Sacrifice the Few to Protect the Many: Is It Ever Justified?

People can only achieve other things—such as realizing dreams, embracing love, and pursuing life values—if they are alive. Survival is the absolute prerequisite for everything.

For an organization, a group, or even a state apparatus, the logic seems to be the same: to achieve any grand purpose and fulfill its mission, it must first ensure its own survival. To keep the collective alive, certain means are sometimes deemed necessary, even if those means harm the interests of a small number of people.

This brings us to a heavy yet incredibly realistic question: Is it justified to sacrifice the interests of a few to protect the many? If we always protect the interests of the majority, does that "majority" eventually become a privileged class of its own?

In extreme crises of life and death, such as war or natural disasters, human society naturally retreats to mathematical calculation: if a lifeboat can only hold 10 people and there are 11 in the water, one must be abandoned to prevent the boat from sinking and drowning everyone.

In this extreme context, sacrificing the few to save the many seems not a moral choice of "good or evil," but a mathematical inevitability of survival. To keep the social system running, harming localized interests at certain moments is often regarded as a "necessary evil."

Yet, the danger lurks exactly here. When "necessary evil" transitions from an exceptional measure for extreme crises into a default logic of daily governance, the very nature of society begins to change.

If a society establishes as an absolute principle that the interests of the minority can always be sacrificed for the sake of the majority, then this logic will inevitably face several fatal questions.

First, who is the minority?

In any massive population, "majority" and "minority" are never fixed, permanent entities; they are fluid labels that shift depending on the issue. Today, you might belong to the protected "majority" regarding wealth distribution; tomorrow, in a specific zoning or demolition project, you might become the "minority" blocking progress; the day after, in some specific belief or lifestyle, you could find yourself part of the marginalized "minority."

If sacrificing the minority is "justified," then this sword of Damocles hangs over everyone. No one can guarantee they will stand with the "majority" at all times and across all issues. Once the mechanism of sacrifice is normalized, society becomes a meat grinder where anyone might be callously crushed for a grand "majority interest" on any given day.

But if we always prioritize the interests of the majority, does that majority eventually turn into a privileged class?

The answer is yes, though its realization is far more deceptive than the literal definition.

When the "interests of the majority" are treated as an absolute truth, this "majority" ceases to consist of concrete, living individuals and instead becomes an abstract political idol. Any act of seizing power, exercising violence, or plundering wealth gains instant legitimacy as long as it is wrapped in the coat of "doing it for the majority." This is what French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville warned of as the "tyranny of the majority." In this state, the "majority" indeed becomes an oppressive privilege.

In real-world political operations, however, "the majority" as a loose, unorganized group cannot make decisions or exercise power on its own. A select group of people must step forward to represent and define what those "interests of the majority" actually are.

This gives rise to an incredibly ironic alienation: when a system becomes accustomed to stripping the "minority" of their rights in the name of the "majority," the select few who hold the power of definition and execution gain absolute power. They can arbitrarily designate who the next sacrificial minority must be. In the end, the abstract "majority" never actually becomes a privileged class—they are merely used as stepping stones. The real privileged class consists of those who wield the scythe in the name of the majority.

To understand how this alienation happens more intuitively, we can look at a thought experiment about the centralization of power:

Imagine a group of ten people, where Number 1 and Number 2 wish to become a privileged class. They first contact and persuade Numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6 to kick out Numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10 in the name of representing the majority (6 vs 4). Next, Number 1 and Number 2 ally with Numbers 3 and 4 to expel Numbers 5 and 6 under the same majority banner. Finally, Number 1 and Number 2 apply the same tactic to kick out Numbers 3 and 4. Ultimately, Number 1 and Number 2 successfully seize all the benefits of the original ten people. Throughout this process, they consistently wave the banner of "representing everyone's interests" until they secure absolute power to prioritize their own benefits and consolidate their rule.

This game is known in history as "Salami tactics" or "divide and conquer." The ultimate result—that power inevitably concentrates in the hands of a few and serves only those few—is known as the "Iron Law of Oligarchy."

This pattern exposes several fatal flaws hidden behind any representative system. When a group agrees to let a few "represent" everyone's decisions, the ownership of power is separated from its execution. Once separated, the agents inevitably develop their own independent interests. Simultaneously, for the sake of efficiency, decision-making power naturally assumes a pyramid structure—the higher up, the fewer the people, and the greater the power. Furthermore, any privileged class, when stripping others of their benefits, almost never says "this is for ourselves." Instead, they always employ grand rhetoric such as "for the greater good" or "for the fundamental interests of the vast majority."

This is why, at their inception, modern political systems try to establish an "immune system" to prevent this from happening—such as requiring diverse representation, establishing mechanisms for elections and recall, and defining the boundaries of power through constitutions and laws.

Yet, there is always tension between the ideal and the reality. When a system's "immune system" runs sluggishly or becomes purely ceremonial, real-world operations inevitably slide toward that dark 10-person game.

At the end of the day, survival is indeed the prerequisite for everything. You have to stay alive to talk about anything else.

But this inevitably leads back to the same dead end: if, to reach the destination of "serving everyone," we feel it is perfectly natural and a "necessary cost" to kick a few people aside along the way, then as we march on, will this act of "kicking people out" slowly become the end in itself?

When people get used to treating concrete individuals as beads on an abacus, shifting them around for the so-called grand scheme of things, does the original intent of protecting everyone still exist? In the end, what remains? A beautiful vision, or a massive machine that only knows precise calculation and self-preservation?

Protecting the interests of the majority always sounds right. But if this path is paved with the constant sacrifice of the few, then where this path actually leads is, quite frankly, terrifying to ponder.