It's a quote, quotes are usually lacking some context and this doesn't appear as bad as you make it out.
What if a few missing/implied words were added in that related to earlier parts of the conversation?
> my inclination would be to allow Lyft here a long time before Uber
becomes
> my inclination based on the legal interpretation of how these companies have operated would be to allow Lyft here a long time before Uber
His quote remains an opinion, the only missing context is whether this opinion is based on the legal arguments in the case or a purely personal opinion or external set of information that would show a bias away from the legal arguments.
He even said in the prior sentence "This is about one company thinking it's above the law". Again, implying that Lyft are following the spirit of the law as well as the letter, and Uber are following the letter and not the spirit (and thus working as many loopholes as possible to 'win' in-spite of the wishes of the people of the affected cities that they do so in accordance with the wishes of the people of those cities).
I think this is not shocking at all, it's how it's supposed to be. Shocking is how some companies wish to ignore the codified will of the people of a city (or state, or country) purely to turn a dime. And yes, it's also shocking that some representatives of the people are corrupt as hell and that the written law has enough holes in it to fly a 747 through.
But a representative of people's tax dollars standing up to ask for companies who operate within a city to do so in accordance with the wishes of those who pay the tax dollars is not shocking, it should be the norm
He even said in the prior sentence "This is about one company thinking it's above the law". Again, implying that Lyft are following the spirit of the law as well as the letter, and Uber are following the letter and not the spirit (and thus working as many loopholes...
By definition, the codified will of the people is the letter of the law. The "spirit of the law" is what politicians kind of want to happen, but never actually passed a law for.
Also, the "will of the people" is a nonsensical concept by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
I don't necessarily agree that the "spirit of the law" is quite so nebulous. If a law is like a computer program, the "spirit of the law" is the program that you are trying to write, and the "letter of the law" is the program that you have written. If you've written a calculator and dividing 2 by 2 produces negative infinity, nobody will argue that this is a bug and not what the programmer intended.
The spirit of the law is the programmer's intention, the design document, the thing the customer wants you...to...build.....
Right, okay, I've changed my mind. That's nebulous.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem only applies in cases where ranked preference is the only information in the vote.
The "people", not being an individual or an AI or whatever, has a more complex preference vector than a ranked list. The real world is more complex than that.
So can we now agree that Arrow's Impossibility Theorem doesn't apply to all of democracy, that these things are nuanced and there is a long and deep conversation about this kind of topic that has been going on in the human race for centuries, and that frankly, pointing to technical flaws in established, stable enough systems that were set up by people with a hell of a lot less information about anything than us hundreds of years go is not going to do anything to prevent that system from operating in the way that it does or to convince people who have vested interests in it remaining stable?
Let's say I like party A 10 times more than I like party B. In a preferential voting system, there's no way to precisely express my preferences using the ticket. I'm forced to choose between "1. A" or "1. A, 2. B". Someone else who like part A 2 times more than party B will end up voting identically to me, despite the huge difference between our preferences. Any preferential voting system is necessarily flawed because how limited its input is.
That's basically what Arrow's impossibility theorem says. Due to its limited inputs, a preferential voting system will necessarily fail one of the three fairness criteria.
There are far better voting schemes out there, none of which are affected by Arrow's impossibility theorem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
If a group of people comes together, discusses, and comes by some process to a unanimous decision ("consensus") then it does usually make a lot of sense to regard the outcome as the "will of these people".
The point I am trying to make through the last n posts is that Arrow's theorem does concerns the impossibility of a certain, narrow-minded formalization. It is therefore incorrect to conclude that 'the "will of the people" is a nonsensical concept by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem', which is what you had claimed.
I have nothing to say about the people and churches of England.
Your claim is that if a unanimous decision has been arrived at, it constitutes the will of the people. No one disputes this - the case where everyone agrees is trivial and uninteresting. It also does not describe the situation with Uber in Portland, Delhi, or anywhere else. I want Uber in Delhi, some politicians don't. Hence there is no consensus.
You either have a coherent definition of "will of the people" that goes beyond consensus, or you don't. If you do, give the definition.
What is an instance of "democracy in general" that you think Arrow's theorem doesn't apply to? It will apply any time "society" (i.e. more than one person) makes a choice among more than two options.
It won't apply if you can assign cardinal numbers to the options, but I doubt that's what you have in mind.
That's actually exactly what I had in mind. Range voting[0], for example, doesn't suffer from Arrow's impossibility theorem, Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem, nor the Condorcet's paradox.
You know, I had a long comment here pointing out many problems with range voting. Instead, I'd like to observe that it really takes balls to defend range voting as "not suffering from the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem" when it's easy to show that range voting exhibits one of the failures that the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem guarantees in pure-ranking voting systems. Sure, the premises don't hold, but so what? If Gibbard-Satterthwaite did apply to range voting, that would guarantee no other problems than already occur.
Theorem: Hitting your thumb with a steel hammer, instead of hitting the nail, hurts like crazy!
Problem: The pain of a smashed thumb is bad.
Solution: Use an iron hammer. The requirements of the earlier theorem don't apply.
What if a few missing/implied words were added in that related to earlier parts of the conversation?
> my inclination would be to allow Lyft here a long time before Uber
becomes
> my inclination based on the legal interpretation of how these companies have operated would be to allow Lyft here a long time before Uber
His quote remains an opinion, the only missing context is whether this opinion is based on the legal arguments in the case or a purely personal opinion or external set of information that would show a bias away from the legal arguments.
He even said in the prior sentence "This is about one company thinking it's above the law". Again, implying that Lyft are following the spirit of the law as well as the letter, and Uber are following the letter and not the spirit (and thus working as many loopholes as possible to 'win' in-spite of the wishes of the people of the affected cities that they do so in accordance with the wishes of the people of those cities).
I think this is not shocking at all, it's how it's supposed to be. Shocking is how some companies wish to ignore the codified will of the people of a city (or state, or country) purely to turn a dime. And yes, it's also shocking that some representatives of the people are corrupt as hell and that the written law has enough holes in it to fly a 747 through.
But a representative of people's tax dollars standing up to ask for companies who operate within a city to do so in accordance with the wishes of those who pay the tax dollars is not shocking, it should be the norm