A Response to "Against All Authority"

It is true, Nick, that many activists today dismiss the entire system as "broken" or "corrupt," and thus often espouse a certain apathetic or nihilistic attitude towards our political atmosphere. But I don't think it's fair to label these people as "armchair activists." You made a point, a very good one. The fact of the matter is that our government has strayed so far from the principles it was founded upon that it has taken on a completely new (and utterly hideous) form.
Federalism today is a joke, because local and state governments have to appeal to a powerful and well-resourced federal government for funds, complying with every single federal mandate in order to scrape together a budget. In this system, there is no avenue for meaningful regional differences between states or communities, because these governments have all been whipped into complying with the federal agenda. Just look at the way the drinking age was set up. In 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, partly because of the massive lobbying efforts of MADD and other groups. Congress then used the Federal Aid Highway Act to force states into raising their own drinking ages to 21, with states that held out losing out on all federal highway funding. Eventually all 50 states declared it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase or publicly consume alcohol. Essentially, ever since 1776, power has slowly been shifting upward. Everyday voters recognize this, and this is one of the reasons that less people vote in local elections than they do in the presidential elections. In the end, they feel like there's just no use, that's simply the nature of the beast.
Now, acknowledging that our current political system is misguided, why should we still adhere to it? In keeping with your springboard analogy, why the hell would you keep using a springboard that's obviously broken? For this reason, I think that non-participation in the system can actually be a morally justified, and even heroic, act.
Another issue I have with your post is the manner in which you seem to conceptualize authority. You write that there needs to be "more authority over authority," but isn't that an oxy-moron? Why have any sort of recognized authority in the hopes that you can "reign it in" and coax it to occasionally respond to your personal wishes? Right now, we pay members of Congress more than 150,000 dollars a year to make our decisions for us. WHY?! To refer to the Paine quote, why should anybody "bear the fatigue" of their government when our government is supposed to be made up of "civil servants" dedicatedly attending to the issues that matter to their constituents? It is in forgetting this, that governments are supposed to obey their people, and not vice versa, that we run into trouble. The above points are central to anarchist (which I'm fairly certain is the group you were referencing in mentioning shoplifters and law breakers)ideology in the US today, and I think their relevance does in fact justify adopting an attitude of contempt to the overall "system."