Democracy will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today.
But not because it will be replaced with something "better". Democracy just means everybody has a say on decisions affecting them and the society they are in.
If your replacement is closer to "only informed people should have a say", that is even older then democracy, and is much worse in practice.
(i) no functionaries: run all the administrative jobs not in an office by Margaret and John, but in some cluster of computers;
(ii) no political nominations: instead of having elections between Side A vs Side B (vs Side C in non-US countries), all the decision-making positions are up to vote by name and all the candidates are sorted out randomly from the totality of the populace (no candidate can have more than 2 mandates);
(iii) negative vote: all ballots have a special box "No One" invalidating all the candidates (if the majority votes "No One") or reducing the duration of the mandate;
(iv) the duration of the mandate correlated with voter turnout (if 30% of the populace vote, you don't get 100% of the 4-year mandate, you get 1.2 years of mandate);
(v) the vote no longer a fact (you voted for X one time), but a process (you are maintaining your vote for X today also); when a majority of people retract their vote for a certain decision-maker they automatically lose their position of power.
The current flavour of democracy is already not democratic as practiced in most countries (perhaps Switzerland is an exception).
In the US it's career politicians with little accountability, billionaires and huge coporations with huge influence, paying politicians, media owned by said millionaires or fed BS by the government, a baroque system of chosing President, a failed educational system that doesn't teach kids to be active citizens, fossilized two party system supported by all kinds of powers and structures that the voters aren't allowed to change, and so on. Plus a charade of voting once every five years. If that's democracy, then yes, it should change: to real democracy.
The options you describe would be some of the solutions to that.
Of course those "wise persons in power who know better than us what's good for us" will prevent anything like that.
The original system wasn't two party. In fact, the first Chief Executive (President of the United States) on leaving Office, specifically warned the populace against anything remotely resembling the formation of political parties.
The populace quickly ignored that advice, and carved up the country between Federalists and Anti-Federalists who either vied to achieve the Supreme Seat of Power to enact their Will, or hold that Seat so no one would be able to avail themselves of it.
Our current situation is that (in theory) the elected politicians listen to the general "mood" of the population, and then listen to the experts how to implement the needed changes. I can't think of a better system, we just need to figure out how to make it resistant to abuse.
I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing.
Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like they all do.
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? Especially a person selected solely by their prowess for violence (or in leading others to violence)?
If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. Decisions could be made much faster. And such a leader could very well be better at making decisions that are better in the long term, even if they aren't in the short term.
However, how do you find and appoint such a leader? And even if you somehow get such a leader, how do you ensure their successor is just as good? Selecting a leader based on military prowess definitely won't get you such a leader though.
First, that's a big if. Second, it's the old pipe-dream that there are decisions that are on "best interest" for everybody, that can just be based on "domain knowledge", and not competing interests to be heard and balanced.
>Decisions could be made much faster.
That persons decisions. Not the ones people want. Basically you're described an infantilized population and a parent/nanny that knows what's best for them.
Productivity requires decentralized decision-making. The more centralized the power structure is, the lower the overall productivity of the subject population.
Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian populace has to provide all the complicated logistics, food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix to "egalitarianism".
We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input on their life, and don't know I exist.