A commonsense assessment of Arrow's theorem

The usual, pessimistic interpretation of Arrow's General Possibility Theorem ("Impossibility" in textbooks) stems from a refusal to accept social indifference between alternatives. If social indifference is absent the Condorcet rule satisfies the axioms of the theorem. It is also argued that social indifference is rare, and that it is easy to find a second-round rule to be employed if it occurs, with no effects on the use of the Condorcet rule in the first round.