Information, impotence, and the information-action ratio

What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime, and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? [...] I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.  You may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans, as well as the power to act. But this you can only do once every two to four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satsifying means of expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a dessicated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

~Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman