adding additional friction to a process always increases the difficulty of the process and the cost of overcoming that friction is always borne by the consumer.
The framers of the constitution did not intend for presidential election by popular vote.
The intention was for state legislatures to nominate electors who would then vote for president.
It wasn't until mid 1800's that states started elections (of electors) by popular vote. Note: still through an elector proxy.
Also this is not a government run by popular vote, it is a mixture of state and population based government and also representation democracy not direct democracy.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison explained his views on the selection of the president and the Constitution. In Federalist No. 39, Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of state-based and population-based government. Congress would have two houses: the state-based Senate and the population-based House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the president would be elected by a mixture of the two modes.
The fact that people feel that states shouldn't have equal say and equal power is to me a huge breakdown of society.
Having California run the entire country would be a nightmare.
When you have so many mergers/aq. that build de facto monopolies there's no incentive for companies to care about their employees and the emphasis becomes on the image of caring vs actual caring.
As the employee has a small selection of companies to work for and jobs become about bureaucracy and politics instead of actual `work` and there's not much you as employee can do about it.
The companies not caring about customers but pretending to is another story tangential to this one.