Democratic control over things that affect everyone and benefit everyone is necessary to avoid e.g. free rider problems, pollution. Democratically restricting

Democratic control over things that affect everyone and benefit everyone is necessary to avoid e.g. free rider problems, pollution. Democratically restricting other people's rights, to the extent that people are not allowed to e.g. subdivide a house into a duplex, all because it would reduce the voters' property values, is immoral and counter productive. Certain rights should not be subject to democracy to the same extent as other laws. When a country comes up with a constitution enumerating rights and makes amending those rights very difficult, that's saying that those rights should be (to some extent) removed from democratic control. But you are absolutely right, when people talk about reducing democratic control, they often secretly mean giving power to technocrats rather than returning power to the people.