Voting is the starting point for participating in democracy. Then you need to make sure you're informed the best you can - this can demand that you move beyond

Voting is the starting point for participating in democracy. Then you need to make sure you're informed the best you can - this can demand that you move beyond your comfort zone to understand things that you do not. You need to interact with your representatives and hole them accountable. There are many more ways to participate in governance. Your hypothesis fails horribly to manage problems that can be classified under "The problem of the commons." You talk about how people should be able to manage themselves, as though that's all government is doing: managing people. But that's not right at all. Like I said, you're really demonstrating that you don't have an understanding of what government actually does. And even you think that humans should be self-managing, that doesn't magically make them so. Reality quite obviously and repeatedly contradicts this.