there are several ways in which large groups of people in the streets might function lets call them "assemblies" as a sort of umbrella term with no moral connocations, not perfect but this is my intent here are the two that I think capture many cases
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1. Assemblies can function as a sort of means of generating a preference cascade, simply credibly signalling that a large group of ppl do have a belief and "permitting" others to express the same See Timur Kuran These mostly matter in environments with viewpoint censorship
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2. Assemblies may increase the cost of imposing a punishment Easy to arrest one guy vandalizing a tea ship, harder to arrest hundreds In this sense an assembly is acting to de facto delegitimize one law or all of them
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Assemblies in (1) are almost purely expressive Assemblies in (2) are somewhat more dangerous to everyone involved, because it's very easy to slip from "violating one law" to "there are no laws" when enforcement is infeasible
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Note that I make no distinction between whether the law(s) violated in (2) are good or bad; this is left to the judgment of the reader Cases of (2) may range from "refusing to pay a salt tax" to "dragging someone out of prison to hang them before they are tried" and "pogroms"
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It is straightforward to generally support (1) on principled grounds, even for causes one disagrees with, while evaluating (2) on a case by case basis
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Further implications are left as an exercise for the reader.
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not sure if I agree with all of this, but one more suggestion: amount of time and energy invested in a protest/'occupation' is a signal not only of the # of supporters but the intensity of the preferences
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oh yes I like that!
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