You seem to assume there is a 'right' or 'wrong' answer. There is not. For example, we have California suffering from catastrophic mismanagement of their water resources. You have one group who wants to move more water into the population centers, essentially taking the precious resource from the rural areas (farmland, which is rather important). You have another group who refuses to build more reservoirs or dams to better manage the water (because NIMBY). And then you have the minority, the folks in the rural areas.

Nobody is right or wrong, they just all have different priorities. Regardless of those priorities, the resources must be allocated to ensure the entire ecosystem can continue to survive. The only solutions to accomplish that are going to be compromises. But unfortunately, the groups in the population centers have managed for an incredibly long time to avoid compromise. So, now California finds itself in an unenviable position of battling drought and fire nonstop.

That is tyranny of the majority.

> I keep hearing people say this, and it baffles me. If the majority of people feel a certain way, who's to say it's not the right way?

Because, as parent said, the majority will usually benefit themselves even if it means harming the minority. If I belonged to some 51% group, why would I not vote to double my wealth, even if it meant stealing from the other 49%? And before you say 'I would never vote for that', it's never worded that way, but more subtle policies that would achieve the same thing.

That applies to the minority as well. The minority will benefit themselves even if it harms the majority and involves stealing from the 90%. NIMBY policies are exactly that where wealthy landowners vote and use their wealth to exclusively benefit themselves over everyone else. Rural voters can do the same thing where they vote in people and ways that explicitly harm the larger city as some sort of perceived revenge policy.

Which then goes back to the person you responded to: That the majority and the minority can both make wrong policy decisions.

I think the great irony of the arguments I see surrounding the tyranny of the majority is that often in rural areas or with rural politicians you'll see them employ this argument. Something like 'we need to protect our way of life from city folk' or 'we're not bothering anyone and want to be left alone'.

But then those same rural politicians will then make the opposite argument against other minority populations (such as people whom are LGBT or among race lines) and that we shouldn't let a small minority control our state or that who cares what they think. They switch rapidly from 'tyranny of the majority is bad' to 'tyranny of the minority is bad'.

Politicians gonna politic. That doesn't mean that the 'tyranny of the majority' doesn't exist, but they're just using the words to try to score points.

I caution people not to let politicians become their mental picture of the constituency.