Well yeah, that was my conclusion too.

I just felt that saying no protest is effective as a bit too broad since say.  Since such a thing can have an effect on someone like a 14 year old girl who wants an abortion.

It's funny one interesting move in greece since the collapse has been a huge rise in direct to consumer produce sales... cutting out the middlemen.

It helps the consumer because they get fruits and vegetables at lower prices, even 1/2 to 3/4's off.  While it helps the farmers because they get there money up front right away when they need it. (Most retailers delay payments till the end of the season.

Works even better in the US if you can save up ahead of time and join a CSA..   I get Vegetables delivered to me that accounts for about 60-80% of the food my girlfriend and I eat in a week... for about $21 bucks a week.  Can't be a picky eater though.

I would say that the majority of the population is on the whole indifferent to this argument. The reality is that most citizens cannot be bothered to vote, and basically defer to those that do. Out of those that do vote it is basically a even split based upon parties, and those parties are alliances between demographics who can work together, but do not necessarily agree. They will support each other so that their own individual agenda can move forward. It is really a I will scratch your back if you scratch mine arrangement.

Despite what you may hear, read, or see. The truth is it is probably less then ten percent of the population that cares at all about government spending. Most people just care about how hard or easy their lives are. Once you move beyond generalities into specifics all you usually get are blank expressions. After all people elect officials to bother with these things so they don't have to do it themselves.

Speaking to whether protests work. The answer is a definitive yes they do. Though you shouldn't think wholly in a short term mindset. Protests are about changing public perception, and that doesn't necessarily change over the coarse of days, weeks, months, or even years. Will a movement like occupy have an effect. In the short term very little probably, but in the long run it is moving the discussion in a specific direction. The movement scared the shit out of a lot of people on the far right, because they saw it for what it was.

Well I ended up probably just repeating what you were saying about protests being fairly useless.  It is just that the political system and media have turned the voice of protesting into a circus to entertain people, and so much media is out there, it is hard for anything to break through.  The Internet keeps producing more and more 15 minutes of fame at this point.  It is just real hard for anything to get going and be sustainable.  Everything also gets labelled.  When I was with Occupy, I saw elements of community coming out of the camps that offers a shot of getting things going.  The problem was that the camps shut down, and people didn't know what they wanted to do.  And then infighting andf so on, and things broke down.  Didn't help much either you had International Socialists show up, and welcomed, and then there was war against anyone who was Fascist.  The guys around Occupy failed to see how Communist and Socialist are about on par with Fascism in the mind of people.  

There was a shot of something, but it didn't hold long term, but did shift debate some.  Anyhow, with me, I figured I would stay away and see if they would figure out bothering to ask me why I was so I could tell them.  But people who don't want to listen won't listen or try to find out.

Damn, I should have followed this thread. There are some good stated arguments here.

I'm was not trying to say that protesting alone will make a change, but it's really one of the rights that is seldom exercised. You can also boycott goods and services, and you can vote. These are the only things that come to my mind that regular people can do to try to make a change. I'm sure that one person may not be enough to make a difference, but that's is how things starts. It takes one person to inspire a group, that will form a crowd, that will attract a massive amount of people to protest.

I guess that what I was trying to say was: If you are not satisfied about your current situation, do something about it. Typing one's frustrations in a forum is more likely to lead to nothing than if you take a pro-active role in your community, find the right group to join and spread the message of the injustice that has been done to you. There are plenty of people out there that will not listen to you, but there might just be a few will form a group.

This generation, in my opinion, rants more about it's problems then it tries to fix them. I may be wrong, but that is just the way I see it. Yes, I'm sure that the government (the system) has adapted to qualm the masses, but I'm sure that if people never gave up and have a solid message, something is bound to change.

If I had a large coalition, My strategy would be to identify the organizations that lobby the government against our cause, find out who funds them. Promote a Boycott of their companies services/products. Vote in every election, and protest as much as possible to try to get your message out. If all these things come into play, I'm sure things could change (and I mean that they would slowly change). The problem is getting people of their gadgets, hobbies, lifes, and concentrate on one message at a time to send to their government officials.

I do think the Dutch government is too big, yet I am a student and the government pays for my education. Hypocrisy? Don't think so. If I'm forced to pay taxes, I'm going to use government money.