bmurphy1976 6 hours ago

Eh, it has an impact. It's not always obvious but it adds up over time. Use your analogy of choice: slowly building up pressure until it boils over or a small pebble starting an avalanche or whatever works for you.

I don't necessarily agree with the OPs approach. He could have filed a complaint or done any number of things that may have been better. But in the heat of the moment nobody is making perfectly rational decisions.

Regardless, we need to fight back against abusive systems on the big and on the small. We won't always get it right but the act of fighting is what matters.

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bitwank 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Nope. It’s like thinking you can overthrow the government by littering. It’s just being lame. If you’re going to be lame to other people, don’t gloat about your lameness online. “If everybody littered, they’d have to do something about it!”

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croemer 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not littering. It shows why fax is stupid and they should accept email. Littering has no such benefit.

	▲	autoexec 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's needlessly generating excessive amounts of trash and waste. It's wasting tax money. It's hurting the next blind person who won't be able to fax his documents because the machine is down/overloaded. It does not show why fax is stupid. It shows that faxing reams of unnecessary paperwork is stupid. It does not show that they should accept PDFs over email (genuinely a great way to get hacked). There is no benefit in trying to DoS the SSA office.

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bmurphy1976 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You kind of missed my point but that's OK. You can agree with or disagree with the action OP took, I'm not making a judgement call on that.

What I'm responding to the the notion that "no action you can take matters." Specifically this:

>Individual human beings acting individually are totally irrelevant when it comes to the behavior of large organizations.

I just don't believe that. Small actions do matter and are necessary because they enable the big actions later. You have to start somewhere. Even if it feels insurmountable. No major change ever just happened in isolation, it always happens when enough people have had enough and fought back enough that the change was inevitable.

	▲	ryandrake 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What's missing is coordination. Coordinated individuals taking actions together can change things. But just relying on individuals stochastically, randomly acting doesn't work. You can't random-walk your way to political change, even if a lot of people are random-walking in one direction. Worker rights didn't just spontaneously appear because enough people wanted them. They came about through organizing, coordinating and leading. Same for Women's suffrage, Civil rights, gay rights...