The majority of Americans consider democracy to be their saving grace, responsible for their freedoms, the source of all their social, economic and political powers and the only necessary validation for their many uses and abuses of those powers. Among dissenters, it is repeatedly voiced that the greatest threat to a given democracy's stability is tyranny of the majority, in that the majority in a given democratic society may potentially enforce shortsighted or, worse, suicidal, demands on that society's powerless minority. With shortsighted demands, the minority suffers from a divisive loss of freedoms. With suicidal demands, of course, majority and minority both suffer, one through loss and the other through sacrifice, though at different rates, because democracy by any definition must collapse.

What then is a democracy? Two definitions frame the term in today's common parlance. One definition suggests government by will of the people, while another suggests government by will of the majority. The difference between these definitions emphasizes a fundamental incompatibility, one which only the majority can afford to ignore. Thus, a democracy is not government by will of the people, but government by will of the majority.

What then is a majority? By majority, one means not only a majority of individuals within a given democratic society, but, moreover, given a defined set of distributed resources, a majority of resource holders. The difference between these definitions emphasizes a second fundamental incompatibility, one which only the majority of resource holders can afford to ignore. Thus, a majority in this sense is not revealed by the number of individuals within a given democratic society, but the number of individuals within that society that represents a majority of resource holders.

Therefore, a third incompatibility emerges, in that the proper definition of a democracy is not government by will of the people, but government by will of the powerful, which is also known as a plutocracy.

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