>I’ve interacted with people who knowingly vote for their own economic interests at the expense of society’s interests because they fundamentally believe they should take whatever they can get.
This should hopefully be balanced out by the fact that everyone gets a vote.
It’s evidently not, especially since votes aren’t equal in the US since voters in certain states have more sway in electoral college than others. Which is how we end up with leaders that the majority did not elect.
This is the United STATES, a democratic republic - not to be confused with a popular democracy outright. We recognize that in national issues, a few blocks in a major city should not be able to out-vote (and thus overrule) entire states having very different needs/interests. Issues which are appropriate for popular vote should be decided within suitably local jurisdictions. Without this balancing of "tyranny of the majority" vs "tyranny of the minority", low-population states would not have signed onto, and would not remain in, the overall federal system.
In a country so large and with so much diversity (!), no region should be able to absolutely dominate another simply by having a larger population.
This should hopefully be balanced out by the fact that everyone gets a vote.