in A capitalist democracy there are essentially two methods by which social choices can be made: voting, typically used to make "political7' decisions, and the market mechanism, typically used to make "economic" decisions. In the emerging democracies with mixed economic sysr.ems, Great Britain, France, and Scandinavia, the same two modes of making social
choices prevail, though more scope is given to the method of voting and to decisions based directly or indirectly on it and less to the rule of the price mechanism. Elsewhere in the world, and even in smaller social units within the democracies, the social decisions are sometimes made by single individuals or small groups and sometimes (more and more rarely in this modern
world) by a widely encompassing set of traditional rules for making the social choice in any given situation, e.g.,a religious code.
    The lasf two methods of social choice, dictatorship and convention, have in their formal structure a certain definiteness absent from voting or the market mecbanism. In an ideal dictatorship, there is but one will involved in choice; ;n o,n irlpnl c:nripfir riilprl hv rnnirorfinn there is but the clivine w:iy; "-,'p-;haps, by assumption, a common will of all individuals concerning social decisions, so that in either case no confiict of individual wills is irivolved. The methods of voting and of the market, on the other hand, are methods of amalgamating the tastes of many indwiduals in the making of social choices. The. methods of dictatorship and convention are, or can be, rational in the sense that any individual can be rational in his choice. Can such consistency be attributed to collective modes of choice, where the wills of many people are involved?