes ?) individuals start to lose rights - like service at a cafe. At a very high level of 10 million dislikes, "criminals by acclimation" are required to undergo lobotomy-like r...