If political activity is worthwhile for producing change, it’s as a low probability, high payoff action. We live in large societies, with a single government acting over millions of people. That means that if you’re able to make a beneficial change, it can have a huge benefit (multiplied over the millions of people who are influenced). But it also means that your chances of having an effect are tiny, since political power is divided among millions of people.
This is most obviously true of voting, but it also holds for other forms of political activity. A legislature that gets millions of letters and emails each year from constituents is unlikely to devote much attention or consideration to any one of them (apparently the US Congress gets 200 million; not sure about Canadian Parliament). And this would also be true with other political systems, including direct democracy and randomized democracy, unless you happen to be one of the few unusually influential people (like one of the people who’s randomly selected in a randomized democracy).
If political activity is worthwhile for producing change, it’s as a low probability, high payoff action. We live in large societies, with a single government acting over millions of people. That means that if you’re able to make a beneficial change, it can have a huge benefit (multiplied over the millions of people who are influenced). But it also means that your chances of having an effect are tiny, since political power is divided among millions of people.
This is most obviously true of voting, but it also holds for other forms of political activity. A legislature that gets millions of letters and emails each year from constituents is unlikely to devote much attention or consideration to any one of them (apparently the US Congress gets 200 million; not sure about Canadian Parliament). And this would also be true with other political systems, including direct democracy and randomized democracy, unless you happen to be one of the few unusually influential people (like one of the people who’s randomly selected in a randomized democracy).