Majority rule and allocation

Majority rule is, generally speaking, not an optimal decision-making process. Impor-tant among its advantages is the element of participation. Everyone who wishes votes and in close situations the switching of a single vote may reverse the outcome. Also the winning proposal (if there is one) has the advantage that shifting from it to another alternative will cause dissatisfaction among more people than it will please. On the other hand, majority rule suffers from lack of consideration of intensity of desire among the voters. If some measure of interpersonal satisfaction is hypothesized, a shift away from the winning proposal may well in