To restate the point above
I'm not saying protest is impossible - obviously it happens. My point is that because it *does* fly in the face of any self-interested analysis, it takes exceptional circumstances to make most people do it. We grumble and moan, but most of us don't participate in any direct action. The job for anyone trying to raise support for a cause is to find ways to persuade people that it is worth devoting time, effort and potential loss of life and liberty for. I don't think that's a particularly exceptionable thing to point out - what's nice about the book is that by framing the problem in terms of rational actor theory it becomes easier to study - as with the better-known Prisoner's Dilemma.

Regarding 'Those with the least to least lose generally protest because they have the most to gain', I'm not sure that's borne out by the facts. Students generally don't have much more reason to protest than others, but they're much more willing to do it. Conversely it's quite hard to get poor people in low-paid jobs to protest because they're more concerned about their loss of income.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 15 Nov 2010, 17:10, 1 reply)

And to see examples of all these arguments, you only have to look at some of the answers on this qotw
Eg www.b3ta.com/questions/protest/post969104
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Mon 15 Nov 2010, 17:15, closed)