> Voting is easy. Participation is difficult. In most cases, the local political system has evolved to perpetuate the interests of those who have been in power

> Voting is easy. Participation is difficult. In most cases, the local political system has evolved to perpetuate the interests of those who have been in power the longest. Creating change is 100x more difficult than maintaining the status quo. And that built-in resistance to change is corruptible. Yes, that's called "human organizations" and it happens wherever there are three or more people trying to do a thing. :) Politicking is messy and difficult because humans are messy and difficult. To be honest, it's amazing we've made it this far. > It's a rejection of the established political system as the most efficient means of producing the desired effects. And my argument is that people who think that we'd be better off with a "full rewrite" (and I know several of them) are ignorant of history and the civic structures that exist around them that are absolutely available to anyone willing to participate. It's not hard to get on a school board, or become a county commissioner. Those things aren't necessarily easy like microwaving a burrito is easy, but they're not necessarily difficult like getting a PhD is difficult. That is to say, yes, politicking takes work, but that shouldn't be unexpected or surprising. > You can vote your whole life, and never see a speck of change until after you join a general strike or boycott. It all depends on what you're trying to do. Zoning changes are probably better handled by voting for better city council members and attending meetings, for example; a strike won't particularly help there. And yes, part of democracy means losing. Sometimes you lose a whole hell of a lot. I think what people (particularly the left, as of late) tend to forget is that sometimes when you lose it's because the people in your city, district, etc. actually have a different enough point of view that they can get their changes enacted. In other words, it IS possible to lose fair and square. That's obviously super abstract, and the real world is messy, but it's easy to interpret every failed election as a sign that the system is broken, when in reality, you just couldn't convince enough people that you're right. I guess my overall point is: at this point in time, I don't think it's fair to say "the system doesn't work, so I'm not going to participate". I think that is an unfair characterization of the hundreds of thousands of available political offices in the United States, and other various ways of getting involved civically. I once door-knocked for a city clerk candidate and one of my neighbors said that he'd vote for the guy just because he heard his name from me and that he'd remember my quick spiel. It doesn't take much to make a difference, and it's better than just shooting him. That doesn't mean the system is perfect, because it certainly isn't, but I don't think it's nearly to the point where we should scrap the entire thing (if we could even survive) and start over.