Voices validated?

Albert O. Hirshman is known for a treatise on the connection between loyalty, voice, and exit. What he describes is an ebb and flow in people’s actions. Whether people interact in the public sphere and use their voice to signal a challenge, or whether people remain loyal to a brand while they nudge for changes using voice in the private sphere, both possible scenarios indicate that, before leaving a relationship, most people will try to talk through change.   

In a free and open society, all voices should be heard. No questions there. But some folks are more able to broadcast their voice than others. So, it seems it would be useful to have some sense of evaluating the various impacts of the topics at hand.

The possible negative outcomes of giving the societal floor, for monopolizing the social audience ready and in attendance to react with resources to causes, are as follows.

1. Opportunity Costs. If the airwaves are only giving voice to one group in harm’s way, then others are receiving aid.
2. When a subgroup is given the mike again and again, even though they represent maybe ten percent of the population, then their imagined importance seems directly proportional to the edges they tend to skate on the issues. So again, there is a misallocation of resources.
3. When a voice of fear is loudly promoted, then a whole generation may act in an overly protective manner.

Wouldn’t it be useful to track three items when a topic gets brought to the elevated status of statewide attention? Wouldn’t it be helpful to see the numbers of all who are harmed, or affected in some way? Does this group command more, or less the same number of resources as many others who also have legitimate claims? Are the public officials in charge of bringing forward certain voices proportional to their representative groups? Or are they heard due to their proximity to core functions? Are the restrictions placed on people in sync with the risk of missing out?

It seems that a better matrix of analysis could be done before some voices are raised above others.