I can only vote for candidates standing in my region, both in UK and Germany.. I'll grant the UK could be more democratic too, but the EU is as democratic as at least some of it's member states.
All that don't just have time ordered feeds, or feeds which are highly configurable by the user anyway. I guess mastodon doesn't fall under this category..
While billboards are annoying, a) everyone sees the same, they aren't tailored, b) they aren't as ubiquitous, most people don't spend as much time looking at billboards as they do at various feeds and c) they are only show 1 advert, I would say an equivalent to a feed would be every billboard in a part of a city showing an advert that sells the same thing in a slightly different way.
To the point where I'll click away if they don't give me a way to opt out, or if I feel like they're taking the mickey too much. All those cookery websites that are so snooty about cookies as if there weren't 10 more similar websites where they came from...
You don't generally have to check if your food is made with lead or carcinogens though right? And if inspections aren't compulsory some people are going to get lead poisoning before word gets around, or get cancer decades later and never know. Better to have someone qualified to check it before it gets to the shelves. Granted I'm using lead as a hyperbolic example, but I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to make.
Why are free markets better at dealing with partial knowledge?
Also to put the conversation on record somewhere so that if someone comes later with the same complaint they can see why the code was written like that.
The trouble with libertarianism is that it assumes everyone has perfect knowledge. Right now I don't need to do a ton of research about what drugs I'm taking, or the food I'm eating, come to that, because there are agencies making sure that things I buy which are labeled as such will nearly never kill me. I don't want to spend my evenings reading about esoteric stuff that I don't have to care about now, I want to watch streaming or play computer games.
Even if I did, Covid has already shown us how bad most people are at recognising good research from propaganda. I just don't feel like it would end well.
There have already been quite a few laws passed by our newly-liberated government watering down data protection, environmental laws, ramping up authoritarian impulses, and so on. It's not going well I tell you.