yes kinda obvious now for many, but I've never seen it so nicely summarised and also from 2014!

I always try to consider a possible biased view, but again seen it summarized it like this makes it extremely simple and clear.

It's been obvious to anyone who pays attention to all the details and thinks hard about their meaning, but that is a small fraction of people.

I think that deep down many people often believe that they could have a say in policy if only they tried hard enough, so their lack of influence is a kind of personal failing.

In reality these systems are designed to absorb your effort and direct it into time sinks that either serve those in power

    Want to change things? First "we" need to take back the house by phone-banking for this blue dog
    Chip in $5 today to help Chuck Schumer win back the Senate

or avoid putting pressure on anyone

    We're going to "show Trump" with a big attendance at the next No Kings rally

It's similar to how people are led to believe anyone could have a billion dollars if only they were smarter and/or worked harder.

These things do help but only very slightly, not sufficiently. The main function of a protest is not to effect change, but to help people who support a cause meet each other. Voting for one party can be better than voting for the other party even if both parties are bad in different ways.

> The main function of a protest is not to effect change, but to help people who support a cause meet each other.

This is certainly the case with many protests in many contexts, but there are ways to protest that make the powerful worried and ways that reassure them they really have nothing to worry about. There have been many protest movements that were organized to effect change and succeeded in doing so.

What's more, people aren't showing up to these events thinking "this will certainly not effect change but may help me meet people". Once they get a clue that there's no potential for change they'll stop showing up.

"I think that deep down many people often believe that they could have a say in policy if only they tried hard enough…"

Really? I don't know anyone that thinks that. Everyone I know think, "I'm not a billionaire, so of course there is nothing I can do."

"It's similar to how people are led to believe anyone could have a billion dollars if only they were smarter and/or worked harder."

Ha ha, well there you are. I also know no one that believes that either. But of course if someone believes the latter, the former follows. ;-)

A reverse would violate three red lines that the current oligarchy will not budge on:

* More sharing of political power with ethnic, class or cultural outgroups

* Less revenues for the oligarchy from land ownership, investment in healthcare and investment in finance (other investment sectors would do better, however)

* Greater civil and criminal penalties for civil or criminal wrongdoing by oligarchs, their loved ones and their class allies (e.g. the affluenza case)

Even installing something like Juche and losing internationally to China in every way is preferable to having any one of these go forward, at least to their perspective.

> Its much-vaunted "checks and balances" have been shown to be paper tigers, and the constitution it heralds far and wide doesn't seem to be worth the paper its written on.

The Constitution was oligarchic by design of the founding oligarchs, who stated explicitly that the point of the "checks and balances" was actually to stop majoritarianism.