- A union is not a piece of paper, it is a group of people who individually joined, and then as individuals participated in the collective strikes for improved labour conditions. Early movements included significant violence against these individuals who often kept on fighting.
- An abolitionist movement is not an abstract concept, it contained multitudes of individuals willing to fight for a cause and route slaves to safety and lasting change. Many died doing the right thing.
- Women's suffrage was not just an idea, it required many individual women and men to stand up and take action. Narges Mohammadi chose individual responsibility for her cause and so do many others, and they are paying a heavy price.
- Marriage equality for LGBTQ+ is currently happening around the world because individuals take collective action, often with significant sacrifices and death brought on these minorities.
The power of collective action comes from the multiplication of individuals, not just the sum of them.
This is demonstrably false. I'd posit that basically no lasting societal changes have been implemented by large scale individual sacrifices.
In a similar vein, as this has recently been in the news and on HN a lot lately, when it comes to the obesity epidemic, we've been talking about "individual responsibility" and "diet and exercise" for literally many decades and we've only seen global waistlines expand year after year. The technological advancement of semaglutide is literally the first advancement that many obesity researchers believe will actually make a dent in overall obesity.