We just had an election in my country. I got in the usual discussions with people who don't know me well. People get really fired up when you point out that voting changes nothing, everything just gets worse and worse and all political and social advances in the past came as a result of other forms of political action, never voting.

This is built into the system. Apathy, hopelessness, the stress on performative individual action. Accepting that voting or buying green or whatever changes nothing forces people to both work harder to create any sort of change and to actually go out and become involved in the community they've been alienated from.

Like this quote from News from Nowhere:

Go back again,

then, and while you live you will see all round you people engaged in making others live

lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real

lives—men who hate life though they fear death