Protesting doesn't do shit.  The only way to make actual change is to... well make actual change. 

Don't like corporate culture only maximizing profits?  Found a company and become a different kind of CEO. 

Examples being Ben and Jerrys and Starbucks.  Or just buy from such places.

Want more help for the poor?

Help the poor.  Volnteer or start up your own programs, get others to join in.

Protests are nothing but places to gather socialize and feel good about yourselves while accomplishing nothing because you generally don't have a cohesive point or plan outside of "I'm against this."

In congress you really have no choice.  It's why the big "spending reducers" are pretty much all in the executive branches.

I mean, imagine the house of representatives as a family.  They're all fighting for there part of the budget.  If you say no.  All that happens is other districts take your cut of the pie and no real spending cuts are made.

Essentially the responsible are made to suffer twice.  First during the "high" because they get no benefit.  They they suffer with everybody else during the crash.

Unless a drastic "responsibility first" wave hits the entire country at once, your screwed... well that or someone who represents the whole country steps up and does the right thing.

It's why your friend Gary Johnson had to veto all those spending bills. 

Nevada has an issue like that. Soutern Nevada has a lot of fiscally conservative representatives, Nothern Nevada a lot of liberal ones.

End result is, the majority of government spending ends up happening north, because southern representatives don't get behind spending for their districts, but northern represetnatives too

Protesting does work, so long as you meet three conditions

1: Your movement has coordinated leadership, e.g. someone the government can turn to to answer to the movement, or do something
2: You have enough people protesting (a lot)
3: The people protesting actually mean it

Hell, protests are what stopped the Soviet Union

A reason that can be argued why protesting is ineffective in America, is that, once polling numbers show an issue gets enough interest for people to protest, politicians will end up speaking to it. to get votes.   So, there isn't a reason to protest.  You see now jobs, jobs, jobs popping up everywhere politically and in political adds, because it is an issue that is polling heavily.

As far as what stopped the Soviet Union, it was glastnost and there ending up a hole in the Iron Curtain which ended up making the Berlin Wall useless.  Then came German reunification.

I am not saying what you said can't work, just that the system is rigged to prevent it from getting too much anywhere.  If you want to see full effect, look to the Miami Model of law enforcement.

Occupy was abotu as successful as one can get with protests today.  But it got shut down, and was so open-ended, it ended up getting sufficient numbers to offer a basis for a formation of public opinion in regards to issues with Wall Street corruption, money in politics and income inequality.  You seldom get anything like that, to shift public and political opinion.  You do have Tea Party, which ended up rallying a political base in the GOP.  But that is it.

And you need a perfect storm.  If things go real bad, people will not work together, and seek to fend for themselves (aka, I do not have enough gas to go anywhere to meet and protest).  If they are well enough, they won't feel a need to protest.  So, it is tough to get something going.

On the leader angle, people do not want to follow leaders.  You can get some spokespeople, but usually people with charisma and organizational skills will be working in political parties and get fast tracked through things.  And it is to help bring people together to follow them.  The government doesn't need to bother with leaders, as politicians use polling numbers to get a pulse on things.  

Funny how the world works sometimes...

Can find oneself mumbling to oneself sometime, "Oh the irony".

To me it seemed more like grand economic collapse more then anything.

Protesting was more a symptom rather then a cause.

Similar would be the case if Greece ends up with the "Grexit".

How many people do you know that have ever been convinced about something via a protest?  Protests just play up to people with preexisting beliefs and complaints... as such, policy changes would follow anyway (if the group is large enough) due to polling of the political base.

Well actually I take that back, I can think of one time protesting works. Though, only a specific very negative type case. Which is when the protesting takes on a sense of implied violence instead of actual belief differences.

EX, angry dudes standing outside an abortion clinic making teen mothers fear for their lives.

Though even then, not always, since well, Greece politicians sure avoided such threats and stuck with austerity, change instead needing to come via elections. (well because avoiding austerity is suicide.)

When people say there is too much government or that government is too big, what they really mean is it wastes too much of their tax money and puts too many restrictions on their lives. Most people like Social Security Insurance, but they hate how the government steals out of it to pay for things most tax payers would rather not pay for. Another example is the DMV. Most people agree that we need road laws and police to enforce them, but few people like having to go through all the paperwork and red-tape involved with anything to do with the DMV or do they enjoy paying the fees and taxes associated with the road.

The majority of Americans fall into the middle ground. They want only enough government too keep the country safe, their kids educated and healthy, and the drinking water clean. That same majority doesn't want the government telling them not to eat fatty foods or dictate their health care or subsidize farmers NOT to grow their crops.

There is too much government in the USA. Probably far too much. We are currently going down the European model of a nanny state, and I don't think we can afford to pay all the nanny agencies to tell us all how to live our lives.

To cut through the noise, to make the news cycle, protests got more and more extreme in nature.  Occupy broke through by doing something unique, parking near Wall Street, then doing the Brooklyn Bridge march, getting large arrests, then going worldwide all over.  It was unique stuff.  It exposed some things and work.  It also wrapped itself in a mystery by not having a formal list of demands.  All it, in a slow news cycle in 2011, make for big news.  But then, it settled in and the authorities dislodged them from parks, and they had nothing else to fall back on.  It was cute for awhile, had an impact, but then faded.

Prior to this, you have groups like act up, and protestors operating under the delusion that you make noise by getting arrested.  It was done so much, post 1960s, it is hard to break through.  In America, one can't break into news cycles often.  And then you run out of ideas.  With the Internet, 15 minutes of fame is more extreme also, with Linsaity being big, and then fading.  All along the way, so much noise and news, people can't keep up.  End result, protests end up fairly useless.  Hard to get enough people interested, and most people driving by do NOT want to  protest, they just want change.  The media and political parties push voting as a big deal, and numbers think replying to blogs, or calling into talking head shows, and so on, counts as participating.  Throw in also that the media has turned protests into the circus part of bread and circuses to.

So thus, protests are pretty useless.  Actually coming up with solutions and doing them would be of greater help.