Consider the following scenario for the resurrection of democratic decision-making in centrally planned economies. Suppose that it has been shown that the available planning procedures, using the available information, can narrow down the alternative courses of action considerably, but cannot make the final selection in the context of prevailing uncertainty. Suppose furthermore that it has been shown that the most rational procedure to make the final selection under conditions of uncertainty is to assign equal probabilities to the remaining alternatives, and to make the final selection depend on a randomization procedure. Suppose finally that it has been shown that a fairly wide range of democratic decision-making procedures correspond to a randomization procedure, since the probabilities of selection of alternative courses of action are in fact virtually equal when people are allowed to make a free choice. Under these assumptions it would be most rational to legitimize the use of randomization procedures by introducing the otherwise dangerous “free choice” into the planning process. Expert knowledge and the free will of the people would thus be combined in a most rational manner.

To D.G. Champernowne