[probdist]

I'm interested in thinking through several examples on this subject.

One example that comes to mind with me is the campaign by many university student groups across the country to encourage endowments to divest from fossil fuel companies. For example: http://www.fossilfreeuc.org/ http://www.fossilfreemit.org/ . The the vocal minority on this subject is very strongly in favor of their opinion (divestment), whereas the larger mass of students mostly doesn't care about the issue or perhaps leans to not divesting but only slightly.

It is interesting to consider the more detailed results of this where people don't have 0 cost acquiescence, for example if people really wanted some non-kosher soda it would still exist in the marketplace.

It is also interesting how this phenomena occurs in voting schemes where you have a fixed number of voting points to distribute over all issues up for consideration. In such systems people can have their minority issues more strongly represented.