>This kind of assumes that the system is actually/legitimately democratic,

It's possible that I'm just tired, or that I'm just not so bright, but I don't really understand what you mean here, in the context of the discussion around housing inventories? To which system(s) are you referring?

>and overlooks that one vote has the consequence (in theory anyways) of determining decisions on thousands of sub-issues.

Again, I'm not at all clear on what, exactly you're talking about here. Are you advocating an Athenian-style form of democracy[0]? In case you're not familiar, that would be akin (although certainly not identical) to California's ballot proposition system.

Do you believe that all laws, from Constitutional amendments (or the US Constitution, for that matter) to local sidewalk width ordinances should be individually voted upon by every citizen affected by a specific measure?

>We vote for people, not issues, and it's highly questionable the degree to which the people we vote for are sincere in their stated goals.

Yes, we do. And yes, no one can really know the mind of anyone other than themself (and sometimes we don't even know our own minds).

That goes back to the statement you appear to be condemning -- [paraphrasing myself] that if your elected representative isn't doing their job or is untrustworthy, we have regularly scheduled elections to address such issues. What's more, we have mechanisms in place to remove elected (and unelected) officials who abuse their office or act in ways that are unacceptable to the voting public.

Is that insufficient in your mind? If so, how, specifically, would you change the system?

>> It's what's called "representative democracy." I hear that it's been tried in a few places and has had some minor successes. /s

>Depending on how one measures it, ignoring that we tend to measure such things heuristically, on a relative scale, and tend to not consider counterfactual causality.

I assume you're referring to this[1] sort of analysis. Unfortunately, while such an analysis is interesting, it doesn't provide real information. Rather, it only provides a platform for speculations that can't ever be proved. Stanislaw Lem made a similar "argument"[2] which demonstrates the (lack of) usefulness of such an analysis:

Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while
this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman,
it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The
School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly
unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the
banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated,
there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem
analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of
dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely
hypothetical. They were all, one might say,
nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely
different way.

> Beyond that, "democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried."[0]

>It is an extremely popular meme (particularly lately, perhaps in part due to an extremely successful guerilla marketing campaign), but it would be interesting to know what is actually true.

Then you're in luck. There has been quite a bit of research into this area. Perhaps you should learn more?

Here are a few links to get you started. N.B., these are just a few, semi-randomly (selected because they address your question) selected items from the first page of a web search for "measures of success between political systems." I'm sure you can find much more if you're actually interested (rather than trolling -- which would make me sad).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-system/Stable-pol...

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:663508/FULLTEXT0... [PDF]

https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/file... [PDF]

https://researchoutreach.org/articles/political-systems-econ...

In that context, what do you suggest as the least worst form of government? Or do you reject government completely (a la Anarcho-capitalism[3] or straight-up anarchism[4])?

I look forward to haviung a robust discussion of facts and logically consistent ideas around this with you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1132401-everyone-knows-that...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism