Kenneth Arrow's Social Choice &amp; Individual Values In a capitalist democracy there are essentially two methods by which social choices can be made: voting, typically used to make “political” decisions, and the market mechanism, typically used to make “economic” decisions. In the emerging democracies with mixed economic systems, 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 decisions based directly or indirectly on it and less to the rule of the price mechanism. The methods of voting and the market, on the other hand, are methods of amalgamating the tastes of many individuals 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 choices. Can such consistency be attributed to collective modes of choice, where the wills of many people are involved?