| > Many of “thousand of Reddit stories” are just like your comment. Repeating a meme, nothing more. Demonstrably, provably, completely, wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/netneutrality/comments/7kzblu/i_con... - 4 page account of comms https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/75yjkd/the_offici... - photos showing redditor attended in person instead of making a phone call. Was told their concerns would be 'passed along' https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/6dm169/i_also... - full account of comms. Again cookie cutter response. Maybe this is biased because it's the top results. Let's jump to page 4. https://www.reddit.com/r/SaltLakeCity/comments/7dtlyr/i_just... - rep's voice mail is full and has been for months. No response https://www.reddit.com/r/Connecticut/comments/7gwins/this_is... - representative actually stands up for the interests of constituents. Yay, we got one! No memes here, just detailed accounts which overwhelmingly demonstrate that paid-for representatives have a strategy to deal with this.
As for civic duties, you do not have a civic duty to uphold a process which is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If you get success by doing it, great. But statistically, for the majority of Americans, talking to their rep is worse than doing nothing. It's spending their time and effort on a process which is designed to ignore them, so they don't spend that same effort searching for an alternative process which might actually work. This process used to be effective; before it was circumvented by lobbying activity. You can't cling to it today just because it worked yesterday. You also can't get jobs by just turning up to places and handing out your CV. Times change. |