this is not limited to democracy - every form of government does this to varying degree, and in fact democracy tends to be (perhaps marginally) better than say autocracy.

as is often said with a sigh, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other."

to me, democracy is really about giving the masses enough feeling of agency, because the alternatives are either revolution and/or disengagement / low productivity / low creativity, and both are "bad for business" i.e. cannot compete with democracies.

China will be an interesting test of this theory. Notably, in China they have a terrific education system and the government is able to attract/retain smart ambitious people.

Another test will be the power of governments to thwart revolutions using digital and kinetic assymmetry. The masses have individual hackers and pea shooters and the government has digital armies and autonomous drone swarms. In turn, since revolution is off the table, governments don't need the overhead of democracy. In the US, we see this with the rise of Executive Orders for example.