I suspect it is a problem of information density and control that create essentially a societal logistical hell in decision making. There are too many damn thin

I suspect it is a problem of information density and control that create essentially a societal logistical hell in decision making. There are too many damn things packed together for a ballot in the US's case for issues and any capacity for long term thinking is disturbingly /rare/ in general which means the foregone and horrifying get procrastinated without issue until somebody gets hurt - hell even a while afterwards. And that even those who attempt to practice long term thinking are generally pretty horrible at extrapolation and planning for side effects of "success" because that is a pretty hard task. Direct democracy has downright massive logistical issues for everyone to learn sufficiently capable of being informed on the issues while adding more may diffuse power it also diffuses responsibility. Simply subdividing more doesn't solve problems as not only would it result in squabbling fiefdoms instead of concern for the whole and lose the advantages of large scale. Even if we had a known and proven better solution getting it implemented over the status quo would be fiendishly difficult to bootstrap or carry /massive/ side effects like say literal Civil War or Coups and the latter usually make things worse since the winners are based upon their ability to do violence instead of their ability towards any constructive pursuit let alone to govern. Compound that with the evolution of emotional manipulators - the demagogs and propagandists as an electorally dominant force and every special interest after their own piece of the pie. An educated populace helps as always of course but that is a very long term project. It is a "plant trees and decarbonize 70 years ago" sort of solution. The kicker is that despite the paragraphs of advantages it is still better than dictatorships and oligarchies. Their bread ans butter are lies, cohesion and the ability to rationalize absurdities to make travesties.