Democracy is ill-suited to elect competent officials. When the cost of irrationality is low, people indulge, and people have been indulging heavily. It is perfectly rational to not want your wages to go down BUT vote in favor of immigration, because the odds your vote will be the deciding factor are very small, so the cost is very low, but the benefit, wether its feeling good about yourself or wether it gives you virtue points in your social circle, is much greater.

On the converse, even if a competent official gets elected, he is faced with a choice. People are very bad at choosing economically beneficial policy. Therefore, the official has to choose to either (1) introduce the bad policy the people want and be responsible for the bad consequences or (2) indroduce good policy that the people don't want and be seen as a traitor.

It is not the fault of the people, it is the system that works as designed but delivers different outcomes than expected. Democracy can not and will never work as a tool for equality and justice. For equality and justice to be universal, democracy and the state must first dissapear.