Eh, i&#x27;ve personally affected local elections with both money and door knocking. But in that case, i&#x27;m one voice in thousands. At the national level, i&#x27;m one voice in 320 million.<p>You can change local stuff pretty easily. If you want to scale up to state level, you need to be state level worthy. The guy who owns 100 hotels controls tens of thousands of jobs, and his voice should carry more weight, about some issues at least, than mine alone. It&#x27;s up to me to get a few thousand friends to counter his voice.<p>Yes. The feds are heavily influenced by oil and finance people. but every person&#x27;s life is heavily influenced by oil and finance. Are they unethical? At some level, sure. Do they understand the national system better than anyone else? yeah. yeah they do.<p>There is no magical oracle we can consult for the right answer. we stumble along in the dark trying out different stuff. an 80% right solution is better than nothing. Given the size, the system is pretty nimble. If something sucks, we change it. Sometimes it takes a while for the million voices to come into harmony and say things like everybody deserves equal rights.<p>I get where you&#x27;re coming from. You feel like you have no say and no influence. That&#x27;s largely true. You&#x27;re a nobody. but your influence is not zero. You can affect local stuff greatly today. You can join with others for larger scale political change. Realistically, it&#x27;s a pain in the ass and you probably have better things to do with your free time like laundry or coding or whatever. But people do it. you can to, if that&#x27;s what floats your boat.