> governance by elected officials is not democratic.

Correct. In a (representative) democracy, one does not elect officials. They elect representatives. The representative is not an authority like an official is. They are merely messengers who take the constituent direction established at the local level and travel with that message to deliver it in a country/state/etc.'s central gathering place.

> Then we need to decide if we actually want democracy or not.

We (meaning most people) do not. Democracy is a lot of work. An incredible amount of work. It requires active participation on a near-daily basis. Most people would rather do things like go to their job to put food on the table or spend time with their hobbies or other pleasure activities. Which is why most people seek — by your own admission — officials to lord over them instead.

> Personally, I’d like this decision to be… err… you know, it would be nice if everyone had a say?

It is nice when you are independently wealthy and no longer have to worry about things like giving up an enormous amount of your day to keep a roof over your head. But most people are not so fortunate, so they do not find it fair that, for all realistic purposes, only some people get to participate in democracy to their own advantage. Hence why democracies devolve into a system of officials instead, with most people believing it offers a better balance for all involved, albeit at the cost of losing say.

But in your example, it sounds like representative democracy is a choice freely taken. If people actually want representatives to worry about the details of policy for them, then that is real democracy, because the alternative is a form of government that the people don't actually want.

Maybe something like a publicly traded company, Citizens can vote directly on individual bills, or choose a proxy to vote on their behalf (and change that choice at any point that desire).

> They are merely messengers who take the constituent direction established at the local level and travel with that message to deliver it in a country/state/etc.'s central gathering place.

No. That is exclusively an USA thing. I live in a representative democracy and I vote for the parliamentarian. Representative vs. direct democracy is about whether the people vote on laws directly or not.

> We (meaning most people) do not.

Most people don't want to write the laws, yes. They still want to have a say about the content. Most house owners also don't want to build the house. They still want to have a say what the construction company does.

> Which is why most people seek — by your own admission — officials to lord over them instead.

I don’t recall saying that. On the contrary, I believe people are forced to let officials rule over them, in part by lack of time and other resources, but also in a big part because they believe their government is democratic, even when it is increasingly not.

To give a couple examples in France: in 2005 about 60% of French people voted against the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, despite predictions to the contrary by mass media, and overwhelming representative support. It wasn’t just defiance, there were quite a few objections to the text itself. Then a relatively short while later, a functionally identical text was voted by the parliament. That was the first time I realised my country was no longer, if ever, a democracy. Then over time we had unpopular reforms over unpopular reforms, culminating retirement reform, which all indicators show like about 70% of the population was against. All passed. Not long before that there was a popular demand for citizen initiated binding referendums. Ignored.

The people there did more than discuss in their private homes and answered surveys. We voted. We protested, down in the streets. The state answered with increasing violence. Documented repression tactics, turning a blind eye to police misconduct… A real shame in what was supposed to be the country of Human Rights — that too, we are no longer.

So yeah, politics takes time and effort. But it goes beyond that: work is inequitably spread, split between working overtime for relatively little benefit, and utter unemployment. (The split isn’t all that clear cut, I myself work 4 days a week, because I can afford the pay cut.) And on top of that, peaceful protests now put us in increasing physical danger. People lose their hands, their eyes, and in some (thankfully still rare) cases their lives.

No wonder so many people chose to just disengage at this point.

> But most people are not so fortunate, so they do not find it fair that, for all realistic purposes, only some people get to participate in democracy to their own advantage. Hence why democracies devolve into a system of officials instead, with most people believing it offers a better balance for all involved, albeit at the cost of losing say.

I believe this is false, as a matter of historical fact. At least in France. When we had our Bourgeois Revolution (sure the people were starved and all, but it was coopted quite quickly), there were discussions about whether we should have democracy, or a representative government. Note the wording: "representative democracy" would have been a ridiculous oxymoron at the time. Anyway, democracy was shut down, in big part because the bourgeois discussing this decided that the people couldn’t steer themselves. Nevermind the Paris Commune, who did steer themselves for a very short while, but never got the chance to prove itself — the army disbanded them with bullets, over 10,000 killed.

Another example are randomly sampled assemblies. Constituent assemblies, or assemblies with a specific purpose. When analysed after the fact we generally find that their decisions are pretty well reasoned, well grounded, well documented, and (shocker), serve the actual interests of the people — of course they would be, since the members would then go on being subject to their own decisions.