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Collective action can be motivated in many different ways. Here I point to a new and perhaps surprising one: by, in effect, telling people that the group is powerful and likely to achieve its goal, precisely because each of them is an inessential, interchangeable part in it. Given people's desire to be part (even if a superfluous part) of a winning group, that can be a powerful motivator for people to join in a collective action.

In Democracy Without Shortcuts, Cristina Lafont advocates for the 'full endorsement' of laws and policies by all subject to them instead of 'blind deference' to the judgement of others. But if 'full endorsement' means anything like 'complete consensus' it is an unattainable ideal, and there are many perfectly reasonable ways short of 'blind deference' by which we take into account inputs from others when arriving at our own decisions. This article is devoted to exploring that middle ground—on which Lafont herself seems to agree we must always be operating, based on a closer reading of her book. The key to avoiding 'blind deference', I argue, is exercising your own independent judgement in deciding when and how far to defer to which others.