Aggregating plural preferences or interconnected judgments requires trade-offs; no decision rule is neutral across every desired property.

A collective decision rule must choose which properties to preserve when members hold different preferences or judgments. In preference aggregation, Arrow-style results show that no rule satisfies a specified set of fairness and rationality conditions over an unrestricted domain. In judgment aggregation, proposition-by-proposition majorities over logically connected claims can produce an inconsistent collective set; preserving coherence requires relaxing responsiveness, anonymity, domain breadth, systematic treatment, or another desired property. These are conditional impossibility results, not proof that democracy, collective alignment, or rational group action is impossible. Deliberation, restricted domains, delegation, premise- or conclusion-based procedures, and other rules remain available, each with costs. LivingIP must therefore disclose a mechanism’s trade-offs, preserve dissent, and distinguish a procedurally authorized decision from shared truth or unanimous belief.