taken away. One day, it is decided that the common room should take a new paper,
The News. One member of the Association – the Dissenter – objects to this
newspaper, arguing that it is racist, and that other members of the Association, less
attuned to the paper’s bigotry, will be influenced by it to the detriment of the few
black students in the college. Consider now the two models:
- The Leader The Dissenter asks the Leader to reconsider his decision, but the
Leader is unmoved. The Dissenter ‘takes things into his own hands’ by getting
up early each morning and removing the paper before the others have had a
chance to read it. - Democracy It had been agreed by majority vote, after lengthy debate, that the
common room would take The News. The Dissenter found himself in a minority.
At the next and later meetings he attempts to get the decision reversed, but it
becomes clear that a majority wants to take the paper. On realising this, the
Dissenter behaves in the same way as under the other model: he removes the
paper.
With regard to the Dissenter the initial question that Singer poses is not whether
he has moral reasons for removing The News, but whether under the Democracy
model there are special reasons for not removing it, reasons which do not exist
under the Leader model. Participation, Singer suggests, is the key difference between
democratic and non-democratic systems:
the Dissenter, by voluntarily participating in the vote on the question of whether
The Newsshould be ordered, understanding that the purpose of the election is
to enable the group to reach a decision on this issue, has behaved in such a way
as to lead people reasonably to believe that he was accepting the democratic
process as a suitable means of settling the issue.
(Singer, 1973: 50)
Democratic decision-making is a ‘fair compromise’ between people who have
conflicting moral views.
Fair compromise
Singer distinguishes between ‘absolute fairness’ and a ‘fair compromise’. Fair
compromise is fairness given certain conditions. To illustrate the distinction between
absolute fairness and fair compromise he gives a couple of examples (the second
involves a certain amount of gender-stereotyping, but it is Singer’s example and not
ours!):
- Two people claim a sum of money, and a judge is appointed to adjudicate
between them. Although she can be sure only one has a legitimate claim, she
cannot establish which one has the claim, and so divides the money up 50/50.
This is a fair compromise. An example of an unfair compromise would be to flip
a coin. - A husband and wife argue over who should do night-time baby duties. The
husband says he works all day and so should have an unbroken night of sleep,
whereas the wife claims she attends to the baby all day, and so should have a
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