Your article is irrelevant - and doesn't even support your claim. The article simply states that ordinary citizens have the least effect on policy creation (and they, self-admittedly, offer no data on how effective other participants are). Not that they have no effect. In fact, the purpose of a democratic republic is to provide protections against mob rule by limiting persons' individual effects. You are misinterpreting their study and misapplying it in your argument. Had your argument been valid, then you would be wasting your time anyways - why argue with people who have no effect (definition of a troll)?

So while individuals have relatively little effect on policy creation, you are completely leaving out their participation in policy execution - a major component of my argument. People can file complaints against bad officers or judges. People can file lawsuits when their rights have been infringed (look at policies that were enacted and the payouts against police departments in big cities). People can generate a combined effect on policy creation through voting. An easy way to view this would be to ask yourself what policy changes should take effect if one party or the other took full government control as this requires individual participation as voters and would likely lead to lawsuits against those new policies.

"I bet it makes software engineers in Seattle or SF feel very good about themselves when they can blame the woes of society on the median income household, but maybe you should try to go after people who actually have an impact."

You complain about invalid premises yet you engage in ad hominem fallacies? I wouldn't presume to know what devs in those areas think. I think it's also a stretch to claim that anyone is blaming the median income households - plenty of higher income people are ignorant of the problems as they are disproportionately unaffected.