The New California Republic wrote:LimaUniformNovemberAlpha wrote:"Protesting" is pure virtue signaling. There's no proof that it works.
Nonsense. One of the reasons that the SED was ousted from power in the GDR was because of the mass demonstrations that destabilised the regime to such an extent that the Central Committee started making mistakes, which brought about their downfall.
But Corona is the topic of this thread, not whether protesting works or not.
So I often hear people justify the time and money spent on "protesting;" sometimes to the extent of justifying illegal acts of protest; by claiming they "work."
This came to mind partly because of the recent train blocking protest in Canada, but it's been on my mind for longer than that. This is the kind of protest I hope never works, because I do not want society to encourage such behaviour by rewarding it.
But ultimately, the reward for such behaviour is in the perceived effect of it, not the actual effect. I, for instance, opposed pipelines until that protest, and now support them as a warning to any would-be train-blockers that such a similar stunt is not going to work. However, how are these protesters supposed to be able to tell I (or more importantly, any significant number of people) opposed them before? I could cite previous anti-pipeline statements of mine, but I never made them using my real name.
Likewise, if a protest really DID get results, how do we know they are the results are really the results of the protest itself, and not the results of the overall shift in public opinion that preceded said protests? How do you tell an "A causes B" situation from a "C causes A and B" situation?
Me, I think the case for the efficacy of protest is unfalsifiable. Not a fatal flaw in any argument, but certainly enough to make one question the time and money spent on it.