The very fact that the public depends upon consequences of acts and the perception of consequences, while its organization into a state depends upon the ability to invent and employ special instrumentalities, shows how and why publics and political institutions differ widely from epoch to epoch and from place to place.
Dewey highlights the variability of public and political institutions across different times and places based on their consequences.
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The invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life.
That the state should be to some a deity and to others a devil is another evidence of the defects of the premises from which discussion sets out.
There is therefore no necessary connection between the private character of an act and its non-social or anti-social character.
What is significant is that access to means of amusement has been rendered easy and cheap beyond anything known in the past.